heard of what I had expected for today's call, but I think we should probably go ahead and get started. So welcome, everyone. We have a fairly brief agenda today and had planned to leave most of the time open for Q&A. Wanted to introduce a few people, key people on the bridge with us today. First off, myself, I'm the magma community liaison for the project. We also have Jonathan Bryce and Kendall Waters from the Open Infrastructure Foundation, formerly OpenStack Foundation, and then a couple of the key technical experts from the magma product or project group today. They are maintainers on the project and have been key developers through the life of the project up to date. Amar, who's name I can't always pronounce correctly, apologies for that, Amar and Ulas. They're both very key individuals in the development of the project. We may have a couple of others join us. They may be stuck in our bridge problems this morning. So I want to thank you for joining. The purpose of the call today is to give another overview of the magma project to talk about what we're doing and why and hopefully build some community among the teams and again provide a Q&A session going forward for the project. So I'm just going to walk through a couple of slides to give a project overview and status. Amar is going to go through a couple of topics on the development priorities for the next release that will be coming up in January and then open for a bit of a Q&A time. So we'll just get right into it. First off, I wanted to speak to the mission of magma, why we're building this product and the mission of magma is to enable bringing more people online by enabling service providers with open and flexible and extensible carrier-grade network tools. And we're really committed to the openness of this project. We're really committed to reducing barriers to bringing connectivity into markets that are currently unserved or poorly served throughout the world and driving cost out of the equation, driving friction out of the equation. Magma itself provides the core network of a wireless network core. It's not intended to deliver radios. It's cooperating with the OpenRAN and the other initiatives that are working to bring radio technology to market in the same way. But magma itself was built to be hyperscalable and highly distributed, ready to be deployed all the way out at the edge of the network. We're building a converged core that's intended to support ultimately LTE, Wi-Fi, 5G, private LTE and private 5G services, fixed wireless access, etc. And we wanted the core not to be tied to radio vendors or transport vendors. So we're completely open and agnostic to the radios that we use. It works better with radios that can be provisioned using a standard provisioning method, but we are working with other closed radio networks in a few cases very successfully. And we're focusing on local breakout for internet traffic to get the traffic off of the proprietary wireless network as early in the process as possible, built to be highly available, moving towards a microservices and containerized model for deployment with remote configuration and life cycle management using REST APIs. And I wanted to talk through quickly the three key components of magma. Magma starts with an access gateway, which brings together the key components of the wireless core in the LTE world. It's the serving gateway, packet gateway, and the MME that build the core of what's required to operate the radios for 5G under development. The same services with the UPF, AMF, and SMF that provide those same functions. And for Wi-Fi, an integrated access gateway with integrated AAA services. Magma also delivers an orchestration function. This is a domain orchestrator. It's an orchestrator for the magma functions itself. It is not the system orchestrator that wireless networks talk about. It's not a competitor for those larger orchestration functions, but rather a capability that allows you to deliver standardized REST API interfaces to that outside larger orchestration function. If you'll excuse me, the other bridge actually just got opened. And I'm going to take just a moment there to let people know that we've moved bridges. And I'll be right back, sorry. Hi, this is Phil. I'm back. Apologies for that. Can I confirm that the audio is okay for me here since I switched back? Yep, sounds good. Yep. Okay. Again, apologies for the bridge confusion this morning. There were about four people camped on that bridge. I don't know how many had abandoned previously, but here we are. So again, the orchestrator for magma is intended to give a way to operate and manage and monitor a collection of access gateways and provide REST APIs to a broader-scale orchestration system such as ONAP or ONAP-related services that may operate upstream. And then finally, magma also delivers a federation gateway. And the purpose of the federation gateway is to allow interoperability with 3GPP standards-based implementations of the core and to express the various interfaces that are required for that such as GX and GY for policy and online charging, extending S8, SGS, SH, etc., to a broader MNO network or more traditionally deployed wireless network. Magma operates today as an open source project. You can find us at magmacore.org and it has a number of very active current contributors. Facebook Connectivity, who had started the project and contributed the project to the open core community, still provides most of the contributions. Also the OpenAir Interface Software Alliance, who has been a partner with Facebook Connectivity through the incubation period. The Open Infrastructure Foundation has joined us to help manage this as an open community project. And we also have significant contributions from RADISIS, ACL Digital, who was formerly Alton CalSoft Labs, FreedomFi, WaveLabs, and a small number of individual contributors coming into the project. And we are very actively seeking other contributors throughout the various communities that may want to join us. It's a very active project. We're seeing on the order of 250 to 300 commits a month, 70 to 80 commits a week on the project. And those are coming from 40 to 50 individual committers on a regular basis. So it's a fairly broad community of committers coming into the project. And we're also seeing quite a lot of activity with people cloning the project and pulling it down. We've seen 749 unique cloners over the last 12 months, which is actually a very interesting statistic because it shows that there's interest in people trying the project and playing with it, and perhaps deploying it even in ways that we don't know about. And so we're very excited to see that, and very excited to see that continuing interest in the project. Back in the first quarter of 2020, the MAGMA project started a collaboration with the Telecom Infrastructure Project. TIP had started an activity known as the Open Core Network Initiative to build a set of specifications and requirements for an open and open converged core, similar to what MAGMA was already working on. The MAGMA team has cooperating with TIP to be effectively the software project of the TIP Open Core Network project and delivering a implementation of the requirements from the TIP project. And as part of that, we've taken on an effort to bring 5G services in a minimum viable core configuration into MAGMA. And we're here in the middle of middle to late November and we're planning to do a demo of 5G services targeted to the end of November, early December timeline, and then fully integrating those services into MAGMA as part of a 5G, 4G carrier Wi-Fi converged core. Finally, there's a bit more of an internal architecture diagram here that we're presenting that shown here. Oh, sorry about that. Showing the components of MAGMA and how it is decomposed. The key thing to note is that internally all of the interfaces of MAGMA are delivered using GRPC or basically REST-like API calls delivered over GRPC. And those protocols are open and available in the get. They're extensible. Other services could use them to communicate with these functions of the project to help make it more and more extensible. And we will be doing other talks about the architecture itself and technical deep dives on how it's put together and the declarative set-state model that we've used internally to help make it reliable and extensible and scalable. So lastly, before we get on to a couple of other topics, I just want to invite everyone a reminder on how to join the project, how to interact with us. You can visit our website at magmacore.org. The get is available at gethub.com. MAGMA. There is a very active Slack. We have about 330 contributed or registered members of the Slack channel with a number of subchannels regarding development work in the various components of MAGMA. And then finally, I wanted to announce here that we will be holding a MAGMA developers conference in the first quarter of 21. It is tentatively scheduled for February 3rd of 21. And we'll be getting a more formal announcement about that out, announced on the Slack, on the mailing list, and a few other channels to go. But that will be a very, very nice opportunity to get people engaged. I want to introduce Amar, who's going to walk us through a look at what our development priorities are coming up for the next release of MAGMA, which we've titled Release 1.4 and are targeting for early January. So Amar, just give me guidance on