We were given a nice little gift to celebrate the Sister City Agreement signed 40 years ago inside the writing from Madrid to New York City on their 40th anniversary of the Sister City Agreement signed by Mayor Koch 40 years ago. We thank you for this gift, Mayor Jose and his team are here. And you know it's interesting that there is some commonality between the cities. He's dealing with an affordable housing crisis, he's dealing with transportation crisis, he's dealing with a crime crisis with gangs, he's dealing with a very friendly press. But it was really an enjoyable opportunity to sit down and talk as we struggled with these challenging times in both our cities. Madrid is a city of over 3 million people, millions of people use their streets every day. Trying to navigate the conversation around electric vehicles, making it affordable for the city, dealing with their metro. So we see the common issues that we are facing and one of the things we walked away with is how do we join together as mayors to find real solutions to the problems that we're dealing with. And that's something that our Commissioner, Commissioner Ed Murmestein is going to do in this administration. We're going to reach across the pond, as we like to say, and start building these international relationships. Same problems, we can find similar solutions to them. And so, Amaya, I'm happy that you're here. And this is your first trip to New York, I hope it's not your last. So I look forward to coming to Madrid and seeing your beautiful city again. It's been about 15 years since I've been there and I look forward to coming again. Please say a few words. Thank you, my dear friend Mayor, and thanks to your lovely team. We feel really, really, really comfortable here in New York and you put us very easy to stay here. And until the next Saturday, then we will back to Madrid. 40 years ago, Madrid and New York City became Sister Cities, an agreement with the sign of an agreement with the major scotch and Tierno Galvan, where we feel extremely proud to have the city by our side. Coming along the way to become the understanding city that we are right now in many ways, thanks to the example of New York City. In this 40 years, Madrid has been transformed from a small capital city in southern Europe to one of the most important cities in the world. We are the European city of the opportunities. We are the European city of the freedom. We are the European city of the happiness. Right now, our history is, and we pay a tribute to New York and our people in New York, especially to the public services of New York. Well, history says there's a common path, not only in our greatness, but also in our darkest moments. This city suffered 1911, 21 years ago, and we suffered 311 18 years ago. The example of New York's New Yorkers, Mayor, has made the people of Madrid to overcome the situation and become stronger than ever. I would really like to thank Mayor Adam for his kindness and friendship and for his commitment to the friendship between our cities and people have and surely will have in the future. We serve some unknown goals, such as security, immigration, integration, environmental policies, transform digital transformation, affordable housing. Our local police departments have been working closely and will definitely keep doing so in the future. I take this opportunity, Mayor, to extend an invitation to come to Madrid, please. To visit us in Madrid, where he will definitely, as you will feel at home in the capital city of Spain, one of the greatest nations in the world. Thanks a lot, Mayor Adams. Thanks a lot to your team because we feel at home here in New York, but we respect and we hope to see you soon in Madrid. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I know you have a similar press from Spain, so we could open up to a few more topics. Mr. Mayor, I would like to ask a question to the mayor of Madrid. In Spain, Mr. Mayor, the mayor of Adams has said that one of the issues that you have discussed has been about housing and the issue of the Latin bands that are being a constant news in Madrid. Who have you spoken to and what has been the council of the mayor of Adams, as I say members of the police in New York, to face these challenges? If you don't mind, I speak in Spanish. Thanks a lot. I take this intervention in Spanish to deeply thank the mayor of Adams, as well as his team, for the warm welcome that we have had in New York, for the City Council of Madrid, for all the media of the City Council of New York, so that we can stretch our relations in this milestone of the 40th anniversary of the sisterhood between both cities. And I think that if there is a city in the world where the other cities can learn their numbers and more questions, it is precisely New York and therefore for us it is a privilege to be able to be here and to be able to have maintained this meeting with the mayor of New York. Both are the questions that have been pointed out, indeed, among many, but that have special importance. And in the first place, the security issues. Everyone knows in Madrid that we are worried about the issue of the youth bands. And here in New York, of course, the police department, with which we have also had a meeting. We have been able to talk about these security issues. We have been given a series of advice on how they focus on these issues, on which are the security measures that they have implemented in the city, from a police department that consists of more than 38,000 police agents and who have a great experience, but in which we have also been recommended that we do prevention work, fundamentally in the school area in the city of Madrid, through the tutors of our municipal police, which is the best way to prevent these events to occur. And in second place, regarding a issue that also occupies and worries all the big cities, it is no longer the issue of housing for the people who are in a situation of vulnerability, but the issue of housing for those people who have a job, who have a salary, do not have economic capacity to be able to stay and live in the city of Madrid. And we have been talking about those initiatives that we have put in Madrid about the arrangement of promoters on the ground for the construction of housing in the archival regime at a price that has been specifically directed to minors of 35 years or also the unlocking of certain urban operations in the city of Madrid. I believe we learn from each other in three areas. One is education. We're not limited now by allowing our students to communicate directly with students in Madrid. A classroom in learning should not be isolated or limited to just a classroom. We want to utilize zooms to have students in Madrid speak to students here on every level of education from elementary to middle school to high school so they can see how they have similar desires and outcomes and how they can work together on real projects to do instructional based learning together. Second is economics. We want to see how we could exchange businesses here. Something that I charge with my commissioner of international affairs is to see what business opportunities do we have globally in general but specifically in those areas where we have sister city agreements and we want to look at how we can bring delegations of businessmen and women here and there. And last culture. Culture is one of the best ways you could learn and respect different countries. Our globe is a smaller place and our goal is to show the culture here of New York as diverse as it is and exchange the culture of Madrid. And I believe those three areas are clear areas that we can bring our cities closer together. Thank you Mayor. These 40 years I think have been 40 years that have served to stretch the relationships between New York and Madrid. There have been collaborations from a security point of view between both police throughout all these years but also from a cultural point of view with various expositions that have been in New York and that have been in Madrid and at the same time I believe that in the future and I have already indicated the mayor of us in the first place because of strengthening the ties in the business economy. New York is one of the biggest financial capital in the world. Madrid is one of the biggest financial capital in Europe and therefore we have a series of ties that we must still continue to deepen so that the economic activity that comes from New York and from the United States also focuses towards Spain and specifically towards the city of Madrid and therefore from the point of view of the businessmen there is a more close contact. In that sense also this night that there will be a flamenco show tomorrow when the real theater comes there will be contacts between businessmen I am going to have a meal with businessmen also throughout these days to explain the advantages of the city of Madrid and to invest because then everything that comes from New York in economic terms will be beneficial for the city of Madrid and the capacity that we will have to attract. Then we want to enhance the tourist ties. For us the North American market from the point of view of tourism is absolutely essential at a time when the market in China and Japan has it very complicated yet due to the consequences of the pandemic however the American market and especially New York receives 60 million tourists a year. Madrid received 11 million. For us it is very important that they can share experiences of those tourists or that the American tourists have as their preferred destination in Europe, precisely the city of Madrid and then coincided fully with the mayor when he said that culture is the shortest way for the people to know and to maintain peace and the most important coexistence than ever in the times that we live in and therefore that in fact we are able to guarantee those cultural exchanges will be very important but I would also stay with a phrase that has been said the mayor who allows to narrow the relations between the great cities we have the same problems we have to share similar solutions if the great cities that we are the great protagonists of the 21st century that we are going to accumulate more and more population that we are going to reach 75% of the world population in just a few years we are directly responsible for guaranteeing the quality of life of all our fellow citizens and if we have the same problems, New York and Madrid have to share similar solutions and I am sure that we will do it in the future. I want to give a little bit of a lot of respect to the Spanish speakers like Gladys who has been with me all these years they teach me the phrases over and over again but I don't want to do the de Blasio version that butches the Spanish language. I want to give it the respect that it deserves and I am going to pop out one day and give you all of the practice that I had and this way I can give it the justice that it deserves. I'm really impressed when the conversation around affordability and living in Spain is a group of population that we often ignore. He's doing everything possible for low income earners. And those who are high income earners are able to afford, the high income earners are able to afford to live in Madrid. But it is the middle income earners, we often forget them. We forget about those who don't receive the same level of subsidies as we see here. Oftentimes they slip through the cracks of their struggling and he clearly acknowledges that we need to be there for those middle income earners as well. And that's something that I would like to continue to focus on. We're doing on topic with the mayor so you will not embarrass me in front of the mayor. We're doing on topic with the mayor so you will not embarrass me in front of the mayor. Any other on topics? Okay, Mayor, thank you. Mayor, thank you. Good to see you. And now I offer to the Mayor-Alms Madrid as the right place to learn Spanish.


