The T2 Tile project is building an indefinitely scalable computational stack. Follow our progress here on T Tuesday updates. Hey folks, it's been two weeks, tons of stuff to talk about. Let's get into it. The top story this time is I did not submit to the Artificial Life Conference this year. As always, I had great ambitions, but once I settled down to actually start working on it with like three weeks, two weeks left, it didn't come together and I wasn't happy with the way it was coming out and I decided to let it go. The deadline was March 7th, but we knew it was going to be extended to March 14th. It was. It's now March 16th, it looks like the submission window is still actually open, but I didn't write anything. I mean, I wrote tons of code, but I didn't write a paper and that's sad in a way because it's been sort of a tradition that each spring there's a bunch of stuff that's happening on the T2 Tile project that I'm not talking about because it's kind of the obligation that I sort of think to if you're going to submit something new to a conference or journal or whatever that you're not supposed to really talk about it until the paper comes out. And I never really liked that that much, but that's the way it was. So for the last two years in 2019 and in 2020, we put up the wall of science between the spring like around February, March and like July on a bunch of work. And I didn't really like doing that, but of course it just is what it is. And what I would feel like trying to do this year is I want to develop this stuff in the open. I'm going to talk later sort of the feature story for this update, a little mission status review to try to reset and put things in context, but what we're actually trying to accomplish here or at least my vision for what we're actually trying to accomplish and see how far we've gotten and what the next steps might be and the stuff that I was trying to produce for the A-Life conference was some of that. That said, there is another call for the A-Life 2021 conference which is now fully online. They were hoping at first to have it be hybrid in Prague and online, but you know, world being what it is, it's virtual. The deadline for art and visualizations is April 25th and you know, we'll see. It's not out of the question and you know, there's the logo robot person without the mask on and the art and visualizations call all online and so forth. And you know, in the 2020 A-Life art competition, which I was one of the judges for, there was a prize for sort of science related art visualization as well as sort of art for art's sake visualization.  We might have something to say in a month. Talk about that more in a minute. So in the last two weeks, I started a new YouTube channel, the third one now, which currently has no subscribers. You can be the first subscriber. The purpose of the MFM, the T2Demos channel is to just collect the little, you know, two to three minutes or the pop song length visualizations of it doesn't have to be purely art or jokey or funny. You can have a scientific purpose as well, but it just needs to be really boiled down, you know, maybe absolute tops five minutes. And so far, I've briefed demonstrations, brief video demonstrations and I put up the the Eugene video, which is now at the moment on both, but and I'm going to put up the Don't Cross the Streams on T2Demos and in the future, they will go there. So if people are interested, and maybe someday people will, you know, a wider audience, you know, we've got our core of 150, 150 people that seem to check out the updates, you know, in tempo and, and, you know, thank you folks.  It's nothing. It's a rounding error. But it's 150 people that I feel are sort of part of the team and are staying along with the plot. So I need to feel an obligation to number one, advance the plan number two, let people know what what has been happening, even if I don't know whether it's a success or a failure yet because the story isn't written yet. So there could be a broader line of people that don't really want to follow the blow by blow on it, but we wouldn't mind dropping in to see a little piece of candy every so often. That's what T2Demos is for. Be happy to get as much pushing social media, of course, as we can, but at the moment there's only one or two videos there. That here's a teaser for another T2 demo, which I'm hoping to release next week although we'll see how it all works out. That should be sort of fun and nobody's seen it yet. In addition, also on YouTube, there's some new voices appearing as making suggestions and asking questions and had a certain amount of engagement and that was really good. Thank you folks a lot for raising issues and just letting me know you're thinking about this stuff because that really helps. Brian Canard, I'm not sure, I feel like he's a recent arrival, but I'm not positive. He found the research when looking for modular motherboard back planeless scalable connector design on Google. You Google that, you actually can find something back from 2008 that I've talked about it a little bit before that ended up in a wired online wired lab article. I don't remember exactly what hardware hackers create a modular motherboard. This is where I learned a little bit about quotations and accuracy in journalism. Nothing against Priya Ganapati. I don't know that I ever spoke to her directly. Him or her actually. I don't know her, I think. It says David Ackley, associate professor. We have CPU serial ports for connectivity on every two square inches. That's not actually what I said. I said on every two inches squared. Two inches squared. Not the same as two square inches. And even inside quotes, it doesn't come out right. There's the picture of them. The IXMs, the Illuminato X Makana, two inches squared. There are advantages to essential plant structure, but eventually we're running to great inefficiencies. I'm not exactly sure I use that word either. It's really hard. We have efficiency built into our brains so much as that is the nature of the good that even if you say you're doing something else, you're doing robustness, and they say, oh, will that lead to more efficiency? And you have to say, well, actually, no, at least less efficiency, but it leads to more robustness. Is that, oh, it sounds very efficient. So, and Brian Connard also linked to these folks who I hadn't heard about, that I googled for a moment, and it seems like they do FPGA stuff and this open FPGA project. And here's the thing, I've talked about the Illuminato X Makana, the IXM a few times before. But, right, when I looked long ago, FPGAs had unfortunate limits on dynamic reconfigurability. And, you know, so here's a little bit of show and tell. This is the Papillio Pro, and that's an FPGA right in the middle there, that big chip. This was designed and built by a guy named Jack Gasset up in Colorado who I actually worked with sort of on and off, and the idea would be, you know, he was selling these. And I thought, you know, what if we could take all these pins and move them around so that we could connect one of his Papillio Pros to other Papillio Pros. He designed, in consultation with me, the eight-fold mega-wing, like that, which is basically a connector board with, you know, there's a little bit extra stuff on it. And the idea is, you know, you take a Papillio Pro and it plugs in on a half stride, you know, slightly off one way and slightly off the other way. I don't know if I can actually do this, but when you get it right, you can plug them in. I'm not going to be able to get it right and we'll take the time, but like that. So you can tile the wiring into tile boards and you can tile the Papillio Pros behind them. We did one generation of this, never actually got it working.  