driving the slides forward. Yeah. Excuse me. Thanks, Phil. Maybe the next slide. Thank you. So I think we're looking at core features, operational features, and something more like bug fixes. So just listing out some of the high-level core features. So high availability. This is a feature that has been asked by a few of our partners. And this is more of a cloud DR sort of a model where the orchestrator is running either in a private cloud or a public cloud. And the access gateway is running at the edge. And if the access gateway fails for whatever reason, then we leverage the EnoteBeast S1 Flex capability and MME pooling to fail over the capacity onto a central sort of an access gateway. So this is more like a disaster recovery sort of scenario that you see from traditional database vendors and stuff like that. So this requires the EnoteBeast to support S1 Flex. Most EnoteBeast do. And some of the partners that we sort of bundled with like Bicells and Airspan, they do support this feature out of the box. I'll pause here if anyone has a question on this. Awesome. So the next big feature is Volte and IMS. So it's been in the code base for a bit, but we're now testing a lot with our lab setup. So this supports a V6 UE IP address as well as a V4 one. And yeah, and it's pretty standard sort of IMS integration. I'll update this dock to also link to the GitHub project so folks know exactly what is going into the release. The third big feature which is more of a usability feature is call tracing. So this is, you know, in case there are customers who have support calls saying, okay, the UE is not attaching or something, the ability to better debug this through the NMS. There's again a design dock that's published on GitHub for folks who are interested in taking a deeper look. And if you have feedback now is a good time because we have only a few weeks. And so if there's something low hanging, we're happy to accommodate that. Header enrichment, this is a basic header enrichment where we don't do encryption on the URLs. So the MSISDN can be injected for specific URLs. And again, the design dock sort of captures the scope a lot better. This is for certain regulatory institutions and you know, captive portals and few other integration cases where the web server requires the MSISDN of the phone number of the user that is trying to attach onto the network. The next feature is mobility restriction. This is mostly for to prevent theft of CPEs. So you know, not necessarily theft, but if like people are trying to move the CPE from one location to another, it would get, it would not allow for that. There are some partners who require this feature mostly to, because they have different pricing for their CPEs based on which market they're offering services in. Again, the scope document, the GitHub issue describes the scope better. I'll pause here if any questions. Thanks. Yeah. Fill next slide, please. Thank you. Yeah. So this is a big feature that, you know, we're getting a lot of help from the OSCE folks. So they're migrating the release 15 and NSA support that they introduced from in their MME onto the converged MME. This requires an upgrade of the S1AP as well as they're starting to work on some of the NSA supports. So this sort of enables feature parity with the OAI MME capabilities that are available today with release 15 and solidifies our convergence strategy between the MAGMA and the OSCE MME code base. IPv6 support, the scope is described there. So just from last week, the changes that we'd likely not land the underlay side, there are probably two to three weeks worth of work more. So at least for the 1.4 release, it's mostly going to be a UE support. And then the underlay is going to be a P50 sort of like a stretch goal. The same thing with the NACV4 to V6. So this is in case, you know, the UE's are supporting a V6 address, but the underlay only supports an IPv4 fabric. Then we will mat that IP address at the gateway. So this is again as a P50 likelihood of landing. I'll pause here if folks have any questions. Thanks. So operational improvements with 1.3, I hope folks noticed that we pretty much revamped the NMS UX for most of the stuff. And I think there's a copy-paste error for the upgrade of S1AP from the previous slide. But the main rewrite here is to improve the UX for the Federation side to make it at par with the rest of the experience and consistent across both the LTE where it's an LTE in a box model, as well as the federated model where you're connecting into a third party HSS OCS or a PCRF. And then the last one is more of a support feature, which is VPN enablement. So the idea is you can go to the NMS and, you know, click a checkbox and provision a VPN tunnel all the way to the access gateway. And it's a short-lived certificate. So it's mostly for secure connectivity from the orchestrator. So there's a jump host that also gets deployed as part of this workflow. This allows for support engineers to actually debug the access gateway over SSH. Any questions on this? Cool. Thanks. I think that's it, right, Phil? Oh, okay. Sorry. Platform improvements. So Stateless MME is a pretty big feature where, you know, if the MME restarts, it's not going to take out the UE traffic. So this is going to be enabled by default in 1.4. The other features are access gateway containerization and Python 3.8 upgrade. The access gateway containerization is looking like, again, is looking as a P50 effort, but we will land it in master, whether we claim production-grade support for it in 1.4 or not is to be determined. Thanks, Amar. Appreciate you taking the time to share that. So the only other item on our agenda this morning was an open Q&A or open discussion time. Really, this is open to any questions regarding the MAGMA project itself, regarding the organization of the platform technical questions. Amar is still here to help us with that or anything else. So the floor is open if anyone has anything they would like to discuss. Oh, excuse me. I have a question. What's the relationship between the MAGMA project and TIPS OSM project? Thank you. Could you share the pronunciation of your name so I can address you properly? I don't want to. Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm Zhu Qiang from China Mobile and in the OpenStack community for four years. Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people from the OpenStack community. Thank you, Qiang. Thank you. My apologies. My Chinese is poor. So the MAGMA project operates as an independent software project developing the converged wireless core that we've just described. And TIPS and OCN are also operating the open core network project that is primarily describing a set of requirements and specifications for what an open core network would be. What an open wireless core network would be against a specific set of use cases. And in most, like other TIPS projects, TIPS is not itself delivering product, but delivering specifications and coordinating with developers of those products that would be compliant with their specifications. It becomes a cooperative arrangement. And this idea shown on the bottom of the chart where TIPS is delivering a set of requirements for what the open core network would need to deliver to be a consistent product compliant with TIPS, TIPS goals, and then developers deliver implementations of that product back. We do have a very close working relationship with TIPS. There's a lot of cross pollination of people who are working on both products. And TIPS recognizes MAGMA as essentially the reference implementation or the reference software project for TIPS, but they're not one in the same thing, if that makes sense. And TIPS is interested in and will probably see other implementations, both commercial and otherwise, for aspects of the open core network. So it is a collaborative agreement. As we put together the, as we formalize the MAGMA core organization, TIPS will probably continue to have some leadership on the technical committee or the steering committees of the MAGMA project, but not a dominant position among them. Does that clarify the relationship for you? Okay, thank you. Can I add? Sorry, go ahead. I just want to have these slides after the meeting. Where do we share it? We will, we will be posting a recording of this meeting and the slides, and we'll get an announcement out on the MAGMA Slack for where to find them. Good, good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I just had a, this is Mark Collier. I had a follow up question maybe to make sure I'm understanding the difference between OCN and MAGMA as well. Clearly, is it fair to say that the primary output of OCN is basically written documentation that has requirements and specifications and things of that nature as opposed to lines of code and software, whereas MAGMA is, in addition to, of course, having documentation and stuff, it's primarily about producing lines of code, which is, you know, to produce software. Is that, is that the difference? Is that one way to understand it better? Mark, I think that's a completely reasonable way to, to describe it. You know, TIP is not a product organization. They are a industry consortium that's driving the specification of product. And probably, if you look at other things TIP has done, look at what they've done around OpenRAN and the specification of how the radio would be decomposed into components. But TIP itself is not delivering any radio components. There's probably 10 or 12 significant entities that are delivering radios that are then certified by TIP as compliant in one way or another. And TIP also sponsors plug fests where people can prove their, prove their compliance and prove their, their interoperability. If that helps clarify what TIP does. Yeah, thank you. That definitely helped me understand it. I appreciate that. Okay. Anyone else? Excuse me. Can I have a second question? Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I'm from China Mobile. I'm the open source program manager in China Mobile Research and actually at the middle of this year, we have some talk with TIP OCM project because we, we are from, I'm from China Mobile and we have an orchestrator project named ONAB, Unix Foundation Networking. So June or July, I didn't remember. The OCM project tried to talk with us about the project of ONAB, you know, the orchestrator project. So my question here is, with the magma do an orchestrator and also a core network component and a separate orchestrator and an FV core network component. So, so if you think of ONAB as the orchestrator that is looking at the telecom deployment overall, basically looking at all aspects of an operator's network, it has inside it this concept of domain orchestration or in previous descriptions of the, of the NFV standard, what might have been called a VNF manager, which is a component that is managing a subset of the telecom network. And if you put it in that context, the magma orchestrator operates more like the domain orchestration function for magma or the VNF manager for magma, another way of thinking about it. And it provides a set of APIs that a more global orchestration tool like ONAB can call upon to execute changes or updates or collect performance data or statistical data from magma itself.  This is really the local domain orchestration for magma itself. And magma is working to update its APIs and make them available in a way that is more compliant to semi standard programs like ONAB so that we could fit into an ONAB framework. I hope that makes sense. Okay, thank you. So with the magma orchestrator, manage the open-run component. As implemented, the magma orchestrator does provide interfaces to manage the radio network. If magma is deployed in a standalone configuration so that it can manage the radio network for the operator, that would typically be done in a private LTE or fixed wireless scenario where you're not operating with a larger orchestration complex. But we're also able to operate where the radios are managed by the radio manufacturers, OSS systems, if we were deploying traditional radios from the large equipment providers that we all know and love who manage their radios separately, or if a larger orchestrator was managing the radios. Those are all reasonable deployment scenarios for magma. Okay, thank you very much. I hope magma will be a successful project to be the next generation core network. We appreciate that vote of confidence. Thank you. Anyone else? Yep. Hi, everyone. Hello. Hi, Dimitri. Hello. Dimitri from the Nicaragua Company. Thank you, Felix. Thank you. I'm our presentation. I appreciate you a lot. Very interesting. And I have a very technical question, I think. Here, we are starting very specific case with thousands of customers, like potential customers. Unfortunately, I cannot describe it in a few words, but the situation is the following that I found out that the architect itself of magma, how to say, the design of magma is not considering such kind of clients, what I mean. For example, GPRC whole started to be very heavy and databases started to be very big when we have a lot of customers. And I would like to ask a question. How do you think? Is magma, sorry, sorry, have a technical problem, is magma able to serve like a few thousands of customers, like 20,000 of customers by design? Or is there any problem with that? Yeah, so I can take this question, Phil, if you don't mind. Very good. Yeah, so I think, hey, thanks Dimitri. So actually, so we have two issues and we're working through them on scaling. So at some point after 10,000 subs, the message payload gets too large. And then we're getting truncated sinks. So, so we need to, you know, we're trying to figure out what's the right way to do like agination. So you don't have to send all of the subscribers in one request. And then the other thing that we're sort of running into, which is again, metrics related, but of a similar nature is that if you have too many subs on a single access gateway, then again, the payload becomes too large for the gRPC metadata and we start truncating the metrics message. So there is a design dock on the metrics, right? That is, I think somewhere in GitHub, but I can look it up and post on on the Slack channel first. But yeah, I think what we've tested is 10,000. That's the limit that we support today without issues. So if it's greater than that, then, you know, we're still trying to figure out what are the things that break beyond 10,000 subs. Okay, thank you for the answer. I just, from my point of view, when I did the test, I found out the first issue I had with the subscriber DB service. And my question was, why just not to increase gPRC payload size? It's so very straightforward. Workaround, why just don't do that? Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point. I think the bigger issue, yeah, I think the subscriber issue is probably easily solvable. I think the bigger issue is the metrics one. Because that if you have too many subs on an access gateway, the change is larger. So that's sort of the one that we've been like sort of focused on at this point. But if that is a, if the gRPC one is the one that's blocking you, is the issue for you more just that you have too many subscribers and not that many subscribers that are active on each gateway? That's correct. Okay, got it. So then you won't run into the metrics issue. Okay, so yeah, we can look at the gRPC issue and then also the other thing, I don't know if this is the right forum. But if you have a decent size deployment ahead of you, then there is probably a way for you to get in touch with the Facebook itself. So we can offer a more dedicated sort of support for certain issues that are getting prioritized. So I can. Thank you very much for that. Sorry. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, so I think yeah, we can probably maybe Phil introduce him to Carlos or someone and then take it from there. But from the open source side, yeah, so we're looking at the metrics issue first, because that seems to be the bigger like more complicated engineering challenge at this point. Okay, and if you don't mind if you have a few minutes more, I would like to ask you, Omar, about the Voltee non-federated deployment. We already talked in the slack about that. How do you think? Is it technically possible in this stage of magma development to have Voltee service in non-federated or by design, it's quite difficult right now? Actually, I would. So unfortunately, Ullash had to leave early because he had a doctor's appointment. But I think that this might be a good question for Ullash. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, maybe he can answer on slack as well. Sure. Okay, thank you very much again and I'm muted. Thank you. Thank you, Dmitri. Dmitri, if you want to drop me some better contact information via Slack, I will try to get you in touch with someone as Omar noted who might be able to get you some better support or help get direction on the scaling question that you're facing. Okay, thank you very much. I definitely will contact you and Slack. Okay. Okay, thank you. Omar, there is one question that came in on the chat from NTT. Are there plans to apply acceleration DPDK or XDP to magmas OVS, the UPF and SP Gateway? Yeah, definitely. We're looking at DPDK at this point. So there's some patches that province of streaming. I don't know if province on the call, but yeah. So we're looking at DPDK at this point. The thing with XDP is it's good, but given that our control plane is kind of at this point, at least open floor related, that's a bigger lift. So yeah, but at the end of the day, we want the switching fabric or the routing fabric to be more of a plugin model. So I think in the fullness of time, we'll try and decouple some of this from OVS. Again, I think Ullash had some design dot that sort of briefly covered that, but we're probably at least six to eight months away from executing on anything that's not OVS or OVS plus DPDK. Did that answer your question, Yohei? Okay. We're actually coming up very close to the hour. Could open it up for maybe one or two more questions. If anyone else has anything, if nothing else, I want to apologize again on behalf of the project for our technical difficulties getting the original bridge opened up and thank you for everyone who made it over to this bridge. Thank you for your time this morning and the very good questions and dialogue. I look forward to more and I want to remind everyone once again to watch for an announcement for the MAGMA developers conference as I think that will give us an opportunity to dive much more deeply into how MAGMA is built, how we can build community around it, and how we can develop it further into a V dominant product for the wireless data core network networks. Thanks everyone and I'm going to bring this morning's call to a close. Have a good day. Thank you.