So this is a J-Term experience. We have an entire month where we work with our music, our music guy Sam, and then our choreographer, our director, the costume people, the set people, all these people coming together to create this show. So as costume designer, what's been interesting with Cabaret is that I've had to do a lot of research into the people in the history of the time period, and I've learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know. The show takes place right after the Great Depression causes the European economy to collapse in about four months before Hitler's elected into power, which is just such a fascinating moment in history. And it's been quite the experience choreographing eight different dance members, not only just for the core, but also for the MCs and for Sally and the main people who do different choreography during the dance members. And then also choreographing just tiny bits and pieces of staging and things like that. So if you have this wonderful story, right? Who's the MC? And I could just leave it at that. Honestly, who's the MC? Oh, good to see you. Oh, who's this guy? Cameraman, hello. He's not good, but he's not bad. He just sort of flips on you. He's like, it could be one thing, it could be another thing, but I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to show it to you and I want you to look, because this is interesting what's happening here, but I want you to think about it. How does your vision of your character line up with what I am able to give you? And that's been really rewarding for me. I've really enjoyed being able to collaborate with my peers and my friends. And it it's nice to have that kind of collaboration and theater and really be able to create something organically like that. It's not just my idea of what the cabaret looks like. It's very the amalgamation of everyone working together to create this one production.


Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Shappie, and it's time to go over the newest book released as one part of a three-piece set, Monsters of the Multiverse. This book acts as a catch-all for D&D players looking to get as much content as possible, pulling in popular creatures from Volo's Guide, Mordekaden's Tome, and Miscellaneous Source books to update them for a new era. And it also updates not 10, not 20, but 33 races to both bring them up to speed and consolidate them into one place so that you don't have to buy five different books to catch them all. As always, keep in mind with the majority, this is just my opinion. So if you feel like it's really shady to put your massive book expansion inside of a $160 combo set, don't worry, we'll talk about that. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So, like I said, Monsters of the Multiverse is one part of a three-piece combo, the others being Xanathar's Guide and Tasha's Bowl. Because the other two comprise what is basically the totality of expansion rules for the general D&D player in regards to everything but races, Monsters of the Multiverse was tasked with acting as the next rendition of Volo's Guide, giving a bunch of new rules for Monsters and races for players and DMs to punch each other with. However, Mottom decided to do something a little bit different, in that it doesn't include any new material, but it updates a lot of the old material that people have had problems with in the past. For instance, the cadaver collector, an ancient war machine that stands on the cutting edge of fashion, now has the unusual nature trait so that people can't strangle the robot to death anymore. It's some inspector ability was also changed to a bonus action instead of a trait, so the stat block actually makes more sense to look at now. There are hundreds of these little updates and I'm just one man, so if you see something on this list that you use in your games, check out this updated version. The big thing is that every creature with spellcasting abilities has been updated to help the DM manage it all. See, the developers realized that spell slots are a great system when you're a player that's running through a dungeon and you only have to worry about yourself, but it can get real annoying for a DM who has to constantly keep track of every spell for every spell slot for every level of every enemy. So instead, spellcasters get a list of spells that can be cast at will, three times per day, once per day, etc. To ease the burden of note-taking on dungeon masters who may be running, say, a magic school. Other than that, the only thing in this book are the aforementioned 43 races, and I know that that's what you're here for, so I'm gonna hit each of them briefly to compare their old stats to their new. Then I'll do bigger in-depth videos to replace my classical guides since this book took that series out back and shot it in the kneecaps. Two things to note about every updated race is that any spells that said race casts can now be casted using spell slots as well, and you can use whatever mental stat you want to cast them. They also officially throughout ability score improvements and racial languages in favor of Tasha's Do What You Want rule, so I'm not gonna repeat myself every time it comes up, just know that they all do it. But without further ado, ERACACRAZE! Fun fact, this is the first book that these guys were in because they were first released in a tiny pamphlet for an adventure book that no one played, but their claim to fame was being able to fly, and they can still do that, but their speed was reduced from 50 feet down to a more manageable 30 feet, and their walking speed was changed to 25 feet as a way of punishing you when you get too close to the sun. Their talent damage was increased from 24 to 1d6 so that you actually have a reason to use them, and they spontaneously learned to cast Gust of Wind once they hit third level. ACEMAR! ACEMAR can be small now, probably to imply that ACEMAR don't have to be human, but maybe they just like cherubs. The biggest change is that all three ACEMAR subclasses have been consolidated into one big feature, the Celestial Revelation, which you get at third level and then can choose one of the three options that basically function in the same way as the old subraces. But the main difference is that all the damage no longer scales off of level because it's proficiency time, baby, and the Scourge ability no longer hurts you because that was a really silly feature. Healing Hands doesn't scale off of level either, now you just get a d4 per proficiency bonus, which means higher lows and lower highs. BUG BEAR! Y'all won't believe this, but bugbears are goblinoids now. They also count as fey, so charming them as harder. Their sneaky trait specifies that they can comfortably stand in a place sized for small creatures, despite literally being long-lived powerfully built monsters, and also their surprise attack was reworded so that you no longer need the surprised condition that you just need to take a turn before they do. CENTAR! Can you believe that these guys first came out all the way back in Ravnica? Anyway, Centars are completely unchanged except that their survivor skill was renamed to natural affinity because they had to justify some reason to include the Centar in this book. CHANGELING!  Also, their fey now? They're fey now. Technically, their changeling instincts also include performance as a possible option and their shape change now explicitly does let them change their size from medium to small, but it's mostly the art for me. DEEP GNOME! The first of the subraces to burst out from the loins of its parent race is the Swerve Nebulin, who basically have nothing in common with their subclass counterparts, except that they're small, they can resist mental magics, and they have super dark vision. These deeper gnomes have an altered camouflage that works anywhere but can only be done per proficiency before you have to take a long nap. They also get spells in the form of disguised self and non-detection, which, hey, is more than they used to get. DUERGAR! Unlike the deep gnomes, duergar have an easier time rectifying their subracial counterparts, keeping the duergar magic, extended art vision, and dwarven resilience, but changing their duergar resilience to working at stuns instead of paralysis. And now they can walk as fast as a normal person, so good for them. ELADRIN! I'm not sure what these guys are in their own race. They literally keep everything the same, except now their summer form scales off of proficiency, and it's their transfeature that keeps them from falling asleep, if that's a change you care about. FAIRY! These guys literally just came out and they already have been reprinted. And they have not been changed. FAIRBULG! The biggest change for these guys is their lore. Now they have the soul of the forest inside of them, but juries out on whether they've actually seen a tree before. Concerning this stat block, hidden stuff gets more uses that scale off of proficiency, but otherwise they receive no updates except for this little blur by Tasha. GENASI! GENASI got weird. They all count as their own race now, despite the fact that they all have more in common than they did when they were all part of one group. Now, all the genasi get dark vision. Fire genasi lose their red vision, by the way. And they can all be either medium or small, depending on if you want to play a chibi elemental. Past that, they're all different, so... Air genasi! Wind boys can move 35 feet now, they have lightning resistance, and they've got shock and grasp and featherfall, in addition to the old levitation spell. Thusly turning them into more of storm boys than strictly windbags. Earth genasi! Earthwalk was reworked so you can now walk on any floor-based difficult terrain, and they get an additional new spell in the form of Blade Ward, which I thought was a practical joke. I thought you were kidding! I thought it was a joke! I even wrote it down in my diary! Veronica had a very funny joke today! Until I read that they can cast it as a bonus action per proficiency. So, yeah, new tank meta. Fire genasi! The only one anybody used to play. Like I said, they lost their red vision, but it's still dark vision, so I guess you can just pretend. And