So these things, I mean, if this thing had gotten working, it would be, you know, blazing fast as far as the communications compared to where the T2 tiles are so very slow. But engineering, I mean, hardware is just one straight up after another.  And I really don't have him follow exactly what he's doing. He, you know, could help at least get some links or something that I'd actually look at. Maybe Brian and I could talk at some point. I've solved dynamic FPGA reconfiguration in an object-oriented way. I mean, if you squint, that's kind of looks like what the T2 tile is trying to do. Take a uniform, relatively uniform hardware platform, which is what a field programmable gate array is or does, and allow it to talk to others of its own kind, so that at one moment it can be acting like a drag, at one moment it can be acting like a sorter, and so forth, without the hardware actually changing, just by dynamic reconfiguration of the same existing hardware. So, Brian, in any case, thanks for stopping by and making contacts. All right, and this video, that is not my house. I think for the first time in the history of the universe, a T2 tile is booted up not by me, or not by us here in. Strider, who I've known since UNM days, has been working on software. In particular, he's forked a version of the underlying engine stuff to update, to upgrade the graphics and the interface stuff. There's a particular library called SDL that I use, the old one. That he's now upgraded MFMS, the simulator, to, and, you know, the next logical step to be able to merge that stuff, because there is so much commonality between the code base for the simulator and the code for MFM T2 that runs on the tiles, is that he needed a tile to actually try out, if he could port the code, the SDL2, it's called code to the tile.  He's put up a couple of videos, he's talking to it from a Mac, and he's got in the T2 splat code, other stuff going on, and in particular, he's got a journal file, I encourage folks to keep an eye on that, if you're more interested to see what's going on. That's very exciting, it's very terrifying. You know, these things are rare. But, Strider says, I found the tile to be much more robust than I had imagined. All right, so that's that. Finally, it's now been a year since we incorporated the living, since we formed the Living Computation Foundation, our nonprofit to try to back all this work, and to build outreach for the ideas more generally, as well as the specific computational ideas. Spring Incorporated, Spring of 2020, right now it's Spring of 2021, it's time to do our first tax return for the foundation. We've raised a little bit of money, we've spent a little bit of money, and we have our LCF nerds, we're now up to the 240 series of LCF nerd numbers, and we have monthly contributors, thank you folks, so much. Exactly how we're going to position everything, and I use the LCF, I use LCF, Living Computation Foundation, trying not to say the the, I use Living Computation Foundation as my main affiliation now, so step by step, all right. And so that's the news. Now, we put out these little videos, we put out these little art goofy things, like don't cross the streams, and so forth, and people can look at them and they can think they're interesting, or funny, or pretty, or not, or whatever it is, and that's all good. And I think T2 demos are really important, not just for outreach, in a sort of art and fun to look at, well, partly fun to look at sense, but also in the sense of training our eyes what these systems look like. They are not kchunk, kchunk, kchunk, kchunk, like the master synchronizer that makes everything perfect, there's always little ripples around the edges, and that's the way these systems work. And so having these demos all different ways that shows, you know, things spreading, things coming together, whatever it is, is all important, I think, for training our eyes. The bigger picture is that we're going to take this bottom up, distributed, robust first approach, and work our way back to, work our way up to a computational framework powerful enough to do useful work. And there we go, right. And so this kind of comment that comes up on YouTube, about when can I start to deal with my Excel dialogue using this sort of thing, or when is this going to implement a spreadsheet, or could I use this for video gaming, it's a standard kind of question comes up. It's all variations of what is the killer app for this thing. And my answer is, if there's a killer app, I wouldn't tell you, because this is early research, this is research and development, but that doesn't mean there isn't a goal, a plan, a path. So I don't even know if any of this is actually visible, but so here's the idea, we're building a whole new computational stack, from physics to people to society. And at each scale, things get bigger. So we've got physics is concerned with picoseconds to milliseconds on this cartoon story, chemistry is milliseconds to a second and so forth. And there's computing analogs for all of this, that from one bit to an event window is sort of the domain of physics. And from one to a thousand sites perhaps is the domain of chemistry. And right on up the stack. And so what we're trying to do is build our way up that stack. And here's how our progress that we've made. We've got actual tiles running that are doing bits. We've got languages for supporting, manipulating those bits for the chemistry, for the order of a thousand sites or so. We've got various demos and we're going to keep working on that. But we want to start moving on to the next step, the biology step, where we have something like a cell, something bigger than an atom, much bigger than an atom, that there are many copies of it that are related, similar, differentiated, identical, whatever it is that interact to perform some larger problem. Because that's going to be the key to reaching a first level of utility. We're not going to expect to find a, to make a marketable app using individual sites and atoms. It's got to be stuff that's doing something complex in a collaborative fashion. And that's what this is getting at. And that's where we are now. We're sort of at the tipping edge between sort of digital chemistry and digital biology on this point of view. So, you know, in physics, you know, MFM, MFMS, the simulator, MFM T2, the tile engine, those are physics level, ULAM, SPLAT, and SPOT from last year, the stage priority operation teams, those are dealing with coordinating, you know, groups of atoms, you know, perhaps hundreds or thousands, but not millions or billions, not directly. There's going to need to be more structure. There's going to need to be more organization in order to do that. And biology is the next stop. Multicellularity, reproduction, differentiation, and signaling. So here it