Hello and welcome back, I'm Evil Revit. We're here on a set of Corsa staring down a track that may look different That's because it's a Gymkhana style track by Hexer mods So we're gonna be talking about the HDC series that I'm going to be competing in So make sure you follow me on all social media all of which are found in the description box below So Hexer mod if you guys don't know he makes a lot of really great mods for a set of Corsa He did Slyboy Sanctuary, Slyboy Skidpads and things of that nature and now he's going to be running the HDC Competition so if you've noticed it's basically like a Gymkhana grid style or Gymkhana style track where it's for time So we're gonna be taking a look at the layout one big Thank you for them giving me the track early access So we're going to be taking a look at we're gonna drive through it first to get the layout set And then we're gonna go a full-bore run. We are gonna be running our 350Z But this 350Z is a little different Then 350Z you know this has a nice big V8 in there with this is a tropical supercharger basically the motor was Essentially pulled out of map fields is s14.5 So like I said, we're gonna be running this super excited to be getting into another competition This is a little bit different than a tandem comp. So but we can use our own cars As long as they're on 265 So let's take a little drive through the course before basically a course walk So we can get an idea of what the course the layout we should be running in full drift so we're just gonna We're just gonna be going now We're gonna have to be drifting the other time I believe you lose add time added if you're not drifting So we have to go through there and then we use this is a pretty long sweeper around the outside of the course Into this tight little section trying not to hit any pylons We got a tag that hanging wheels with the front of our car then we come back looping around Back kind of the same way we came but instead of going back towards the lead We're gonna be going into this inner section, which is a split. There's a little bit There's some double arrows there We're gonna be going on the inside of that first And we got to complete the whole loop trying not to hit any of these barriers Now these barriers do get knocked out of the way, so you will hit them I'm not sure if they're gonna be adding time for that so you do one loop inside and then you bring it back on the outside and Come through and bring it into probably one of my favorite looking parts of the course the box turns So you're gonna come you got to come in and loop around this first Box turn which is kind of hard to do not drifting and then loop into the second one and Then pull it in into the third one Why while drifting this entire course, so you can't stop drifting. I Don't know why we're glitching there. Why are we glitching and? Then you bring the full sweep on the outside They're not unsure why we were glitching there But we're now we're not and pull the sweep fully outside taking out those hanging tires and then sweep it back around and Bring it through this Section in between the two sets of jersey barriers and then loop it back around the outside And then it's a big long sweeper through This section of the course pulling it as fast as you can go But making sure you slow down just enough because you got to slow down and get into this 180-degree turn which also hooks you back out into the tight technical section of the track, which I absolutely love It's a nice and small nice and tight Got a lot of Barriers to be mindful of and not hit and you bring it around the outside section of it Make sure not to hit it and then you loop it all around and then you cut back out and you go back out the way you came in So there's a lot of going one way or another looping it in and out and Then this is a full drifting shot all the way across across the finish line So that's the course that's layout number one of I believe there's three or four different layouts So that's a layout one. So we're gonna go full bore on this here and see what we can do So that was a little course preview. So now we're gonna go full bore on this We're gonna go see if we can't run a full test run on this course So we're at 100% boost, which I think we're gonna be running we're on 265 Achilles one two threes on This z so let's uh, let's go for gold kick it in fourth gear Kind of hung that out a lot lighter than I wanted to Slow it down. Oh, we took out a couple couple pylons there a little bit faster than I wanted to go into that section Now we're gonna be in third gear using our left foot brake Trying to keep it nice as tight as we can but also gain speed now We're gonna hook it on the inside of this section A couple a couple pylons there now. This is only my first or second time actually running this We need to not hit those pylons like we were there We're gonna bring this all the way out here Just stay in third gear to kick it into these box turns Third gear around that front pylon drifting in a little bit wide, but we're able to bring it back in perfectly nice and wide there Now this part we're gonna want to kick it into fourth probably because we've got a sweeper on the outside Kicking the third just taking that out with the back end of the car Kick it in between these walls Hard flick out the other way Stay in drift because we don't want to fall out of drift Kicks into fourth because we know this is that long sweep section this way There's enough time to slow us down Almost missed the gear. Oh, I missed the handbrake And we kind of came out of drift there, but Kind of made it somewhat look cool Into the tight bits Left foot breaking is going to be a big key with this Keep it there. Now. We're almost done with the course Come out of this section So I'm in the fourth and Across the finish line in the first layout not sure what the time was on that But we can take a look now that wasn't the cleanest run or the fastest run by any means and it looks like That was a 207 Not the fastest run definitely can run faster. I believe on my one test run. I was running low twos So that's just a quick glance at this But I think we should I think we should try and do another one of these runs in this car Maybe lower the boost a little bit. So we're gonna restart the session We're going to make sure the gear issue we want our tire pressure good We're gonna lower the boost on 80. We're gonna see how the car handles an 80% boost and see if We can get a cleaner run. Maybe not overpowering and maybe get some front and grip Or some rear grip definitely power curve is different As you can see we're kind of blogging Yeah, I don't think 80 is gonna be enough for these grippy tires Yeah, I don't think it is enough I have to kick that back up to 100 Kick it in there. We go Third gear is the money gear for this car on this gear ratio set and everything Box turns so much fun You could lose a lot of time in these though if you're Come to a stop or stutter out so we're trying not to stutter out this time like we did last time Taking on that out. There we go. Nice clean line drawn through there. Just a wall to have to Flick ourselves back around We'll try not missing the handbrake through this Section this time. Oh Nope do not want to do that in competition. That would be the end of our run, I believe So we are fine-tuning this car to get it to handle exactly how I want it to on this course Got a little bit more work to do gonna change up delivery a little bit to get it finalized for The competition believe is beginning in January. So a lot of practice in the Gymkhana Style environment racing, which is definitely a lot of fun definitely a different style competition than I'm used to But I will definitely take that so that second run was a little bit better But I still don't think it was fast enough. No 205 not fast enough We need to get our times down even more want to be down in there in the low twos if not in the 150 One high high 150s So hope you guys enjoyed this episode a little look into this competition There's gonna be a lot more going on with this competition and be testing out some different cars But I believe we're gonna be set on the Z gonna be fine-tuning some settings So make sure you guys follow me on all social media all of its front in the description box below And as always I like to you guys come back and watching. I'm evil rabbit. See you guys on the track


Here's what we want. We want the two Philly guys playing tight and to be in the same room. We'll have y'all both back. Yeah. For sure, that's basically get us on here, man. Two Philly guys. I'ma get him, cause he ain't really from Philly. Right, yeah. No, that's true. We ain't from the outskirts. That's true. I got love for you, Cal, but you ain't from Philly, bro. No, that's my guy. He's from Philly adjacent. Yeah, he's Philly adjacent. That's my guy.