they get Flameblade on top of their usual spells. Water genasi! They lost Shapewater, but they get Acid Splash instead, which I think is dumb, but maybe I'm in the minority. Also, they get Waterwalk. GIF! Much like genasi, I don't see a reason why the GIF were split up, other than to keep the book's format streamlined, at least here they don't have much in common besides a new resistance to psychic damage. So... GIF Yankee! Basically, completely changed. The GIF Yankee only keep their psionic spells, but their martial prodigy and decadent mastery traits get mashed up into one trait that lets you pick a skill and a weapon or a tool to be proficient in per day. GIF Zorai! Completely unchanged, aside from the universal GIF psychic resistance. However, I do want to mention that due to the way that innate spellcasting is handled now, the GIF Zorai is your one-stop shop for granting any spellcaster access to the Shield spell. Use that information how you will. Goblin! The representation of manic monkey brain energy has been gifted with fae ancestry and fury of the small was changed to that both the damage and the number of uses scale off with proficiency, but you have to take a long rest to refresh it. Is that better mathematically? Depends on how many naps you take. I prefer it, but that's because I keep my goblins up all night making content. Goliath! Natural athlete and powerful build were consolidated into one condescending trait and now you can use Stone's endurance per proficiency. Which, what? Who said to do that? I get it. You're swapping all of the short rest uses for per proficiency, but you have created a stronger beefcake than the barbarian and it can be a barbarian! You monsters! Herringon! I just want to point out that some poor developer made what they thought was a really witty pun and named this race after it and now that nobody caught on to the joke, they had to add a blurb or Mordenkainen explained it. We made the book people explain their joke, guys. There aren't any changes, by the way. Hobgoblin! Wow, these guys have completely changed. I don't even know where to begin. They've gone from being a militaristic society to being basically Feywild bards. For instance, saving face has been transformed into fortune from the many, effectively drawing on the energy of friendship to do the same thing that saving face does, although now the cap is plus three and it's per proficiency instead of short rest. Then they get fey ancestry like their goblinoid siblings. They get a new feature called fey gift, which lets you take the help action as a bonus action per proficiency. And at third level, you get to choose between three additional effects every time you use your bonus action help. That'll grant temp HP, increase movement speed, or impose disadvantage on an enemy attack. If you're a hobgoblin puritan, you can flavor these abilities as your character just being a very good leader, but I'm feeling some major culture shock whenever I look at this smiling red boy. Kenku! Everything is just a little different. Expert forgery is now expert duplication to better represent that it can recreate items too. Mimicry no longer challenges your deception, it just has its own DC calculator, and the bonus proficiency choices were expanded to two of whatever skills you want. Plus, you can give yourself advantage per proficiency on whatever skill you already have proficiency in. Apparently, Kenku are being reimagined to have a supernaturally good memory, which only further brings up the question of how do they keep forgetting words? Gobbled! Another one that basically got replaced with an evil duplicate, this kobold loses everything except its size, and it gets a bunch of new abilities that essentially boil down to, we're sorry we made the dragon babies into unmitigated cowards. Now, kobolds grant their allies advantage by roaring instead of groveling around like a wimp, but it's basically still the same ability, just per proficiency instead of short rest. And they get three semi-subclass options at third level that give them extra proficiency, advantage against fear effects, or sorcery cantrip. I will deeply miss pack tactics, and I don't think any of the kobold legacies make up for it, but now all the people who hate sunlight sensitivity don't have to worry anymore because that's gone too.  The bite is still the same, the natural armor is still the same, Hunter's lore just got renamed, and they added medicine as a choice, but it's otherwise unchanged. Hungry jaws is per proficiency instead of short rest like everything else. You can even still hold your breath like normal, but they removed cunning artisan. The coolest thing about the race, and they threw it out because they didn't want to tie down a race to being tribalistic. Why even play a lizard folk anymore? To bite things? That's not even one of my kinks. This blows. Minotaur! Virtually unchanged, except that they swap out extra proficiencies for the ability to always know where north is, they've got vulnerability to tar-tar damage, and advantage on survival checks to specifically navigate or track. Orca! They keep dark vision and powerful build, but they drop primal intuition to steal relentless endurance from their half-orc cousins, and aggressive has been updated so that they don't need to specifically move towards an enemy, and they'll get temp HP for it, but now it's per proficiency instead of just whenever they want. Also, they can be blue now. Seder! Their horns are a bit hornier, going from 1d4 to 1d6 damage. But they're the same goat boys they've always been. C! Elf! Behold, more elf, still with all of the normal elf traits, but the weapon training has been removed in favor of giving it cold resistance, and maybe accidentally locking its swimming speed to 30 feet instead of making it the same as their walking speed. Oops. Shadar Kai! Same deal as the first version, they just changed blessing from per short rest to per proficiency. Shifter!  This is the least popular race from the Eberron expansion. Did somebody ask for this? Is the Vedalkan in here somewhere? Anyway, confusion aside, the shifter actually got reworked where Wolfian subraces became features within the shifting ability. And the skill proficiencies that the subraces used to give just got turned into one bestial instincts trait that gives a random proficiency to the base race. The shifting mechanic got the usual rework of going from per short rest to per proficiency, and the temp HP calculation is now two times proficiency, but the individual transformation abilities remain the same. Top Baxi! Got a few touch-ups, namely an increase in the claw damage from 1d4 to 1d6. They can be small now if you want to play a kitten, and their climbing speed is equal to their walking speed now instead of being capped at 20 feet. Portal! In addition to having a small option, turtles get that natural weapon buff of 1d6. They've gone from having no need for armor to being explicitly barred from wearing it not that it makes a difference. And their survival proficiency is slightly changed to be either survival or animal handling, medicine, nature, perception, or stealth. All in all, basically the same turtle. Triton! Their casting of wall of water was replaced with waterwalk. Their ability to talk to fish extends to elementals and monstrosities as well as beasts. And their swimming speed is tied to their walking speed now, which means that they're both increased together as well. Very minor changes, but maybe they'll be enough to convince someone to try out the Triton. You wantee! Wait. Is this the last one? Hell yeah. For starters, yawn tea dropped the pure blood from their name. They can be small now to represent that they were created by transforming other species into snake people. Their immunity to poison was dropped down to resistance. Their magical resistance no longer works on magical effects, only spells. And they actually have a little bit of art that isn't just one sexy snake lady. Having played a yawn tea up to level 9 in Joe Kat's Belkinous Necrohunt, I never saw this race as too groundbreaking. And I really don't bat an eye at these sort of nerfs because they solve such specific problems that I barely even encountered over half a year of playing. Oh my god, that was a lot of races. So hopefully this video has helped you make an informed decision as to whether or not you want to buy Monsters of the Multiverse. But I really want to mention something before I end this video. It is not necessary to buy every expansion and rules update in order to play D&D. But whenever something new comes out and I don't get it, FOMO hits. Especially when it's one of these big expansions, the importance of getting it is huge. Because D&D is a very social game and trying to talk to your friends when a new book releases is just them reminding you, hey, have you seen the new book? That's why I find it really scuffed that the biggest rules expansion since Tasha's is locked into a three book set that costs between $150 to $160 to get. It's not like no one would buy Monsters of the Multiverse otherwise. People are already treating these like new races. Especially since multiple sub races were turned into new races via this book. I get that it is by technicality not an expansion, just a revision. But it doesn't change how the community treats it. These will be the stat blocks of all these races now by order of the rule of new. And preventing people from buying the book unless they purchase it in a bundle that also includes the two best selling expansions in 5e basically guarantees that people are forced to repurchase a book or two that they already have unless they're very new to the hobby. Or they'll otherwise have to find alternative ways to get the book that haven't been sanctioned by the crowd. The worst part is, even if you're new, you can buy both Tasha's and Xanathar's for 30 bucks on Amazon. So you're paying an extra $100 for a big book of Arata.  Have you tried Tinder? Buuuut that'll about do it! I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, check it out on my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can afford to continually pay Emma for making increasingly longer and longer videos. But yeah, Davi out.