is, running, taking a lot of time. I'm going to chop off part of this here. But so the goal, my goal, A goal, a proposed goal for 2021, is to actually get high enough up in the biological systems so that we can do simulated simple control system demos. Like we have a simulated robot, perhaps something as simple as a Breitenberg vehicle that sort of turns toward the light or perhaps even something more complicated, like a cart pole, a traditional problem for simulated robotics. But what we do is we take a simulation of it and we connect it to the real grid. We have new hardware that does input and output in some fashion around the periphery of the grid, perhaps injected into the center of it, who knows. And we let it flow through doing its biological, chemical, physical type bottom-up processing. And we take signals off it and we say, okay, as far as the simulation is concerned, that was 100 milliseconds or something, even if it takes 20 minutes in reality for us to do it. That's the goal that I would like to achieve. I'd like to achieve a lot more goals, but that implies many of them. All right, so yeah. And so getting to reproduction and differentiation cell structures is what I've been focusing on, what I was trying to focus on for the A-Life 2021 that I did not end up submitting to. I was working on stuff that went all the way back to 2016, which was a very simple-minded method of copying structures. This is an example of a structure being copied that I called the 2D printer back then. I was trying to refresh it now over the last couple of weeks. And it's exactly one of these horrible early technology failures, like rockets falling over left and right and crashing and the early attempts to fly with airplanes with six wings going three feet and then folding up. That's what was happening to me, trying to get this replication method working. So here I've got a scribbled little blue thing of stuff that's meant to be copyable by the 2D printer technology. And the idea is it passes swap lines through a special kind of swap line to copy line by line and then deposit them until it's made a copy.  Eventually I fixed enough of the bugs so I started getting more interesting failures like this one. I got an absolutely perfect copy but mirror image talking about evil Kirk. And so now that's where we're at. This is running on the Keymaster. We've got a little something make a little squiggle and let's see if we can reproduce it. So that's the next T2 demo. In the service of the larger goal of we need to be able to make cellular structures bigger things hundreds of cells that would be bunches of them which will rebuild themselves from scratch and if in case something goes wrong and reconnect and so on. That's where we are now. We shall see. Going forward I'm going to keep working on the new T2 printer stuff. The copy area the reproduction system because it's getting close and it's it really is kind of cool and interesting things go wrong. Still but also for the next update it's going to be the hyperspace academy. Second lecture is this whole other thread that will come together in the end if we imagine to enough work that we are coders. We ship code way of looking at the world. Way of looking at human interactions. Way of looking at computational interactions. We shall see. Thanks for being here. I hope you're doing all right. Hope to see you in two weeks.


Well, hello and welcome to understand men now. I'm your host Jonathan Astley of Jonathan Astley.com And I'm so excited to be shooting this short video for you today our topic What makes a man stay in love the five steps? I mean, I'm on a roll with five here There's lots of fives in all my videos So the five steps for a man to stay in love Really quickly if you're new to my youtube channel, please hit the subscribe button hit the bell So you could be notified of new content. I shoot about four videos a week for you And I'd be honored if you follow me. So thanks so much. Okay, what are these five steps man for men to stay in love? All right, I mean, this is gonna be really obvious and seem like common sense But I think it's important to actually have this in your consciousness have this in your mindset when you're actively dating So step number one. It's the most obvious is chemistry Let's face it whether a man or woman. We need to feel a connection with me another human being We need to feel that vibe. We need to feel that sense of like God This just clicks because let's face it when you're meeting people You can meet all kinds of people where you don't click with but here's the challenge with chemistry oftentimes we associate Physical attraction with chemistry and I'm here to say there's other forms of chemistry So ladies have you ever met a man where you had an emotional connection with them, but you weren't attracted with them? Hey, that's called emotional chemistry. Have you ever met a man that you had this? Intellectual connection with him. It's called sapiosexual. Have you ever felt that but weren't attracted to him? That's intellectual chemistry Have you ever met a man where he's a he's a creative type He's an artist a musician a writer something that's creative a comedian You know my friend Allison Armstrong calls this the Adam Sandler effect where you're attracted to their creativeness But you may not be attracted to them If you're feeling chemistry You're feeling chemistry and I know we're talking about men But I'm bringing this up for you for a reason because chemistry for men is tends to be more Visually driven but for women it is some other forms of chemistry But the regardless we need chemistry to feel connected with another human being okay. I said this was common sense This is obvious number two is communication You ladies say this all the time communication communication communication is the most important thing about Relationships and I agree, but here's the trick. Here's the thing. I want you to think about communication in two ways Number one. Do you talk to this person like they're my best friend? I mean we men are seeking relationships with women where we can talk to them like they're our best friend Because when you're talking like friends, you can be free. You can be honest with each other You can be vulnerable and transparent so communication is important and also for communication is good conflict resolution skills good conflict resolution skills And if you're not familiar with the book nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg nonviolent communication Check it out because this is gonna help you learn how to communicate better with a man And he can you can lead by example and helping the relationship Become more communicative with one another and let me give you a hint Communication isn't with your thumbs text messaging and telephone calls do not count as communication So throw out all those text messages throw out all that because it doesn't help him fall in love that form of Communication doesn't reach a man's heart. It's face-to-face communication that helps us connect with you Number three compatibility We need compatibility to fall in love with one another and Compatibility isn't like this you like sushi me, too You like up, you know stand up paddle boarding.  