I can totally see you staring at me. Good morning, my beautiful internet friends. Welcome back. Today we're gonna talk about the topic of staring, but I'm gonna take a little bit of a different angle on this than I have before, because a lot of people talk about, and I've talked about how uncomfortable it is to be looked at in public, because I can't go anywhere without people staring at me. That sounds very narcissistic. It's because I'm missing a leg. And there's a lot of vulnerability in that, but something came to my attention not that long ago that kind of made me start thinking about this a little bit differently. So I wanted to tackle that. First of all, don't worry. This is not gonna be an angry rant or anything like that, but I did want to address this subject. There is this phrase that has stuck in my head for, honestly, months. In a video a while ago, I talked about how being stared at was kind of challenging for me sometimes. And someone said in the comment section, Joe, some people stare because they care. Just cemented itself in my head for a really long time. It actually kind of helped me deal with the way that people perceive me in public sometimes. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that I released this shirt a couple of days ago that says I can see you staring at me in big black letters. I was at the mall a couple months ago and it was a day where like, man, that the place was packed and I swear every person around me was just like a gaping at me with like a wide mouth, like they'd never seen a person missing a limb before. And I was kind of in a lighthearted mood that day.  So I made a shirt saying it instead. And I released it on social media and I was amazed by the response. How many people said like, oh my God, I feel this so much. Like it's so uncomfortable.  And it's a weird subject for me to address, having found both sides of this coin because for most of my life, I looked normal, gonna use normal in quotes here, kind of fit into society's version of like an average human. And so I wasn't anything that stood out. I wasn't anything that people spent time staring at. I could choose to be invisible, which was great. I now miss that privilege. I have presently lost the ability to go out in public and not be noticed. And with that comes the sense of like insecurity. People stare at you and think like, what's wrong with me? You know, we're herd animals. We need other people. We desire a connection. And when everyone's looking at you like you're weird, like you're different. It's very isolating. For me, it can also feel kind of vulnerable when a lot of people notice me. I don't like being noticed all the time. I kind of deal with some safety issues in my mind and I'd rather kind of go around unnoticed sometimes. And so now I can. Now if I go out in public, I am noticed. People remember me because I'm missing a leg. And for a long time, that was difficult for me to deal with, right? Like I avoided going in public because I didn't want to deal with everyone's eyes on me. I felt like I had to like dress up every single day I left the house because people were gonna be looking at me. Like I used to be the girl who would wear like sweatpants and a T-shirt everywhere. And I was like, I can't do that anymore. I have to look nice. I have to have my hair done because people are gonna be staring at me. It took me months to work out of that mindset. And the thing is, I used to be on the other side of that equation. I have absolutely stared at people who did not look like society's definition of normal. And now I realize what that felt like. But I don't know that there is a super easy solution to this problem. And I made this shirt honestly more as like an empowering joke to myself and others because I'm not gonna lie. It's kind of fun to see someone like staring at you and then like notice your shirt and then like be like, you know, weird about it. It's just maybe it's a sick joke it's kind of funny to me. But here's the problem guys. A lot of people make videos or speeches about how we shouldn't stare at people who are different or don't look like us or whatever. But it's literally human nature. It's in our DNA to notice things that are outside the norm, slightly different. Kids are the most curious creatures around. They point and they stare at anything they haven't seen before. They wanna know what it is. They wanna understand it.  We still have that curiosity. We still have that urge to like look and see what it is. And I get that. I totally understand that.  Like I just wanna go get a fricking cup of coffee. Can you please not notice me? And I just go incognito, but I can't. You know, and it's super frustrating but on the flip side of it, it's kind of hard to fault people. It's kind of hard to get mad at them. Except the people who like stare for like 12 seconds with their mouth wide open. That's kind of like a little too far. I feel like I can get a little frustrated at that. The people who are like, that just seemed a little odd. But anyway, I am welcoming anybody and everybody to disagree with me on this. But I don't think that telling people not to stare at people who are different or rather not to look at them is really the answer here. I should have probably thought of an answer before I started this video.  I don't stare to make them uncomfortable but I do notice them. And I think something I've realized being on this side of the coin too is that I can also tell when people are purposefully not looking at you or purposefully not trying to think about it. Because they're like, that's not socially acceptable. I shouldn't do that, but they do have questions but they do want to know something. And I'd be more than happy to answer it if they would speak up and I invite questions. So I think the topic of people who look different than you, like how should you respond is not necessarily a super easy one. Cause again, the normal answer is like, don't stare, don't look. Oh, but that's just not human nature. Like that literally fights against our instincts. And so I'm not sure, I'm not sure what the answer is. I can tell you that it makes me feel vulnerable and uncomfortable when everybody in a room is looking at me and is like glancing at me. But it's also hard to get mad at them because I know that they're just interested. I know they're fascinated. I know that I look different than they do and they want to know why. They want to know what it is. They might want to know my story. They might have questions and that's okay. So I guess maybe what I'm encouraging is that curiosity is awesome. Curiosity is a good thing but let's maybe curb our curiosity and not prolong our stares because that does start to hurt people. And while we're talking about staring, let me introduce you to our sponsor for the day, Peaks Clothing Blue Light Blocking Glasses. You guys know I get headaches, I get migraines and I'm working a number of jobs now that all involve looking at the screen like all day long. And screens have a lot of blue light and apparently that can actually interact and give you headaches. So before I filmed this video, I have actually worn these during my work day for a week now. And I'll be honest with you, I thought it kind of sounded like Poke Science blocking blue light. Like what's that gonna do? I can actually feel my eyes relax a little bit when I put these on. Just a little bit. I feel like there's tension that releases itself. And what these actually do is they block blue violet light which can be harmful to your eyes and we have it coming through our screens, our tablets, our computers, literally all day long. I have continued to wear these whenever I'm working at the computer and I really like them. Also, I kind of feel like they're cute. They're fun. They've got a couple different styles. I'm gonna link them down below and I would super recommend checking them out because they're also really affordable. I've looked into blue light blocking glasses before and oftentimes they're like 50 or 100 bucks and I don't have that kind of money to spend. And so this company, it's a lot less than that. You can find them on Amazon and they're actually based here in my city. So I was super happy to find them and work with them. And I would honestly recommend this if you guys have issues with headaches or eye strain or work at a desk all day long starting at a computer. So if you wanna try them out, I'm gonna leave a link in the description. There are four different styles currently. They've been an awesome company to work with and I super appreciate them sponsoring this video. So as long as we're talking about staring, maybe get yourself some cute glasses to a not stare or stare at people with. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. So what do you guys think about staring? Maybe I'm not being the best advocate for disability or anything like that when I suggest that people don't not look. But I get that it's hard not to look at people who look different than you. But the caveat is don't stare too long. And if you have a question, maybe just ask if it's okay to ask the question instead of awkwardly continuing to look at them because that is super uncomfortable. So let me know what your thoughts are on this subject. Should people just get over their curiosity, force themselves not to look at people who look different and go about their lives or not? Let me know what you think. I'm interested to hear your thoughts down below. A huge thank you to all of my patrons. We are almost at the second goal where I'll host two live streams a month that are scheduled in advance so you can make it. So thank you guys so much for being a part of my Patreon team. A big thanks goes to our patron of the day today who is Natalie Davis. Natalie, thank you so much for your help and your support. It truly means a lot to me. Thank you. If you enjoyed this video, I would love it if you would hit like and then subscribe to this channel that would mean a lot to me. And I would love to hear your voice in the comment section and see you back here in the next video. Thanks for listening guys. I love you. I'm thinking of you and I will see you in the next video. Bye. And her from the sky.


This is the only Ursula K. Le Guin novel I've read, which is a problem I need to correct. The story takes place on a planet that is covered by a single unbroken forest. Humans arrive and set up a military logging colony. The small, furry green humanoid natives are treated as slaves. Their villages are burned. Their men are brutalized and murdered. Their females and children are savagely raped. Excellent literature, but very unpleasant. It was published in 1972 and it is a Vietnam allegory in case you were wondering. Please remember to press that like button. It helps my videos get seen. And then subscribe so you can come back next time. I do science fiction, book, TV, and movie reviews all the time. And please consider becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below.