I finally read Shadow of the Conqueror by Shad M. Brooks, a.k.a. Shad of Irciti. It's a lot of shads. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so I didn't do a whole lot of research into what the consensus on this book was before I read it. However, I didn't get to it until this point because I was very wary of it. I was thinking, yeah, that's not going to be good because, one, it's a first-time novel. Two, it's self-published. And three, it's self-published by a YouTuber. Which, for those of you who don't know, Shad of Irciti is another YouTuber. He talks about medieval weapons and history and such. And the thing is that those three things together do not usually work well in combination. They usually produce some pretty awful stories when that happens. And that being said, I don't think Shad of the Conqueror is awful. I think I just have extremely mixed feelings on it. There's some stuff that's very, very good. And there's some stuff that I would say is great, actually. But then there's a lot of stuff that's just absolutely awful. And just, oh god, it should never have happened. So this is a fantasy novel. It takes place in a world which is like just a giant floating continent. You know, it has airships and stuff that's how people get around.  Okay, that's kind of interesting. And the main character is also pretty interesting, because he is, unlike most fantasy protagonists, he's not a young kid in his late teens or early 20s. He's actually 82 years old at the beginning. And not only that, he used to be this war hero, and then he became a revolutionary who overthrew his government, and then he became a horrible tyrant, and then he was overthrown, and everyone thought he was dead, and then he went into hiding for 20 some odd years, and that's where we see him at the beginning of the book. And then he attempts suicide, but through some magical shenanigans, which I don't really feel like getting into, he winds up getting magical powers and also becoming young again.  You know, he is genuinely just an ultra-Uber-powerful badass the entire book, but it is a super unique concept, and I think it's done very well for the most part. So the world is really good. The main character is genuinely great. There are other characters in here who I think are really good. You know, maybe not as good as Dalen himself, but they are still really good. I liked most of the magic stuff. You know, it got a little too broad, I felt. Like, by the end you could basically do anything with magic, but overall I thought it was cool. I liked the culture and history of the world that it goes into.  And so what it winds up being is that there are a bunch of good pieces, but they don't tie together well. They don't mesh together well because the story, for the most part, just isn't good. For about the first, I'd say 70 or 80 pages of this book, almost nothing happens. Like, it introduces us to Dalen. It shows us his mental state, which is not good.  It shows him get his powers, and then he starts learning about his powers. And most of him learning about his powers is just him walking around, testing stuff out, and then talking out loud to himself about, oh, hey, I just discovered this new thing. And Dalen talks to himself a lot in this book, actually, which wouldn't bother me at all if it weren't for him constantly doing it with his powers and stuff, because I feel like that would be better with an internal monologue, and it just feels a little awkward, but I don't know, that's a small thing in the grand scheme of things. But yeah, it takes about 70 pages for anything to actually happen, and then most of the events after that are pretty disconnected. And part of me feels like that was done deliberately, like this was done as more of a character-based story, but then once you get near the end, it feels like, oh no, this was trying to be plot-driven, this was trying to be heavy, this was trying to have stakes, and have the fate of the world be in the balance, and so it just doesn't work, you know? It's hard to even explain without going into detail on every plot point, but basically they just don't tie together, they don't really lead into each other, they just sort of, one happens, and then it's over, and then another happens, and then it's over, and then when the climax comes, it comes kind of out of nowhere. For that matter, there are like three climaxes in this, and I'll probably do a little bit more detail in the spoiler section, but basically the first climax is, I would say actually pretty good, because it's just very character-focused, it's just about Dalin and his relationship with his new friends, and as the final fighting is happening, you really don't want anyone to get hurt, and you kind of see where everyone's coming from, so it's a good climax, okay? But then the second climax is the one that kind of comes out of nowhere, and it's very... I was about to say plot-driven, but that's not the word, it's like, it just kind of comes out of nowhere, and it's like, oh, fate of the city is in the balance, and it's like, it's hard to care, and then third climax is another one, which is a little bit more character-driven, but it's... I... man, it just... I don't know, there's not enough build-up to it, whereas the first climax had all this build-up to it, and then it had all this tension, and then it was released, the other one just, it didn't have enough tension built up, so there couldn't be a release, and so, yeah, the plot of this book is just... it's a mess, it really is, and, again, Shad is a first-time author, so it didn't really surprise me when that happened, that's actually a pretty common issue with first-time authors, but it does... I mean, that doesn't make it any better. But let's talk about the genuinely the best part of this book, and that is Daelin himself, the protagonist. Now, as I said, the very concept of his character is super unique, but even beyond that, just seeing him be consumed by his own guilt, and seeing him want to try to atone for his crimes, and seeing him realize that he's still not a great person at the beginning, but he slowly becomes better, that is a... I mean, it's a great, great arc to watch, and in fact, there's a pretty huge part of it that is taken up by like, well, can a person like this even be redeemed, or is he worthy of being redeemed? And just... it's... man, it's really fascinating, and I think that the book is definitely trying to say like, yeah, he can be redeemed, but you know, the question is still posed, it's still a good arc to watch. I still really liked it, okay? I really liked Daelin, and the only real issue is that he's just way too much of a Mary Sue. Like, as soon as he gets his powers, he figures out how to use them almost instantly, perfectly, and then as it goes on, he only gets better and better at it, and till by the end, he's just almost like a god, and it's just... it's kind of dumb, and that aside, he's also just like a super smart dude. He kind of knows everything on how to get out of crisis. He is generally a pretty nice guy throughout most of the book, like, not always, but even when he isn't, they kind of try and justify his acts, so it's... yeah, he's not a perfect character, but like, just the concept and the arc of seeing him grow and change is... it's genuinely amazing. And there's not a lot of other characters, like there's an Arch Knight, who is basically just a magical good guy, night guy, named Aurek, who is... he runs into Daelin pretty early on and starts journeying with him, and as time goes on, he starts to suspect more and more that Daelin isn't who he says he is, and I'm not gonna go into detail here, but like, seeing his relationship with Daelin grow and change is... I mean, that's really good, and Aurek is also just like a good guy on his own. He's pretty badass, so I... I like seeing all that stuff. And then there's another major character named Lyra, who has a unique relationship with Daelin. That's not funny, I shouldn't be laughing, but yeah, she has a unique relationship with him, but even beyond that, she is pretty good as a character. I don't know why I hesitate so much to say that, but yeah, she is a pretty good character as well. Like, she has her own personality and goals and all that, which are separate from his, but she also has her own relationship with him, and she has her own growth and change throughout the story as well. So overall, character cast of this book is pretty great. I think that's about it for the non-spoiler section. Would I recommend this book? I don't know, because like I said, it's first-time author and it's self-published, so there's a lot of amateur mistakes in there, like the prose isn't that great, the story kind of goes all over the place. There's a few typos I noticed. It's not perfect, and well, if you're really, really looking for some fantasy fare, which is a little bit closer to modern technology without having like gunpowder and everything, then I guess check it out for everybody else. I don't think this really has anything that great to offer. Okay, so spoilers. First things first, there's a lot of talk of rape in this, and I would say that it's handled pretty well for the most part, because it's always treated as a horrible thing that happens, and it's never tried to... It's never downplayed or justified at all. And it's also brought up that like, even if you aren't physically coercing someone or threatening them in the moment, it can still be rape, so yeah, I liked how that was handled. The only thing about it is with Lyra. Now, at the beginning, it's made clear that talk of sex makes her really nervous, and it's kind of played for laughs. At least it feels like it's played for laughs at the beginning. And then later you find out that it's because when she was 14, she got forced into Daylan's harem, I guess you'd call it, so she got raped by him a bunch of times, and then she wound up pregnant, and then she got an abortion, which left her unable to have children. And so, yeah, it makes sense that she would be traumatized by that, obviously, and how it would change her as a person so much. And it's just that having it be treated for comedy at the beginning just feels, I guess, poor taste. It feels like it's in poor taste, and I mean, I'm not like getting mad at Shad or anything about this. I'm just saying like, this is a heavy subject, and if you're gonna handle it, handle it well. And he does that for the most part. It's just that one bit later on, I look back on that. That did bother me a lot.  And so as they're fighting, you realize, man, yeah, Aurek has very good reason to kill this dude, but by this point, we realize that Daelyn has changed, and we realize that he wants to actually do good in the world, and he has done some good in the world, and so we really don't want either of them to be killed. So it's actually a very, very good fight scene. It's very impactful. And so, like I said, this is the best of the climaxes. So I mean, I don't have a lot to say about it. It's just like, yes, that's a great character moment from both of them. And then I want to talk about the Daunists a little bit. Now, the Daunists are basically just dudes who want to bring back the Daun Empire, which is what Daelyn ruled over, and they don't go into a lot of detail about what exactly that means. Now, it's definitely mentioned how there's a lot of poverty in their country at this point, and how the Daun Empire was kind of this proto-socialist empire. They don't go into a lot of detail about it, but it definitely has some socialist ideas in there, and so they're definitely arguing for that. But beyond that, it doesn't really go into detail about what sort of government they'd have, would it still be an absolute dictatorship the way it was when Daelyn was in charge, and if they had gone into stuff like that, it would have been better. And even beyond that, the Daunists try to bring an island to crash into the capital city at the end and only saved by Daelyn at the last second, and it just makes them seem way too crazy. This book is definitely siding against the Daunists, and I'm not saying that the book is in the wrong for siding against the Daunists because Daelyn did do some genuinely horrible things. He was a dictator, that's just what happens, but it would be much more interesting if the Daunists had one or two legitimate points, because at one point they bring up poverty, and Daelyn says, well, you were even poorer during the Daun Empire, and I'm like, oh, okay, I guess they were. That was never mentioned until now. And so if they just had one or two good points that were actually brought up, then that would make them much better as villains, because as it stands, they don't even really have that much screen time, so there's just not much we can do with them, and well, that's just disappointing. In a book that has a couple of other really good characters that we didn't really get a good villain. So that's all I got for you. I just wanted to thank my patrons, Jo Savilainen, Abrahaj Singh, Christopher Hawkins, Joseph Pendergraft, and Melanie Austin, you guys are great, as well as all the other names here, you know, they're great too. And everyone watching to this point, you're pretty cool. If you could like, comment, and subscribe if you haven't already, that does really help me, that makes me more visible, gives me money, which I need to live.