Oh my god my favorite band. I've seen him in concert five times actually my favorite band is Joe Jackson, and I have seen him five times, but nonetheless. That's not compatibility Compatibility is can you blend lives together? Can you blend lives together? That's how we stay in love with another human being is can we blend lives together? Okay, the fourth one is character Now when I think of character I think do we share the same values with one another because values are the most important facet of a Relationship if you don't share the same values, then it's going to be a problematic relationship Take for example someone who's on the extreme Extreme left of their politics and someone else on the extreme right actually It's probably the other way around for you if you're looking at the camera But I'm just basing on this two people that are extreme on their politics Most likely don't share the same values two people on the extremes about their Spirituality or religion probably don't share the same values It's when we are actually aligned in our values that we eventually stay in love with someone So while I'm talking about men I'm talking about women as well And this is crucially important that you choose partners and you ask really good questions Before you give your heart to a man Before you give your heart find out if you share the same values because he can't fall in love with you If the two of you don't aren't at least close. I'm not there's a big difference here versus here Okay. Oh my god. Did I see a little bit of jiggle there? Ah, anyway, all right You get the gist of where I'm going there and lastly the fifth step for a man staying in love is something called Continuity continuity. I talk about this in my private coaching those who work with me in my five week boot camp Get a full deep dive in continuity But continuity is developing the roots to a relationship and when you understand the principles the five six seven eight different roots that need to be not that need to be established to begin to build trust in the relationship because without a foundation of trust in a relationship without a foundation of continuity means regular things these are regular things continuous things that create that base foundation Needed to build a healthy happy relationship if you're not familiar with the work of Dr. John Gottman check out the book eight dates when I said the eight foundations I do a deeper dive into this in my personal work Recognizing the foundations you need, but it's so important to build that continuity that foundation Because without it, they're going to have a problematic relationship And while this isn't this the the there isn't six steps Without a doubt self-love is needed before you ever begin a journey of seeking a mate He needs to love on himself and you need to love on yourself. This is my book What the heck a self-love anyway the link below if you want to check out my book, but without self-love How can you build a relationship with someone if you're not at least beginning a journey of loving on yourself? And that's my invitation for you Ah, okay, we covered a mouthful. Those are the five steps As I said a lot of links below to check out if you want to grab my book or schedule a coaching session But you got the five steps for a man staying in love. All right I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do giving myself a big gigantic job to bear a hug of self-love I'm gonna give you a hug of love. I'm gonna ask you to give your friends hugs of love because with love Because with hugs we can love on ourselves a ton and when we love on ourselves We can attract a great relationship in our lives. Thanks so much and wishing you a fabulous day. Bye. Bye now


US, Russia seeking munitions from North Korea in exchange for food supplies. The White House said it has new evidence that Russia is looking again to North Korea for weapons to fuel the war in Ukraine, this time in a deal that would provide Pyongyang with needed food and other commodities in return. As part of this proposed deal, Russia would receive over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions from Pyongyang. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, We also understand that Russia is seeking to send a delegation to North Korea and that Russia is offering North Korea food in exchange for munitions. We remain concerned that North Korea will provide further support and Russia's military operations against Ukraine and we have new information that Russia is actively seeking to acquire additional munitions from North Korea, he said. Kirby emphasised that any provision of weapons or munitions to Russia by North Korea would be in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions which prohibit any shipments of weapons to and from the North. Any arms deal between North Korea and Russia would directly violate a series of UN Security Council resolutions. We've taken note of North Korea's recent statement that they will not provide or sell arms to Russia and we are continuing to monitor this closely, he told the press briefing. We are going to continue to identify, expose and counter Russian attempts to acquire military equipment from North Korea or from any other state that is prepared to support its war in Ukraine, he added. John Kirby said North Korea seeks to secure food supplies in exchange and that the potential arms deal is being arranged through a Slovakian arms dealer identified as Ashok Makhrichev. Makhrichev worked with North Korea officials to obtain over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions for Russia in exchange for materials ranging from commercial aircraft, raw materials and commodities to be sent to North Korea.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jasper's casebreaks.com with a sell-o-pack break of 2019-2020 Panini Donneress Optic basketball With a chance to win a few mixer spots, which I think that mixer is very close to being sold out But let's do the break itself first big. Thanks all of these wonderful people for getting into the action There's all the teams right there and we'll do the randomizer for the mixer spots in a different dice draw at the end of The break, but this is the break first five and one six times for each list one two three four Five and a one sixth and final time after six. We've got Marissa down to Matthew five and a one six times for the teams one two three four Five and a one sixth and final time. We've got the Miami Heat All the way down to the Denver Nuggets So Marissa with the heat Matthew shear with the Pacers bucks sixer Zach with the thunder Matthew with the nicks Oliver with the trailblazers Ryan with the magic, you know what?  It's only like a it's a sell-o-pack break Just want to see who wins spots, right? This is 1920 so basically Alex Turner you have the gris and Matthew share you have the pelicans. There you go. I get all that on one thing 82 percent 81 percent It's pretty good. All right, so let's sort by column B That's right. John Samison. I got it. I was about to read off all these names for a sell-o-pack break Make it would make the reading of it would take longer than the actual break itself. That's just crazy Tom TWC means trade window closed Questlove as a food food show quest loves potluck. Oh, it's a special event Questlove probably doesn't need his own food network show Who's gonna get chopped here? All right, there's a no-name Kendrick nun Who's been playing some pretty good ball? Silver or a hollow Damari Carol? This will go to the heat Marissa with the Kendrick now This is his first optic card and Panini forgot his name on the front of the card poor Kendrick nun Probably has this in his house right now being like man guys forgot my name It's on the back though. All right, we've got the blue velocity here mo Bamba Lonzo and Luke canard all of those will ship to There you go. See that's it Let's Grab your names again New dice new list. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it top three names are in the basketball mixer Which is almost sold out seven left or seven seven on the dice roll seven times top three after seven one two three four five six and Seven after seven we've got Scott Matthew and Matthew then Matthew shear has certainly had the odds so congrats you two guys are in the mixer I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye


dedicated to the strength of the nation. Proudly, we hail. A very merry Christmas from Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen. This is C.P. McGregor welcoming you to Proudly, We Hail, United States Army and Air Force Presentation. And our story for Christmas, the Carol Vansary on the Hill, starring Mr. J. Carol Nash. Many have pondered it the miracle of the ages, and how they, Joseph and Mary, were directed to the humblest place imaginable, a simple manger in Judea. And it is of this time of generations we speak, this hour of simple majesty and splendor, this moment of the beginning of promise to mankind. I am Jan. I am the proprietor of a small Carol Vansary located on one of the low-lying hills in Bethlehem of Judea, the only one of the town. My place provided shelter for travelers through Bethlehem, but times were slow, the Carol Vans' few causing great irritation to my most exacting wife, Shayla. Fool, wasteful idler! Don't strike me, Shayla. Coward! What has happened to you? I do not know. You were not like this once. You were not born to this. Now, Shayla, it grieves me that you should suffer such concern. Words, words. Now off to town with you. There will be a proclamation from Rome delivered at noon. And if the rumors are true, you will be too busy for a time to find mischief. As you wish, Shayla. And you will take the milk goat, the fat one. You will return with the price of the market, not a coin less. Or there will be no bread. Yes, Shayla, yes. When did you town? It seemed that all in Bethlehem who could walk had gathered to hear the proclamation from Rome. Be it known to every man, woman and child assembled by order of Caesar Augustus, emperor of all Rome, a census will be reported of every person throughout the provinces for purposes of numbering and taxation.  So this was the rumor Shayla had spoken of. Become law. There would be travelers, many travelers to register for the census and the caravansery would be full. It boated well for me. With the caravansery full, Shayla was always more generous. We sold the fat milk goat and started back to home on Shayla. It was dusk turning dark. It began to rain, unusual for the season. As I walked through the town, the money jingled in my pocket. I passed a familiar house. I paused. I felt the coins. There I chanted. I started to go in. Where are you going, friend? I jumped back in surprise and then discussed for it was only Hester, beggar of the road. Wait, the dice-jad and not kind at this hour or any other. And who are you to give counsel? I am a man of feeling, jad. These are momentous hours. I have ears. I heard the proclamation. Not that. I speak of the coming of the new king to be born here in Bethlehem.  We must look to the sky in the east, jad, and watch for the stars. I think I should be getting along home. You're not going in? I think not. And here. These are for you. Thank you. You are very generous. Yes, well, mind you. No talk that I was here. No talk to get back to Shaila. It wasn't usual at all. After I had spoken with the beggar, I had no desire for the dice. No desire at all. And when I got home... Well, you're back. Yes, Shaila. And I have the money for the goat. All of it. No, not that. I was worried about you. You? You were worried for me? You were so late in returning. I... I did not mean to speak too unkindly this morning. Well... Well, now, Shaila, you had every right to speak to me as you did. I know, but... you see, jad, I was thinking today, we are not growing any younger, and we have spent so many quarrelsome hours. It is not right. And much of the fault is mine. Oh, now, come here to your husband, Shaila. Why, you have not kissed me like that, jad. In as long as I can remember.  I have heard of the proclamation, and we have hard work to get everything in readiness. We prepared for the host of travellers, but I did not forget the star, and each night I looked for it. Yet I was hardly prepared for an early traveller, an advanced emissary from Rome. He was a big man, and he spoke with such alarming authority.  You are the proprietor? Yes, sir. What will your wishes be? We will require lodging for his eminence the council Marcus Publius, who will supervise the census. We'll take over your caravan, sir. But most important, the council takes particular pride in his horse. The horse will require several measures of hay. It must be two parts alfalfa, one part hoat, the texture not to exceed the width of a narrow lace. I will gather it myself. There's a place several miles from here with precisely what you require. Very well. I will hold you personally responsible. And let me see a sample of it when you have it gathered. Shaila, Shaila, watch this ahead here in the yard. They're raising a whipping post. A whipping post? The emissary ordered it put up during the census. A reminder of the law. Come along, Shaila. I don't like that sound. I don't like it at all. Quick, Daddy wants you. What? What for do you think? How do I know? But don't keep him waiting. Here you are.  Must I shout my lungs out like a squandered? No, no, no, excellently. No, indeed. Where's the hay? The hay?  He arrived today. Have you forgotten it? No, not at all, excellently. I was just leaving to gather it. Well, mind that you do. And at once. Or I'll have you squared to the post in the yard and flogged. Such a forceful man. Well, I took the entire day to make the long trip for the hay. And believe me, I selected it almost strand by strand. Then by nightfall, when I returned with the hay, every nook and corner of the caravansery was filled. But still they came. Their pleas became annoying, exasperating, where they even stopped me in the yard. For one moment, sir, if I may. Well, what is it? What is it?  I am, and I assure you tonight, indeed, I wish I were not. You have many difficulties. Difficulties? Well, I must say, you were the first to recognize the fact. All these people shouting and pleading for a place to stay, drive you to your wit's end. It must be hard to turn them away. Well, that too. But why do they stop here when I tell them we are full? Surely there are other places to the south. They are weary. The night is very cold. Well, we are doing our best to take care of all.  