welcome to our speaker today who will speak on Brexit and Northern Ireland. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has been in political life as an elected representative for more than a third of a century since the mid-1980s. Among many other roles he has held ministerial office in Northern Ireland and served on the Northern Ireland policing board. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 2007 and knighted in 2016. He is currently the DUP's chief whip at Westminster and representing the constituency of Lagan Valley. Before handing over, just a brief housekeeping note, phones, if you could turn them off, would feel free to tweet during the speech. The Q&A will be on a Chatham house basis, so no tweeting during the Q&A, obviously, as that is off the record. With that, the floor is yours. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming along to this event and thank you to Dan for his introduction. It's a pleasure to be here and I very much appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to discuss the role that my party has played and hopes to play at this historic time. At the outset, I want to say that this afternoon, as you would expect from an Ulsterman, I'm going to be pretty straight on what I have to say. I've come with a message and that message comes from the leadership of my party and it's not just for those in the audience this afternoon. I thought this was too good a platform to not to use for that purpose and I just want to say this. My motive in being straight talking is that we really want to find a resolution. That we want to find a way forward that works for both parts of this island and I say that genuinely in the hope that we can achieve that objective. Dan has already introduced me as Chief Whip of the Democratic Unionist Party in the House of Commons. Let's face it, there are quite a few stories about Chief Whips and whether they are true or exaggerate it, they tend to pin people like me as being somewhat unfavourable and rather scary like who could possibly believe that. And yet I was speaking at another event recently with a younger audience, forgive me, children. And some of them had been watching I think a little too much of the House of Cards. It might have been the British version I'm not sure but they had this kind of notion of what a Chief Whip was and had this sense that they were figures to be feared. Recognising that my own reputation as a sensible and polite person was on the line I sought to reassure them that there are different types of Chief Whip. There are some who are all stick and no carrot and these characters are rich pickings for Netflix and the like because they rule their backbenchers with a rod of iron. Not sure you'd get away with that in the DUP mind you but I'd like to take a more measured approach and I firmly believe more in the carrot than the stick and not just because the colour of the carrot either. At the end of the day a big stick is quite awkward to carry around anyway whereas a well sharpened carrot is just as effective I find. Therefore as Chief Whip I've had a very important role to play at Westminster in ensuring that the government is able to deliver its legislative programme since the general election in 2017. That has given me a very interesting insight into the way the government works in Westminster or doesn't at times. Most especially the whole debate around Brexit and how that has been taken forward in Parliament. One thing I've observed generally in politics and I think especially in the politics of Northern Ireland is that when people feel forced down a particular path that is rarely the route to a long term solution. The starkest example in my lifetime was the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and this morning I came through Hillsborough on my way here where of course in the castle that agreement was signed between the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Taoiseach of the day Garrett Fitzgerald. And it was an agreement between our two governments but crucially it failed to win the hearts and minds of Unionists in Northern Ireland and as a result it failed the test of time. When I consider the current withdrawal agreement that is designed to pave the way for the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union and in particular the backstop element of that withdrawal agreement then for me there are similar alarm bells that sound. The withdrawal agreement has so far been rejected by the House of Commons on three occasions overwhelmingly and in Northern Ireland every shade of Unionism is opposed to the backstop in its current form. If we are to lay the foundations which the next generation both North and South can build upon then we must recognise before it is too late that there is a seismic problem with the backstop. This issue should not be treated like a diplomatic football match where one side must win and the other must lose. We must step back and learn from history and work for a sensible and sustainable deal which can be supported by all sides. The members of this institute are amongst I believe the most experienced civil servants, diplomats, business leaders and opinion formers on this island. I'm not here today to rehearse the imperfections of the European Union, many of you strongly support the European Union and I absolutely respect that. However I think even the most enthusiastic cheerleader of the European Union project will readily admit that there are problems. Our two jurisdictions joined the EEC together in January 1973 and the objective at that time was one of economic progress but over the past 46 years the European Union project has gradually taken on a new life. I often tell the story when speaking in this part of the island that Eamon de Valera and I had a few things in common or maybe a few things in common. But one of them is the moorn mountains where I grew up as a child and of course Eamon de Valera represented the constituency of South Down in the old Northern Ireland parliament although I'm not sure that he ever took his seat in the parliament. And in 1985 I took my first step into elected politics by representing that same constituency of South Down in the former Northern Ireland assembly. When Eamon de Valera was signing the third amendment of the Constitution Act in 1972 to set the wheels in motion for membership of the EEC I doubt very much that he envisaged the plan that has emerged over the years of an EU with potentially its own army and with the increasing diminution of sovereignty for the member states. And I know that this is an issue not only for the United Kingdom. I know from my role on the Council of Europe where I said in the parliamentary assembly that this causes concern in other European states as well. They struggle with the reduction of influence of their member state, the increased use of qualified majority voting for adopting legislation, removing the national veto, the expansion of the number of policy areas where the EU has exclusive competence, the increasing use of the EU common values mechanism whereby Brussels can punish a country if their national parliament legislates in a fashion the EU feels is not in keeping with their values. People all across Europe struggle as they watch an economic body transform into a political body and I accept there are many people who endorse the direction of travel. But I think we would be foolish to ignore the voices that have concerns. In 2016, for example, to give you a sense of the influence of the European Union today, if all of the EU regulations approved in that year were laid end to end, they would cover the area all the way from, along the M8, from Calcanny to Cork, which is just over 150 kilometres of EU regulations if you laid them end to end. They have a lot of influence and as a member of parliament in the UK over half the laws that come before the UK parliament emanate from Brussels and to my frustration they cannot be amended. So as a legislator elected by the people of my constituency, I struggled with that concept. I think there was a time when it was possible to address the concerns of the United Kingdom on this front and I commend former Prime Minister David Cameron who made efforts to reform the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. But he was largely ignored in Brussels and genuine concerns that were raised by the UK I'm afraid were wished away by the people who wielded the real power in the European Union. Some may be surprised by this but my party actually supported what the Prime Minister was trying to achieve. We were desirous to have some reform of the EU so that the UK could continue in membership and I think it was frustrating that David Cameron wasn't accommodated in the way that I believe would have not only benefited the relationship between the UK and the EU but it would have been a wider benefit to the European Union itself. That democratic deficit between Brussels and the member states I think signals further problems that lie ahead for the European Union. And it was a central reason why in the EU referendum in 2016 with a 72% turnout, the biggest ever democratic vote in the history of the United Kingdom, the UK voted albeit by a relatively narrow margin to leave the European Union. I realise that I'm speaking this afternoon to an audience who largely support the European Union and who struggle to rationalise why anyone let alone a party from Northern Ireland would seek to leave the EU. And I would simply ask that for the moment you set aside those points of debate and consider that if we are all true democrats then we must at least respect and enable the UK to implement the will of its people as expressed in that referendum. It was not a regional or a local question, it was a UK question. Indeed the leave vote in Scotland and Northern Ireland represents the majority of the referendum result. While some are attempting to undermine the referendum result in the UK such actions I believe are counterproductive and send out the wrong signal to communities who for decades felt ignored but found their voice in June 2016. To ignore that voice I think would be to foolishly undermine democracy. I have to say that people like me who voted for Brexit didn't vote in ignorance. We supported the prospect of the UK taking back control of its money and its laws and its borders. We wanted our national parliament to be in control. In supporting Brexit we did not seek to undermine the existing agreements that underpin the peace process or to create a so called hard border on the island of Ireland and let me be clear about that. I have not ever attended a meeting of my party at any level where there was any suggestion that in supporting Brexit our objective was to undermine the peace process or any of the agreements that