powerful for those powerful words and for that young man every time I hear that song I'm overwhelmed with grief and sadness and inspiration and so you know I don't know about you all but I feel overwhelmed by the week what a what a community of leaders what a powerful week this this has been and just time well spent and you all have shown that by your interest and your engagement and so I just appreciate on behalf of the Spectrum SoCAP team I appreciate you I just want to really quickly run through some learnings of what I heard from today and then I'll invite my colleague Keisha Center back up to for a special announcement so earlier on we heard Michael O'Brien bring the fire in terms of really demonstrating how we bridge to empathy and the critical power powerful role that artists play in meaning making and culture making and then we were graced by Rashad and Crystal reminding us of the importance of narratives and they gave us some reframes stop telling stories framed as unfortunate instead of those with a justice frame stop talking about indigenous people or black people in black community as communities as vulnerable we are not vulnerable but we are being attacked the active voice has to be turned towards the system and in terms of its role of with harming people of color black folks and indigenous people are the antagonists in the American story so yes we have pain but we also need to center black joy indigenous brilliance black innovation Natalie Molina Nino reminded us that if you are alive today it's because you descended from people who refuse to die I just want you to marinate on that today and that she she challenged us saying that equity lacks ambition and that and that for us not to settle for what's been the normalized standard of living of prosperity defined by the dominant culture and there was a lot of conversation from our friends at Prudential around the financial services not having the history and not understanding how recent it is and how it's built into the policies and practices and how to tackle those emotional parts the community of the conversation that need to be taken up head on how do we then address policy in in the groups of people how do we use philanthropy as a scaling mechanism even recognizing that philanthropy is not enough and that government and the private sector must step up and totally transform the way that things are done how do we engage with community in ways that make sense for the community taking into account their individual experiences there was a call to action there financial institutions must step up and educate themselves related to sensitivity and they might they must find the people who have the credibility and the trust in the community to help them message and implement those strategies and again engage communities in ways that make sense so that they can help you with that leaders must make themselves vulnerable in those ways particularly in corporate settings where they can bring their full human selves there was a call for moral imagination I refer to it in my practice as an embutu moment my ability your ability to see ourselves as an extension of one another the private sector has to mobilize in ways that they've never done before so what can we do tangibly I heard develop peer groups to support transformation in the system and that includes with accountability I heard keeping an eye on the study that is about building this effective ecosystem not just about capital but also about trust relationships and networks I heard just move it just invest the dollars in entrepreneurs of color I heard spin down your power and your privilege there are so many learns and I know that you all have been sharing resources in the chat there was so much that we were able to gain and and that you will continue to share with this community I want to pause and take a special announcement and invite my colleague Keisha center to join us for her special announcement hi Nadia are you how are you good I'm after those those panels I mean from Rashad to and crystal and Cynthia and then you know what the prudential conversation it was just absolutely fantastic and of course Bermuda does what he always does best always does leave us with hairs literally you know on my arm so I'm just so thankful this has been a great this has been a great three days and I before we get to our special announcement I'm really excited about I want to first thank you Nadia everyone put some exclamation marks in the chat put some love in the chat for Nadia this is not easy work this is not easy work any just any day of the week but it's not easy work when we're in the the reality that we have right now so trying to show up and be present for people to help navigate hard conversations and emotions and feelings when you yourself are trying to figure that out is not easy work so you did it with grace you did it with elegance and we honor you for bringing your body and your wisdom and your experience to the table so thank you for doing it's always so great building and working with you I look up to you and I just I love I love you so I just want to say that I also want to say thank you to Kerry who's backstage somewhere putting out fires and you know the whole team but there's a shout out to Casey you've heard him on on here is in the background and navigating and Amanda who's fantastic you know the whole the whole socap team is dynamic but you know this last week it's been a group of people just burning the midnight oil making it work so I just want to say thank you and everyone please show them some love in the in the comment section as well and the whole socap team you know you've seen them pop in and out and help moderate your conversations but they make all the magic happen and they're just such a dynamic group and I hope that spectrum has been the start if you're already part of the socap community and the spectrum community yay if use is your first time you've been introduced to it then consider yourself lucky because this was a dope first time so we hope that you will stay with us we've got so many things that we want to do and I have to say thank you to all of our speakers who I mean people are busy people are being Rashad Robinson I mean he was talking to Oprah yesterday you know and Stacey I mean people are busy and they showed up for us to have this conversation and we talked about the dynamic people that were going to be here so we just want to say thank you to that and our advisory board our advisory board our team of rock stars that have believed in us since the beginning so I have to thank our vice board for always keeping us honest telling us what we should be saying what we're not saying what we need to push for and I thank you for that please check them out on the spectrum website there's some dynamic people you can you can ping them in the people section they've been here throughout the entire week and then to our sponsors we cannot do this without you thank you every last one of you that gives us resources to make this happen to make these conversations happen and who were like what we've been talking about with funding is a former funder and Nadia you were a former funder funder too they were nimble for us to change when we need it to change when when we were doing one thing and then the next day we had to change and make this virtual and so these look at everyone that were there's so many to name so we have a slideshow because you know how someone always forget some get forget someone we got a slideshow so we don't forget them but they I mean I would challenge our funders to do that we had to pivot these were uncharted territories and times and so our funders were there to help us pivot and help us reimagine and do this the right way so thank you and I really appreciate that so I am excited to announce um the second the nominations are open and you can find this on the spectrum website for our 25 game changing founders of color we launched this list last year and some of the um founders that we have identified have for speakers today they were speakers last year at spectrum they're from all over the country who are doing work in the communities and in across the nation and are changing the game I mean the title is fantastic is 25 game changing founders of color so that those nominations open today they'll be it's posted on the web on the spectrum website there is a form for you to fill out yes you can nominate yourself if you think you are a game changing founder of color please you know if someone if anybody's gotta stand up for you you should stand up for yourself so um please take a look at that list we're gonna be pushing that out more there's gonna be emails I've seen people in the chat asking about videos we're gonna have all of that to you but we ask that you please take a look at our at the 25 game changing founders of color um and the issues that they are working on we've got um innovators who have been working in covid that stepped in the gap across climate housing tech social justice so if you know someone out there we want to know them we want to highlight them use spectrums community and platform to highlight them so we can get them more of what they need and we can also help them be a light for others who journey on this path as well so we look forward to your nominations we look forward to you engaging with us and helping us to do better and be better and continue to build this dynamic community I think that's that's all I have to say for me thank you so much Kisha so if you missed the session I'll say that the videos will be made available in about a week and so you'll be able to go back and you wanted to remember that quote that someone said you'll be able to go back and look at that and then I think that there are other ways that the spectrum team are looking to bring this community together and they'll keep you informed of what that is but the work does not stop here the work is not over we implore you in this time and in this case to take these learnings let relationships that you have developed this week and engage in this work until we see substantial change and I dare say parody and if I'm channeling my internationally beyond parody in terms of what equity is between entrepreneurs of color and the dominant culture don't stop until we have more a more just economy that is been that is about more than than profit it's about justice let's aim for that new bottom line that centers justice and impact and so I want to leave you with this poem that I found from a poet from New Zealand whose name is Terrence George Craddock he's speaking to and this is called American Promise in Social and Economic Justice if the promise of social and economic I'm not sure what happened I think I got booted so I'm not sure what you heard but I will leave you with this poem that I found from Terrence Craddock and he's from New he's a poet from New Zealand but he's speaking to us this piece is called American promise is social and economic justice if the promise of so justice is to be attained in America the time to struggle and fight for social and economic justice is now always now not delaying for some for more opportune time or more courageous future generation the promise lives on in all of us who are prepared to stand up against those who stole justice deliberately without mercy or the slightest trace of scruples in the first place justice is only as strong and as secure as each generation prepared to honor and fight to uphold and preserve justice we must stand to be tested in the crucible of integrity now always now moving power but more importantly moving justice be well thank you