My husband is looking for you now. We, too, seek a place for the night. Woman, there is not a cube bit of space left inside. The census takers from Rome have everything. Even my wife and I sleep out. Why stay here? Why not try further south? We have traveled 60 miles these three days. 60 miles? Well, that... Oh, no. You, on the back of a donkey, heat of day and cold of night, and a woman so heavy with child, what she had said and what I said made me look to the sky. And there it was, star of the east, in magnificent brilliance. I turn back to her. Blessed lady, there will be lodging for you. Wait here a moment. Wait here. I rushed back inside to the warmth and crowd of census takers. I sought out Shaila and whispered to her what had happened, but what to do? Eject the census taker from Rome? That would be trouble, but what to do? Shaila could not say, and then the way occurred to me. There in the babble of noise and the multitude, I prayed. Prayed as I had forgotten to pray, as I had never prayed before. Father in heaven, who blessed me with a small part in the magnificence of thy plans, give me guidance. I beseech thee. Show me the way that I may follow in thy will. Amen. I receive my answer. I receive my answer. What happened when I returned to them? You have a place for us. Yes, come with me. I have a place for you, and it is as it should be. I led them to the empty stable. I helped him clean it out. Then I gathered the sweet hay I had travelled so far to get that day and spread it on the floor. I got them food, the fine goat she Shaila had made. And when I left them, he shook my hand, and she, she smiled her gratefulness to me. I left them, and the next thing I knew, Shaila was running excitedly toward me. Where have you put them, Jad? The stable. Will they be safe there? They will be safe. But in the stable, Jad, they are comforted. They are where they should be, Shaila. I'm sure of it. But why do you shake so? I have to wait until tomorrow. But he shouts of a flogging. He wants it now. What will we do? I will tell him there is none. Jad, this is strange. Here I find myself asking you what to do. Tonight, Shaila, tonight marks the beginning of all things, all things for me and for all men. Surprise! The emissary is calling you. In a moment! Let us kneel, Shaila. Let us kneel to speak our prayer. Our prayer of gratefulness for this night. Christmas has served to center our thoughts on home. Today, the men of your army and your Air Force, in Europe, in the Arctic, in the far flung outposts of the Pacific, want you to know they are thinking of you.  Who among men can utter with more sincerity the age-old prayer for peace on earth, goodwill toward men? Thank you, J. Carol Nash, for a marvelous performance. Mr. Nash appeared to the courtesy of the Hollywood Coordinating Committee, which arranges the appearance of all motion picture stars on this program. Next week, we present Mr. Ralph Morgan in Touchdown. Until then, this is C.P. McGregor saying a Merry Christmas and Cheerio from Hollywood.


Welcome back. So glad that you found yourself back here for the nonprofit show. Have a little bit of a Southern draw coming out. If you're hearing that recently, I was in Nashville also made my way to South Carolina. So my, my roots are coming out. But again, thrilled to have you here at the nonprofit show. This is a very exciting week, Julia, because it is nonprofit power week and each and every single day this week, we have a fantastic thought leader and rock star from our friends and our partners over at Y PTC, your part-time controller. This is day four of the nonprofit power week. And the days are flying by each and every day. Each and every conversation has truly been back magnificent. So thrilled to jump into today's conversation. We have Alicia Eastbold joining us. Alicia is of course with your part-time controller and she's bringing to us a conversation all about nonprofit success as it relates to automation. So she's got lots of good nuggets to share with us today. Before we jump into conversation though, Alicia, we want to remind all of our viewers and our listeners. If we have not met you yet, we are thrilled you're here. Julia Patrick is of course here. CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. And we have her to thank for this platform. I get to play alongside each and every day. My name is Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven group, but really known as nonprofit nerd because I can nerd out over this stuff. Until you're blue in the face. I absolutely love it, but I have to tell you the Y PTC team is quite nerdy and that is a huge compliment because each and every one of you truly just have this like excellence within you. But you know, we are so grateful because we have now produced nearly 900 episodes, including these episodes here today for nonprofit Power Week. Could not do this if it weren't for our amazing partners. So a shout out of gratitude to all of our friends. Thank you to fundraising Academy at National University. Also to Blumerang of course to your part-time controller again with this dedicated nonprofit Power Week. Also thank you to nonprofit thought leader, American nonprofit Academy, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd as well as nonprofit tech talk. These companies day in and day out pour into you and your mission. Of course they're here for our episodes, but they're really here to help you elevate your mission no matter where you are in our country. So please do check them out.  If you're watching, I go ahead and grab your phone scan this QR code on the left of the screen and you can download our app. You can still find us on broadcast and podcast platforms. So pretty much anywhere you like to consume your entertainment. We are also right along there. So please find us. But without further ado, you've waited so patiently Alicia. Even into this week because you were on day four of nonprofit power week and you've seen your colleagues, you know, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday prior, but Alicia Eastbold again is joining us. She is an associate at your part-time controller. Welcome to you. It is so nice to be here. I love this group. I love this podcast. You guys are doing great work. I'm honored to get to share today. So thanks for having me. You know, you said something really magical in the green room chatter. And I'd love to revisit this because you talked about being on a team that allows you a lot of flexibility. And it seems to me that's led you to be a flexible thinker. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, I think what I love about where I work is that I work with people who are very collaborative. We share what we know and we're generous with what we know. And that's a real culture that YPTC has worked to develop. And as a result, we just become better experts at what we know. So whatever I share today, it's a lot of what I've learned both on the job, but a lot of it is just from people who were kind enough to say, here's something I've learned from my experience. And I'm really grateful for that because I think it makes me a better professional in a lot of what I do. And it's really unique, I think, to, to where what YPTC has created as a culture. So. Well, in that culture, as you mentioned, I know we mentioned it earlier this week, 30 years of business, which is a wonderful feat. I mean, really magical in and of itself. So 30 years for the business, but if you add up all of the team members, right, like centuries, it's just so much information. So it's really to have you with us, Alicia, to talk about automation. And as we kick this off right out of the gate, we're going straight to AI, artificial intelligence and automation and how that might be a win-win. Share with us what you're seeing when it comes to AI and automation for success. Sure. Well, I mean, I think there's the easy answer, which you probably already know, which is that we know that this can save time and it can save costs. And that's important when you're managing a nonprofit with limited resources.  