are associated with it. Or to somehow create infrastructure on the border that would make life difficult for people but we participated in a democratic process that came to a democratic conclusion. I often think that some of those who make the claim that Brexit is all about creating a hard border are playing on the fears of people who live along the border and who rely on cross-border travel to go about their daily business. That's not what we want. That is not our objective. As someone who lost family and friends during what we call the Troubles and who strongly opposed terrorism in all its forms for both loyalists and republicans, I stand by and I continue to support the political institutions created under both the Belfast and St Andrew's agreement. My party will always support the democratic process. In August 2016 within weeks of the EU referendum my party leader Arlene Foster panned a letter jointly with the then deputy First Minister Martin McGinnis. That letter was written to the UK Prime Minister Theresa May and it's worth quoting I think from this letter in August 2016. And I quote, this region is unique in that it is the only part of the UK which has a land border with an EU member state. There have been difficult issues relating to the border throughout our history and the peace process. We therefore appreciate your stated determination that the border will not become an impediment to the movement of people, goods and services. It must not become a catalyst for a legal activity or compromise in any way the arrangements relating to criminal justice and tackling organised crime. It is equally important that the border does not create an incentive for those who would wish to undermine the peace process and or the political settlement. The letter concluded with these words. It will also be important to proactively seek out opportunities in any new arrangements that would be of benefit to the UK and its regions. This was a letter I believe written in the spirit of respecting the referendum result and seeking the best deal for everyone. It was pragmatic and constructive. As then First Minister and Deputy First Minister these two leaders were writing in the same spirit of mutual respect and common sense which enabled my party in Sinn Fein to reach agreement at St Andrews and subsequently to establish a power sharing government. At the heart of those agreements was a desire to move away from the politics of division and to build a shared future for everyone. I firmly believe that had these institutions, the political institutions, like the Assembly, like the North South Ministerial Council, been functioning throughout the period of the recent Brexit negotiations. And if the spirit of that letter written by Arlene Foster and Martin McGinnis had been reciprocated by everyone in London, Dublin and Brussels, then we I think would be in a fundamentally better and different place than we are right now. The Northern Ireland Executive, if it had been functioning, could have provided a forum for the Northern Ireland parties to try and reach a consensus. Equally the North South Ministerial Council had it being functioning, would have provided a forum within which Belfast and Dublin could discuss and agree on a mutually beneficial position on Brexit. Just think of the difference that would have made. If Belfast and Dublin had been able to sit down together and work this out, that has not happened and instead we have reverted to the politics of megaphone diplomacy. Despite the absence of the political institutions, I believe the Irish government could have done more to engage, understand and reach a consensus on the way forward with the political parties including my party from Northern Ireland. Again that has not happened. And I say this with no sense of bitterness, but I say it in all honesty. It is my view that Leo Veradker is the first Irish T-shock to subcontract his Northern Ireland policy to the European Union Commission. I think of Sean Lamass who tried to settle the border issue, not by bringing outsiders in to lean on unionists, but by means of trilateral talks between Belfast, Dublin and London. And the snowballs that Ian Paisley threw at the time would melt in later years and reveal that actually they weren't that far apart after all. As the principle of consent became the bridge that brought our two traditions to a meeting point. And those two words, consensus and consent, you're going to hear a lot from me this afternoon. The Irish government knew from an early stage that the border was sensitive. Therefore it ought to have been a matter where they sought consensus on how it should be addressed. Instead it is our view that the border has been used as a bargaining chip in these negotiations. At a time when cool heads were needed, the T-shock was photocopying articles from the Irish Times from 1972 portraying the provisional IRA bombing a customs post on the border. He was sharing this article amongst the EU leaders, but to what end? What was the point? We haven't had customs posts on the border for years. No one in the UK is arguing for that infrastructure to be put back on the border. The UK government has given a unilateral declaration it will not put any new infrastructure on the border. The UK has willingly signed up to the continuation of the common travel area across these islands which has huge implications for the movement of people across these islands. Let's not forget that in 1972 the border posts were targeted, not because they represented the United Kingdom being outside the European Union. They were targeted because they represented the United Kingdom government. That's not where we are today. Let us not also forget that that same mindset attempted to murder a police officer in East Belfast two weeks ago by placing a bomb under his car. We need to tread carefully and what frustrates me about the approach of the Irish government is that no one was even talking about building border posts in 2018 other than the Sinn Fein amateur dramatic society in South Armagh. They were the only people talking about border posts and yet the T-shirt felt that it was important to make this an issue as a bargaining chip. Now all is fair, love and war. It's politics and people will use whatever means they need to achieve their objective provided they're lawful and democratic. I accept that. But how do you build a consensus on addressing the border issue in the context of Brexit if you exclude one key element of the process namely unionism? And sadly I believe what we've witnessed over the last two years has been more the politics of turning plowshares into swords rather than swords into plowshares. And we need to step back from that. At the outset I touched on the need to win both hearts and minds of all sides if any agreement is to be successful. Yet as I've said the Irish government has sought a solution on Brexit which they know and they've been told does not have the support of unionists because of the backstop. They abandoned the politics of consensus and instead now find themselves claiming to be a guarantor of the Belfast agreement whilst being at loggerheads with Westminster, with the UK government which is the co guarantor and with unionism all shades of unionism in Northern Ireland. Is that where we want to be 20 years on? Not a credible voice in unionism has raised its voice in support of the backstop in its current form and Parliament has three times now overwhelmingly rejected the draft withdrawal agreement simply because of the backstop. And we cannot ignore that reality and I think we need to reconsider the approach on this issue. And I want to be clear this afternoon. The DUP and every unionist party I know in Northern Ireland does not want a hard border on this island. I cannot say that often enough. Nor are we at Westminster advocating for a no deal outcome. But I have to say that is where we are heading unless there is a changed mindset and approach in these next few weeks and months. There is no doubt that a no deal Brexit will have major implications for both economies on this island especially for the agri food sector. Over 50% of Irish beef exports go to the British market. Great Britain is by far the biggest market for Northern Ireland producers and manufacturers and the UK is a crucial market for the Irish Republic. Those are facts. No one can deny that this is the case and we are concerned that the backstop has the potential to create a new border, a border in the Irish sea. And that has major consequences for both parts of this island. But it also has major consequences for the political consensus that underpins the agreements that are crucial for the peace process. And at the heart of that peace process, at the heart of that political dispensation is the principle of consent. I want to see the political institutions restored and we are continuing the talks at Stormont even today to try and achieve that. The DUP is clear. If the Secretary of State convenes the assembly tomorrow we will be there without any preconditions. We will appoint our ministers, we will go into government. We want Northern Ireland to have a functioning government today. And we want to see the Northside Ministerial Council back in action enabling Dublin and Belfast to sit down and discuss these issues. But that may not happen in the next few weeks. And yet that dialogue is important and it must continue. I think that if we proceed on the basis that is proposed and the backstop goes forward, in the opinion of unionists it would represent a fundamental breach of the constitutional arrangements underpinning the Belfast and St Andrews agreements because it will not have the consent of unionists. Therefore it has the potential and I do not say this lightly. The potential to undermine the delicately balanced consensus created as a result of those agreements. And in my opinion represents a serious threat to future unionist participation. If this is to be avoided then the UK concerns around the backstop do need to be addressed. The Irish government says that the backstop is intended to be temporary but then they refuse to consider a time limit or a means of unilateral withdrawal. Which means the backstop could be indefinite and I'm not going to bore you with all the details of what that means but it has significant, significant implications for Northern Ireland. It has significant implications for the political consensus that was arrived at under the very delicately balanced agreements. That's the risk that the Irish government is taking in refusing to consider the UK concerns on the backstop. And yet there is a prize to be achieved here. Would it not be a more powerful message sent out across the world if somehow we could manage to arrive at a consensus and how we handle this and restore the political