Up next we have former member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard. Give her a hand. Aloha. Early one morning on a Saturday on a beautiful day like today in January of 2018, over a million people all across the state of Hawaii woke to their cell phones buzzing and ringing. Radio alerts blaring with a message that read ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill. I and so many others, I happened to be here that morning. I started calling my friends and calling my family concerned for them and where they were. But just as you here might imagine, if we all got that alert at this moment, so too did people all across Hawaii start to ask themselves the question, where is their shelter? Where do I go? Where do I take my children to be safe knowing that there is an inbound missile to Hawaii with a nuclear warhead and we have just minutes to live? We had college students at the University of Hawaii sprinting across campus trying to figure out where they could possibly go to get shelter. A father who lowered his little girl down a manhole thinking that may be the only place she may be safe and telling her goodbye, I might not see you again. I heard after from a father who had one kid in town on the island of Oahu and another child on the other side of the island and himself in the middle trying to decide which of his children he might spend the last of his minutes with. An impossible decision for any parent to make. Countless others shared their stories of their panic cowering in the bathtub with their kids, trying to understand they're telling us to seek immediate shelter. Where do we go? And experiencing that harsh reality that was as true for us there in Hawaii in 2018 as it is for us here today, there is no shelter. Our leaders failed us then and they continue to fail us now. Those people who work in our nation's capital eagerly continue to escalate tensions, eagerly wage new cold wars, understanding that if there's a nuclear attack, yes, they will be OK in their bunkers where they literally have plans to be able to continue to wage wars from their bunkers without any consideration for the rest of us and the destruction and incineration that their wars will cause. This is ultimately the thing that caused me to run for president in 2020 because I saw where our leaders were taking us. I saw the dangers of where this new cold war or a nuclear arms race would eventually lead. Whether intentional or accidental, there is only one destination for such wars and that is a nuclear holocaust. I made it clear then that this is a central issue of our time, the most important issue facing us in the 21st century and that there was a clear choice in that election. We're either going to work towards peace, de-escalate tensions, move away from this new cold war, or we will continue to race rapidly towards nuclear brink, toward a new cold war with Russia, a new cold war with China, and therefore racing towards nuclear war. Now, for those of you who remember that election, this issue was not important to the media. They refused to talk about it. They refused to raise the question of debates. There was no other candidate willing to talk about this issue. It was not important to them then and it's not important to them now. And so here we are, two short years later. What I warned about then is now our reality. This proxy war that we're fighting against Russia right now could turn at any moment into a direct conflict between the United States, NATO, and Russia, a country that has more nuclear weapons than any other in the world. Now anyone with a little bit of common sense knows that a cold war can very quickly turn to a hot war. And that when you're waging a hot war against a nuclear armed country, it's just a matter of time before it leads to the use of nuclear weapons at any moment. And here's the insanity of it all. We have talking heads on TV. We have politicians. We have very powerful people here in the United States and all around the world speaking with a straight face. Well, you know, if we start World War III or when World War III starts, here's how we're gonna fight and win. That if Putin decides to use tactical nuclear weapons, here's what we're going to do as though such a war could ever be won. It cannot be won. World War III cannot be won. They're living in this archaic mindset of World War I and World War II and not facing the realities that we have today. There is no way to win a nuclear war. There is only one end. And that is a nuclear holocaust. So we're gathered here today because we know that it doesn't have to be this way. We know that there is a better way and that the task before us is urgent and necessary. We have people gathered here from all over the country, people who are gathered here from all ends of the political spectrum. And if we were to have a conversation, my guess is there may be other things we don't agree on. But the truth is that we could disagree about everything else, everything else. But the one thing that we do agree on that brings us together here today is that we value life. We want to live. We want our loved ones to live and thrive. We want to be able to go out on a day like today and walk in the trees and hear the birds chirping with the sun shining down on our face. We understand that whatever our differences may be that we must stand together as people who cherish peace, security and freedom. We must set aside our differences, work together to fire those warmongering politicians from both political parties who serve their masters in the military industrial complex instead of serving the people.  The only way we can stop them is when we stand together and lift our voices in unity telling them, no, we will not let you destroy us. We will not let you destroy our loved ones, our communities, our country, here in the United States and around the world. If we stand together on this one issue, we will be able to rest the power away from those who don't care about us, those who bend the knee to their overlords in the military industrial complex, take back that power and ensure that we take those trillions of dollars they are feeding into the war machine and instead dedicate those resources towards peace, prosperity and freedom. We cannot be free and prosperous or safe unless we are at peace. We are the spark that has the power to light that fire to bring about change. So let that spark of love that exists in every single one of our hearts, that aloha, be that inspiration and that fuel that provides us with the courage to fight against these powerful entities knowing that our cause is just, it is right and it is necessary. We must work together towards this future and fulfilling and accomplishing this mission of peace. Thank you very much, aloha.


R. Kelly is T-Rail, it's just his beat. I know it, but they're gonna be like, hey yo. But you can't support it, but... Look, I don't support none of Kale's did. That's, his lifestyle is his lifestyle. Kobe Bryant was my favorite basketball player. Basketball player. I didn't say he was my favorite person in a relationship. There it is. I get what you're going with that. R. Kelly was my favorite singer. I didn't say he was my favorite person of who he chooses sexually. I like his music. I'm ready to really tap into R&B. Like, I really love R&B. You want to make it to where it's that new, fresh style. You're already doing, to me, like I said, they don't call it that, but that way that y'all make that sound happen is so close to and similar. I can deal with that. I'm working with the V... I'm gonna work with Vito. You know, Eric Billinger. I'll do Charlie Wilson.  You know, you over there in there. Man, if you had my phone, you'd go crazy right now. I got some of these flips in this phone, it's nuts, they won't let, I flipped them. I flipped the Maureen. I flipped, I got R. Kelly flipped on her. Oh, damn. I flipped, I felt it on your booty. And you think if you come out, what do you think people would say about that? Uh-uh. Kobe Jamming, though. They're gonna have to sit up there. R. Kelly is T-Rail, it's just this beat. I know it, but they're gonna be like, hey, you know, but you can't support it, but look, I don't support none. Kale's the, that's, his lifestyle is his lifestyle. Kobe Bryant was my favorite basketball player, basketball player. I didn't say he was my favorite person in the relationship. There it is. I get where you're going with that. R. Kelly was my favorite singer. I didn't say he was my favorite person of who he chooses sexually. I like his music. Hey, pretty mama, how you doing? Said I'm just in town for the weekend. I like the way Kobe shoots the three. Damn right. You know what I'm saying? That's the total difference. When you like a person's, what they do and what, they're separated. Sometimes, when you get in a relationship with a girl, you tell her, you got to learn her.  You got to learn the difference between being my artistry and being who I am as a person. That's what you tell a girl, right? Yeah, yeah. Why can't we learn the difference between a person and what their job is? Now that's real. Why? I dare to tell a girl. You got to learn the difference between T-Rell and Tarell. No, I get it, man. T-Rell and then Tarell. You do, yeah, this is. At the end of the day, it's a burn. Yeah, but sometimes T-Rell comes on instead of Tarell. T-Rell does come on sometimes. When you talking, I got to pull that thing like that so she can talk about it. Sometimes, y'all learn how to turn that switch on and off too. I'm human. So, just let me know, hey, I need you to lead T-Rell outside. So what's your top three artists of all time, dead or alive? I ask that, any genre. Any genre? Any genre. It could be rap, it could be whatever. How many people? Three. It's gonna be crazy. How long is that?  Number one. He said it's gonna be crazy, he said it's gonna be. Somebody wouldn't hear you watch. Nah, it's gonna be Michael Jackson's number one. No. Let's go. Number one. Who's my top? Three of all time. Is it order? Yeah. Yeah, it's order. That's hard. Number one. Everybody been over there done it, give me number one. It might change, but today. My number one artist? Of all time. People, we ain't heard. Probably Kale's. See? Kelly. I killed him number one. We didn't got that one before, but that's heavy right now. He didn't hurt number one. No, no. We done had him number one before. I love Drake. Drake, number two. That ain't bad.  And three probably be, you making this hard, but three artists? Three always be, that's why I do it their way. Number three be like, I got to let everybody else go for this one person. That's messed up, bro. He's on number three, too. Any genre? Any genre? Number three. Okay, three. Hot Kelly, Drake, and who else? No, no, bro. I listen to a lot of music. I read the mic. I only saw Rita that much. Who would it be? Number three, give me one. Man, you making it tough on me, bro. Just one, just one more. You already got it down here. Probably Boosie. Boosie, shout out Boosie. That nigga made it, man. That top three, man. I rock with Boosie. I love the way, I love that. Man, Boosie's so, man.