Would I be assessing pretty accurately from what you hear? Yeah. I'm using it quite, quite a bit. I say it's my best assistant right now, but it is simply that it's an assistant. Yeah. And I know there's so much more to AI and I have, I'm barely scratching the surface. Yeah. And I mean, today I'd love to talk about not just AI, but also automation because both have some different options for what you can use it to do and maybe even clarifying what the difference between those are. But the truth is, like, if you were trying to automate a task a few years ago, it may not have been as easy or as affordable as it is now. And that's something that's changed. Like we're seeing things even changing in the last 12, 24 months of integrations and things. They're more affordable. They're a little bit easier to learn and use, I say a little bit because sometimes depending on what you're trying to do. And they play nicely with other tools. So that's another feature that we didn't have before. You can see it like if, if you're an accountant and you're using QuickBooks online, you can go in their app store and you can try to bloom ring, which I see in your background, Jared, or to our payroll providers. And it can sync up your data and tasks that you used to spend days doing sometimes you can now do in an hour or half a day with automation. But there's also AI. That's another thing that might be a little different than automation too. I think the automation is so great. I've seen win-wins across the board. You know, I play a lot in the development space. And so how does our donor database like bloom ring connect with a QuickBooks online or a Sage accounting system, you know, the accounting system so that the finance and the fundraising departments, which we've had your colleague, Deanna Peterson, join us to talk about, you know, how do we remove these silos and how do we bring in efficiencies and, you know, effective best practices to create these, I'm going to say bridges, you know, but it really is a lot of times that automation piece. Yeah. And I think one of the things that's worth considering when we talk about automation. And so we talk a lot about time and costs. Those are very measurable. But another thing is just the mental load that you no longer have to carry. Like we underestimate the amount of stress it takes to make sure something's accurate to prepare for it, to recover from it. And we all know those tasks. It's the ones that are the most painful to do. And we tell ourselves, there's got to be a better way. Those are the tasks that it's great to automate. And once you do it, when you lighten that load, you get to now use the information better, like you're saying, Jared, like you can use it to make decisions and actually help inform your business rather than we spend more time just trying to get the task done. We don't have any time left. We don't have any brain capacity left. Yeah. I think we, a lot of times we do these tasks. We don't really understand why we do them to accomplish the task. And then we don't have enough time or understanding to review the work that we've done, to really understand the implications and move it throughout, you know, move it through the organization. There's so much fear involved with this. Yeah.  If you could address this a little bit more for us as we navigate into this digital space with, with more intention from our nonprofit side. Is this wise? Is it safe? Is it secure? I mean, the truth is the technology is changing so fast. We're going through a really big shift and like the best thing I could think of is that the shift of when the combustible engine came online and the Model T Ford was now propelling people. And then pretty soon after we've got a lot faster cars and the horses in the buggies that we were using before, they worked and they, they stuck around for a while. But at some point you have to start making a shift because this is where the world's going. And when you look at things like AI and what it's doing, it is like a hyperspeed compared to the way that we are thinking now we have more computing power. We have more data and we have more algorithms to bring all this together. I mean, think of like, I was just giving that example of automation of how I could maybe have it do my record keeping in my accounting software. AI takes it up a next notch and says, analyze all that data. You know, for trends, give me five recommendations for how I can, how I can use that information. And at YPTC, we're working on building our own AI for that purpose because we know it's going to help us do our job more effectively. And there's more and more tools like this coming out all the time. I mean, even ones that will go and generate the email to your donors in the tone of you. It's just amazing. So when you go back to the safety, I think it's like trying to compare saying is, is riding a horse more safe than driving in a car? And answering depends. It really depends. Like I, I, I like to think of when I was a child of the 70s and 80s, my mom had me in like those unlatched car skits in the front, front row.  Yeah. We were lucky if we had a lap belt, right? Like that. Exactly. So I mean, we're, we're driving fast. Yeah. And so you got to slow, there is such a need. If you want to, we want to go that speed, you better first slow down and think about the safety sides of it because there are some real vulnerabilities that you can protect yourself from. And there's some best practices in how you do it. Well, Alicia, I feel like that takes us to, you know, really where you are going to dive deep is, you know, how do we find and choose the right tools for us? And you were sharing with us before we even open the digital doors today. There, there needs to be, you know, some due diligence in this space. Tell us about what do we need to do when it comes to choosing the right tools? Yeah. And first let's just talk safety. And then I can talk about just design and thinking, but when you get to the point when you're looking at it until you need to vet it, you need to make sure that it's a reputable organization. I mean, we've already seen like just because it's in an app store doesn't mean it's going to securely care for your data. And just because it's got five stars, you don't know who's giving those five stars. So checking, checking with other people in the industry, experts in the industry who are using these tools, that's, that's why I love to collaborate with my colleagues and talk about what they're using and what's working well. It really gives me a good track towards