institutions? Demonstrating that the North South relationship on this island can endure and manage such change through consensus. For our part the DUP is willing to work to bring about sensible resolutions and as we have in the past we will work with the Irish government on those areas that are of mutual concern and benefit to us all. We want to try and find an outcome that works for both parts of this island that avoids a hard border on the island or a new border in the Irish sea and is capable of commanding the support of both London and Brussels. And as I've said we want to see the restoration of the political institutions. For there's no doubt that fully restored institutions would help rather than hinder in the challenges that lie ahead. I believe we will only be able to succeed in this endeavour when each of the parties recognise that any restoration agreement in relation to those political institutions is balanced and is seen as fair. We are ready and willing to play our part in delivering that. But beyond the here and now we need to look at future relationships in the light of Brexit, both between the UK and the EU and crucially between both parts of this island. And let me say that the DUP is up for that. We're up for exploring the potential that there is in that relationship between north and south. But a lot depends on how we handle Brexit and that will have a major bearing on how we proceed. And the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom cannot be undermined. It has to be respected. If the protectors of peace agree that a new border north south is unpalatable then I think they must also recognise that a new border east west is equally so. The potential for greater cooperation on this island is there. We all know that. But I'm afraid the backstop could actually inhibit and limit this because of the lack of consensus. Consent and consensus are essential to the building of the relationships north south and east west. And I think it was refreshing to see this acknowledged by people like Seamus Mallon, one of the key architects of the Belfast agreement. In 2017 my party leader was the guest speaker at the Kalarney Economic Conference and during her address she compared Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and our relationship as being similar to two semi-detached houses. Whilst we share the same neighbourhood the houses are a bit different on the inside and sometimes we even hang out different flags. And we use different currencies but we need to work together as neighbours. Whilst frost penned about how good fences make good neighbours there must be a final and absolute acknowledgement in London, Brussels and Dublin that no one is interested in building walls on this island. Brexit does not alter the fundamental need for reconciliation. It does not prevent us from perseverance in the building up and the rejuvenation of the relationships between our peoples within Northern Ireland on this island and between Ireland and the United Kingdom. As with all things in life you can either view the challenges in front of us as threats or opportunities. I view them as opportunities. The opportunity to strengthen the foundations laid in the peace process. The opportunity to bring a fresh figure to working the political institutions created under that process. The opportunity to make this island both in Northern Ireland and the Republic a place that future generations can be proud of. The only people who will prevent this, the only people who will stop us from grasping these opportunities are ourselves. We must learn from our history. We have a history on this island sadly at times of getting it wrong. Some of you will have heard me quote this before forgive me but it bears repeating. I'm often drawn to the words of the late Major Willie Redmond, Member of Parliament and a proud Irish nationalist. Willie Redmond, though he didn't need to, went off to the western front and he fought at the Somme and he lost his life at Messines. In the winter of 1916 having witnessed the carnage of the Somme, Irish men from all traditions and persuasions and backgrounds slaughtered in their thousands. He wrote these words from the western front to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, the author. And I quote, it would be a fine memorial to the men who have died so splendidly if we could over their graves build a bridge between north and south. In the midst of the carnage and the mayhem of the western front, with no end in sight Willie Redmond could lift his vision beyond that and see an island and a future that was about building bridges. My how we need Willie Redmond's now. Think of the trouble we might have avoided if this island had more bridge builders like Willie Redmond. Yet here we are a century later, 100 years later. And in the midst of another difficulty, certainly not on the scale of the Somme, we're still talking about borders and not bridges. What we need now are leaders with the vision to see beyond the current difficulty, to see the Ireland north and south that goes beyond Brexit and builds on the relationships that we identified in the agreements that need to be addressed and built and strengthened. Surely we can learn from the past and go the extra mile this time to get it right. And so in conclusion, I say to my friends in the Irish government, consent and consensus are the essence of bridge building, bridge building in relationships. That is what we desperately need to find in these coming months and for our part we're ready as we have been to sit down and find that bridge. It may be a time limit to the backstop. It might be a unilateral means of withdrawal. It doesn't need to be something earth shattering. We're not asking for something that will fundamentally undermine what is proposed. And I hope that in the spirit of building the bridges that Willie Redmond spoke of. In the spirit of finding an outcome that is inclusive, an outcome that brings consensus across the community, unionist, nationalist, north and south. An outcome that represents and recognises the principle of consent that is at the heart of the political dispensation created under the various agreements. In the interest of getting a way forward, I hope that in the coming weeks common sense and pragmatism will prevail and that we will find a way forward that enables unionism, nationalism, people north and south on this island to move beyond the current difficulty and to reassert ourselves in the task of building bridges. Thank you.


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards, and I'm ripping one box of 21 22 tops chrome UEFA Champions League Soccer hobby for Matthew F. I don't know why I didn't think of that for a second. Good luck Matthew. Good luck Matthew. Let's do it man What's up, Mikey? I feel like number one auto per box out of this. There it is right there got Jude Bellingham Numbered 18 of 75 for Dortmund. Nice one there. You want to trade Stanton Mike? I Don't know I'm doing pretty good Mike. How about yourself man? Yeah, it's weird seeing you like me breaking and having you in here Got Pepe on the rookie speckle not numbered For Porto. I'm doing good. I got Sean the man here with me Gerard Peke on the Silver for Barcelona like the guy. He's actually one guy. I really know Bellingham solid nice Bellingham seems pretty good Beautiful Jude, I guess probably Magda, dude. I would say everybody's saying that it's really solid again. I apologize Kaio Jorge for who Ventus on the refractor. I Apologize, I'm not the biggest soccer fan in the world. I I know some of the bigger players with Premier League. I'm a little bit Less on some of the other like the Serie A La Liga Boons Liga all of those so I apologize on that by Nice refractor Sydney Rabiger heck. Yeah, let's go On the refractor rookie for Leipzig nice one Yeah, I should be able to do that Kennedy So again, I apologize if I I don't get really hyped on a card. I should be getting hyped out It's just my lack of knowledge Noah Lane number to 125 on the mini diamonds So it's not on purpose. It's just again. I don't want to like claim. I'm an expert in something I'm not more than anything. I like soccer four five nine. It's 18 is 75 18 of 75 Got lava to 199 that is Nicolo Varela Yeah, I can get that I can eat Mikey. Personals are definitely open. You want to jump in I mean, it's gonna be a few hours. I would think but we'll definitely get you in tonight for sure Would love to break something for you. Let's do it chill. Well Got Ibrahima Konate Liverpool FC Kennedy just shoot us an email about combining those two into one order and we should be able to we'll forward it to the shipping department for you Renato Sanchez 11 out of 25 messy from a plaster box at Walmart. Wow, that's big That's really big Got a Vaan Peresic from Milano that is refractor not numbered regular top champion Lee cards. Wow Yes, so Tyler Morton Sergio Ramos got Oh Gabby that's a big one and Goalazo on the refractor Erling Holland for Dortmund Yeah, I do like champions league because you get the best players from the best teams all over the world as Opposed to just having like Premier League or La Liga and stuff got go Lazo. Gavi not numbered nice one there rookie for Barcelona and Ben Chilwell on The refractor not numbered Chelsea Bellingham auto graded over 800 more toward a thousand. Wow. Holy cow. Nice one, man Let's go. I know I know Jude Bellingham to get excited about now Got Leonel messy base. He has still weird seeing him in a PSG Jersey Don't know how to say that and Chave Simmons on the Future Stars refractor. I know Gabby is a huge ruckier. Is it Gabby? Am I saying Gabby, right? Gabby Gabby maybe I know he's big because he I opened a lot of obsidian and pulled a couple big things of him Mackenzie Tail Hernandez got Eduardo comma Vinga on the Future Stars we on the dread Ranchek. Oh Chavi. Is it like Chavi? Javi. Oh, is it Javi? Maybe Javi use up the mirror and Pedri Chavi Chavi, that's how you say it. Thank you double double T Chavi So it's kind of like the guy used to play in Barcelona, right? Whose name was XAVI. It's kind of say it said the same way Andy Robertson Dosey Joshua Kimmich and we've got Trent Alexander Arnold to 199 for Liverpool. Nice one there. So true Exactly. Okay, so it's Chavi. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. I Used to really I had a Chavi Jersey when I was a kid Barcelona. My mom got it for me in Spain, which is really cool chasing glory Latoro Martinez for FC international international Zale Milano and last pack. Good luck here Matthew Rafael Guerrero Suarez Fabio and Speckle or mini diamond is Sadio Mane for Liverpool. That is not numbered on the money Nice one there That'll do it for your box there Matthew Congrats on all your hits those will go right out to you. Thanks again, man