So hello everyone, my name is Laura. I'm from the packet team and today I'm here with Simon from the testing farm team We both work in a red hat and today we will talk about packet and testing farm and their integration together So let's start with some agenda for today Firstly, we will very shortly talk about packet then we will switch to the testing farm Simon will explain Testing farm its users how it works Then we will switch back to the packet and deep dive into its features Then finally we will talk about packet plus testing farm and their integration and we will also talk about the use cases the users and In the end we will show you some numbers graphs statistics So starting with packet packet is an open source project That tries to bring upstream and downstream closer closer together And packet has two main goals. The first one is to validate upstream changes downstream So it's kind of a CI system that works in github or GitLab And then the second goal is to bring upstream releases to downstream and Automate the process and make it easier for Federa package maintainers So as today we will talk about packet mostly in terms of packet service Which operates on github and GitLab and reacts to the events in the Federa disk it But there is also a packet as a CLI tool that you can install on your Federa and run it locally so When last block happened in Budapest packet was in its beginnings and it didn't have that many users But since then I think packet user base has grown rapidly So here you can see just some of logos of some of our users. So for example podman system the Cockpit and a state and a lot of others Yeah, so now I will hand it to Simon Thank You Laura. So I have some points to Keep me on track. So I don't get often to the weeds so first of all testing farm is a Infrastructure as a service. It's a service that you can run your tests on and get results There's storage for artifacts. There's cues and so on but it's it's more than that Because you can run your tests on multiple OS's and multiple versions of those losses and on multiple architectures, so There's a Yeah, it scales you can your testing will scale Yesterday, I don't know you guys probably maybe some of you were at Adam Williamson's Fedora see I talked he talked a little bit about How Fedora see I uses a testing farm and CentOS streams will see I use this testing farm That's in a public ranch and there's also a red hat ranch which Red hat all the red all the rails are tested on And Yeah, you can actually use that Ranch as well you get You apply for permission to use it and you change your configuration and packet and you're actually able to run your tests in the Internal range too if that's if that's allowed and of course testing farm is used by packet So Testing farm generally it's it's I mean there's there's lots of moving components, but You're you're there's one API endpoint that your test is submitted to submit a Jason request post request to the API then the ranch is selected Your request waits in a queue it gets picked up by a worker The system under test gets created Installed with the fresh OS of your choice that you specified And then the pipeline starts to execute your tests on that fresh system the plans run and The results and the artifacts are stored and you can access these Even after the the VM is destroyed because yeah, that's that's art in artifact storage So you may ask what's what's the benefit? Why should I use? Testing farm, you know, I could I could probably hack something together myself Yeah, you probably could the benefit to using testing farm is that well its skills to all the different versions of OS is but also You don't have to maintain that infrastructure You don't have to pay for it. So testing farm is Slide that yeah testing farm is Open to any fedora or OS stream contributor team or special interest group Testing farm is also open to any public project service or initiative which red hat or fedora maintains or co-maintains and of course Testing farm is available to any packet user So Yeah, so testing farm can be thought of as a back end for CI But first yeah, we need to talk about TMT a little bit TMT in order to use testing farm your tests need to be Managed by TMT. I don't know if any of you have seen or used TMT before TMT stands for test management tool and There is the notion of Hierarchy and inheritance so These are two things that TMT will allow you to do really well you can have core attributes that your Test is all your tests have access to a very simple example. It's like a version number or something and Then you have your tests and you have your plans And then there's stories so stories are more something that is optional actually but At a minimum you'd need tests and plans you need one test in one plan at a minimum But stories will help you to know why you wrote the test Why it's written that way? Do you really want to? Optimize it you really want to change it was written that way for certain reason and help you to Understand your tests and of course other people to understand your tests as well So yeah, TMT also runs locally on your computer. It's a tool So you can Yeah, that's how you would develop your tests you would you would first try it out on your laptop see see how it's going TMT will create the SUTs the system under tests using VMs or containers and That's yeah, you don't need to because of that You don't have to worry about cleanup because once the the test is done It'll just destroy the VM and not contaminate your laptop your workstation One thing to know about TMT is that it's not restrictive. You can write your tests in any Language you want in any Testing framework you want. Basically, you just have to call it with TMT for it to be able to run in testing farms So say you're using pie test or something just call that test through a wrapper or whatever you like and Then it will run so it's it's a test management tool. It's not a test writing framework So it's it's very flexible. Another thing you can do is you don't so when you submit a test to testing farm Part of the request is the location of the where your tests are it's a URL where your code is In a git repo and in there it expects to find a plan Where your tests are so you could actually have just one plan in there with the URL to another repo Where all your tests are actually there? So you don't have to technically keep all your tests with your code if it doesn't work out for some reason Yeah, so actually yeah one more thing to note with testing farm you have all that skill but with packet you have even more skill and Laura's gonna tell us more about that Okay, so in the beginning I mentioned two main goals of packet so now we will deep dive to them so we will start with the packet as a federal release automation and So that I can explain it I will very shortly go through how does actually the new code get to the user using Fedora operating system I assume everyone knows this process. So just very shortly at the one end we have the upstream the code and On the other hand, we have the user who wants to install the latest greatest change So there is a release that can happen for example in github or githlap and Then as a next step the source code needs to be stored somewhere and for that there is a look-aside cache Which can simply be archive database, let's say and Then we have the distribution git which is in Peggy or there are the package related files Packaging related file. So we have spec file there the sources file and these needs to be adjusted to the new change There is of course the Koji as a next step which is Fedora official build system Bodhi the Fedora update system and After Bodhi here comes the change and user can install it via DNF for example So how does packet fit into these steps and how can help with these steps? here you can see all these steps in one screen and Actually on the right side, you can see how packet covers everything in the middle between the upstream and the user and the installation of the new software. So packet has basically some jobs that can be configured and For the federal is automation there are four jobs that can be configured and they cover syncing the release building the updates in Koji and then bringing these updates to the Bodhi So let's start with the first one Firstly we have the syncing the release That means we need to bring the changes from upstream to the downstream What needs to be done is that the Archives need to be uploaded to the look-aside cache and then the spec file needs to be updated probably the version the change log and the sources file as well and For this you can use one of the packet jobs either a proposed downstream or pull from upstream and You will choose based on multiple factors So if you are upstream maintainer of the package, you can configure the proposed downstream Proposed downstream is configured directly in the upstream repository So you need to place the configuration file in the upstream git repo and then packet will react directly to the release in github or githlap The benefit of this is that packet also provides you the feedback The results directly in the github or githlap interface Here you can also see the snippet of the configuration so this needs to be placed in your upstream and then you can also see a screenshot how packet provides feedback about The job so the proposed downstream finished successfully You will get the link and you can then see the PRs created in this kit, which I will show you in a while But then of course sometimes you have a package in Fedora and You don't have access to the upstream git repository. You don't maintain that code But in that case you can utilize the pull from upstream For pull from upstream the only thing that you need to do is to place the configuration file directly in this kit You will add the pull from upstream job and after that packet will react the upstream release monitoring messages and will do exactly the same process so it will bring all the changes to the Peugeot to the Fedora this git and As I mentioned here, you can see on the screenshot That this is the PR that packet opened You can see that the version is changed the change look is added for the new version and also the sources are updated Okay, so what's next? After the maintainer of the package reviews the change the PR in the disk it and is satisfied with the result He can wait for the CI and if everything is green he can merge the pull request But then of course the new changes should be built in Koji And it can be tedious to do this every time there is a new release. So packet can help with this as well The only thing is again in this git repository add this little configuration for the Koji build job and after that each time The pull request is merged in this git packet comes takes the changes and builds them automatically Here you can see some packages built by packet in Koji Okay, but there is also another step and that are both he updates again manual step and It's very repetitive. So how can packet help? There is the body update job. So Again code snippet You can put this to your configuration file and packet will watch out for the successful Koji builds And once there is a successful Koji build packet comes takes it and create the relevant updates for the particular release Okay, so that was it for the release automation Now let's check the other aspect of packet and that's packet as a CI solution so previously when we were talking about the Downstream automation mostly packet should have been configured directly in this git But if we want to spec it as a CI solution You want to validate the things in upstream. So the setup needs to be done there So firstly unit enable the interaction with packet And that's either in github. For example, here you can see the screenshot of the packet github application Or in github as an integration. So you just do few clicks and install packet in your namespace or repository The next step is that your namespace needs to be allowed So you just provide your federal account system login and we do the automatic matching so very quick step and then Almost the last step is you create the configuration file There you place what you want packet to do for you And if one of the things you want from packet is rpm build You can you need to also place a rpm spec file or at least add Some script how to obtain the rpm spec file Okay, so after setup what can packet do for you? The most used job That packet can do are the rpm builds. So the for the rpm builds packet uses the copper build system and Basically, you can configure packet to build your rpms for any pull requests commits or releases and then For example, if you configure packets to react on your pull request with each pull request packet comes forwards the new code changes to copper the Changes are built there and packet provides the feedback about the builds in github again As you see on these screenshots we provide the links to the copper web ui The locks and everything you need One more note so with rpm builds you can either validate your changes, but also for example, you can Configure the builds for the pushes to the main branch and or for the releases And then you can have some dedicated copper repository and users can consume the builds from there directly Other ci job that you can configure are the vm image builds So these are the follow-up of the rpm builds and if you want to also create the vm image build Then you just place a simple comment as you see on the screenshot and packet will come Check whether there is the build rpm Take it and create the vm image build for you For this packet uses the red hat image builder.  So as you probably got now packet uses testing farm for the tests and the configuration Is very similar to the other jobs So, how does this work? User enables packet as I previously talked about sets it up in the upstream Then optionally also configures the build job And after the rpm seller build packet forwards to the testing farm the Package and vr's of the copper builds Sends the request to the testing farm and then checks for the results once the results are Then the packet provides you the feedback again as you've seen in the screenshots So as for the configuration the tests can be again Configurable for pull requests or the branch pushes or also for releases You can see that the configuration is really simple. So you specify the trigger And then you specify the targets you want to run the tests on So let's have a look at monius cases how you can utilize the tests. We are packet So as Simon already mentioned, there is also Red Hat range of testing farm and It is really simple to utilize this via packet. It is basically a one configuration option And there's the use internal tf. So you enable this one And of course you need to reach out to us. We need to allow you So that you can use testing in the red hat infrastructure, but that's it. You're good to go Then for example, if you have some really resourceful tests Which you don't want to run on each pull request In each push to pull request But you want to run it only manually on a comment You again specify one more configuration option and that's the manual trigger. So after that If you are ready to test your changes, you can just post a comment and packet will react to that Another useful thing That can be done via packet is that basically there is this configuration option tf extra params and Here you can specify anything you would specify in the request to the testing farm So one of things you can specify is some additional artifacts So if you want to do some reverse dependency testing cross project testing You can just specify some repository in the artifact and we will send these parameters to testing farm And you can ease your reverse dependency testing like this Then there is another use case if you want to define some custom mapping between your build and test targets so Here you can see we have rpm build job copper build job And the targets are configured for ipo 7 and ipo 8 But you want to run tests Then and define some mapping. So for the builds With target ipo 7 you will run these on the center s7 on and oracle linux 7 for example So it's possible to define one to one mapping or one to n mapping And another thing that was already mentioned If you have your fmf metadata somewhere else not with your test with your code You can also specify the fmf url That points to some other repository and you can also specify the fmf ref and Yeah, packet will forward this to testing farm and everything will work And now salmon will talk a little bit about the interesting packet usage examples So when preparing for this talk Miro and I looked through some of the stats um on some of the the users and There was a couple more, but these were interesting and they had they were running a lot of tests The first one These guys stream z they actually contributed to Um Packet you can take a look at how they're how they did it there. They they they documented it. Um Maybe you already read this. I'm not sure. Um, but They they don't use any of the building They basically use the testing farm infrastructure to run their tests, but they don't do any building um and cockpit of course Uses packet They run the same tests that fedora ci does but they do with packet and This project scupper they uh, this Is a default plan That will run if you have no tests defined and So even just enabling the packet service the packet packet integration in your repo What you'll get is you'll get this Sort of sanity check It builds your packages and tries installing them So at a minimum just by enabling it you get that functionality. This project is using that So there's there's several use cases. Um, you don't have to use all of the functionality Uh, at a minimum. Yeah, you you still benefit a lot statistics from packet Okay, so just for The sake of having some numbers to show you like how many users actually use packet So you can see some numbers for the past year. Uh, so the most used job is The rpm builds in copper copper builds as you can see in the past year. It was 76 000 builds And then of course the the testing farm usage. So there were More than 40 000 testing farm runs And as I already mentioned, uh, the Downstream automation As for the syncing of the release from upstream to downstream There were more more than 700 runs of the sync And here you can you can also see the activity of packet bot in the disk it So you can see in the recent months really active And also some badges we earned um, and then We have the statistics also for the testing farm. Uh, so on the Image below you can see the numbers. Uh, so in the Uh, 2023 it is uh 680 000 That's projected. So this it's not the end of the year yet. Yeah, so you can see it is really growing And as for the distribution of the users of testing farm Firstly, we have the federal ci But then there is also packet uh with around the third of the usage of testing farm So really nice And if you would like to try packet and testing farm Together or separately it's up to you. You can check out our documentation. So Also packet and testing for documentation And one more step if we even want to contribute, uh, we are very open about the contributions So, uh, you We will share the slides with you and you can definitely check out the links And uh, we are really happy to help help anyone who would like to do some contributions As saman mentioned, uh, the stream z team helped us And they implemented some awesome features. So And the same applies for the empty and testing farm. Yeah, um So I just want to mention that testing farm We uh, the code is as public and you can contribute to it, but we don't have Yet a nice developer guide or any kind of style guide or Community guide or anything like that. So you might feel a little bit lost But if you have the confidence, you know, what you're doing go ahead and make merge requests It's it's up to you. Uh, but there's no we we don't have it very Welcoming yet so to speak Okay, and lastly get in touch with us if you are interested in anything we have talked about Uh, here are some contact information. So, uh, matrix email, uh, and we have also a master plan account So yeah, uh, make sure to get in touch with us And uh, now it's time for your questions if you have any Thank you, uh, I have a question probably related to testing farm if my test requires a specific hardware Is it possible to define somehow or Yes, there's um There's uh, if you look at the tmt documentation You can see that you can specify specific hardware In the public ranch, you'll you'll have access to x86 and arm In the uh internal red hat ranch, you'll have access to beaker, which is Full of Interesting hardware. So this is not just about vms, but I can say no you can use bare metal In With beaker, there's bare metal access with the public ranch. It's only vms. Okay just for Cost All right. Yeah, I see. Thank you. Yeah um, are there any resources for learning about how the, uh Which is the the fmf is the syntax and the tmt is the tool Is there any resources for how to actually use fmf because I guess the way it works is a bit Different than other traditional ci systems work. So um, you don't really have to fmf is technically like a library or it is a separate project But you don't have to know about it the documentation for tmt is sufficient to to Help you to use test management tool. Um, and it's it's yaml. It's uh Yeah, it's it's not very complicated and Um, maybe I can go back to the slide. Yeah, if you go to the If you go to the uh All right, we have oh, we don't have a link to the tmt documentation I guess I'll if anybody's interested in that I'll I'll send it to you. Uh, but you can just google tmt and you'll find the documentation And uh, yeah, it should help you get started. Um, yeah, if anybody's interested maybe We can do a workshop later or something any other questions Okay, so if not, then thank you for coming