what I want to use. And then they should be having security certifications like the SOC2 and others to make sure that they are protecting your data. And if you're not sure, you might want to get somebody to come in and do like a cybersecurity evaluation, and they can look at your organization and help you think through if you are thinking about those things carefully, they can help you through that. But when it's time, I mean, so that's a security side, but I've got a few more things to say about like picking a tool. So I don't know if you want to, if you had to bring it on, we're ready for it. Yeah. We want to hear. So biggest thing, spend the time up front. You're going to spend it either way. This was a great thought from my colleague, Edwin Harvey, who's done so many tech implementations, which is you're going to spend this time either up front or at the end. If you choose to pick quick, you're going to spend a lot of time learning the tool as you go. And you may get to the end and have that same circumstance you talked about where you get to the end and you go, oh, man, this doesn't do what I wanted to do. This is so hard. It doesn't work. And that has to do with the questions that you probably didn't ask in the beginning. So we always ask when somebody comes to us for like a tech advice or tech implementation, we say, what do you need the tool to do? And then right on the heels of that, we say, do you even need to be doing this task? Because there's so many times we see people are automated. I got to automate it, but like, okay, but is this the kind of task we need? And because sometimes the best automation task. As Bill Schwab said, is to just not do it. So I think that's a great thing is, but if you start with what you need it to do, it'll steer you towards what kind of tool you want to build. And then comes that task of, all right. So now when you choose, you got to customize, you got to figure out how custom you want to get. So Alicia, how often should we be assessing, reassessing automation, you know, like integrations, all of our technology, that in and of itself, I realize is a load of question, but with the changes, cause I feel like even during our 30 minute broadcast, something's happening, something's changing, right? That we're unaware of. What are you like, how often should we put our finger on the pulse when it comes to all of these moving pieces? Yeah. I mean, you nailed it, that we can, you can find software tools that come out of the box and they can do a job for you right out of the gate, the Toyota Corollas, right? Like they're ready to go. They do the job. They're not going to be able to pass them, but you might look at them a year ago and it didn't do what you need it to do. And all of a sudden the new model comes out and it does everything you need it to do. And we've been finding this with QuickBooks advanced users. They are rolling out all of these spreadsheet sync features that are just blowing our mind as accountants with what you can do. And that didn't exist. It didn't, it didn't exist the way it's used now. So, so you have to kind of keep a pulse on it. And I think having a thought partner who is, is aware of those changes or having somebody on your staff who knows the technology and what's going is really helpful because it could change on a dime. And if that could change your automation task. Yeah, it's nice to know sooner than later because you might go build out something really expensive and customized. And then you find out six months later that a software does it. And the truth is when you build a custom product, which we do that too. That's specific to your organization. It works great, but software developers are constantly looking for ways that they can solve problems. Right. Right. Yeah. I think one of the things that's so fascinating with this discussion is you don't know what you don't know. And so a lot of times I think it's so easy to just fall back on, okay, this is the way we've always done it. Yeah. We have to work really hard and we have a lot to do and we're under pressure. And sometimes just opening your mind and going back to that flexible thinking and saying, okay, I'm going to invest and change in this digital format. And ultimately it might be a little hard up front, but ultimately it's going to be a better investment. How would you guide us to this? Because this is really an implementation, almost like theory and practice for people that oftentimes don't like change. Derek. Yeah, not liking change. It's, you, there has to be some level of openness to it because that beginning process, you have to be enough of a technical mindset and interest that you can see the value of automation. And I find if you have staff that aren't on board with that and you aren't steering your organization that way. Yes, you can keep limping along. You can keep doing your tasks the way you do. And you may not in the short run see the difference, probably the way people drive in the horse and buggy down the streets while the Model T Ford's going. At some point it will come to an inflection point. You can wait for that. And I think it depends on your organization and what you're trying to accomplish when you have a better sense of what technology can do, you're going to have a better sense of what you're missing out on and ways it could be helping you better. And if you can't do that, find somebody who can. Find a consultant or hire somebody in your staff to get up to speed on those things because.  But when you do know, when you embrace that sort of a mindset, it opens it up. And I think when you get some things in place, when you find out what experts are using, it makes it feel a little more like an on ramp to a freeway instead of, you know, we're going 60 miles an hour right away. That's not a great model. So, um, yeah, having people help you as a. It's whoever they are having someone kind of guide you as a really helpful way because they're going to know what questions to ask. They're going to be thinking about what your needs are. They're going to kind of see the whole playing field for your nonprofit organization of ways you can automate it. And they may be able to say, yeah, that tool exists or no, we need to build that till maybe we use something like power automate or something to do it for you.  I was going to say, I can't help but think, you know, 1.8 million nonprofits registered only the registered ones. No one, I believe, starts a nonprofit that says, you know, I really want to start this nonprofit because I can't wait to automate or I can't wait to create these systems, you know, like, I feel like that's an afterthought, you know, and really looking at even accounting. We talked about this with, you know, other YPTC colleagues this week is accounting for nonprofits is different. Different. Perhaps automation for nonprofits has a little uniqueness as well. And so looking at this from, you know, again, no one starts a nonprofit with the excitement to get to that automation stage because that's not their, probably not their passion, you know, and so looking at this, I just love YPTC as a dedicated nonprofit accounting, you know, company has so much knowledge when it comes to automation comes to the NICRA comes to so many different opportunities. I'm just blown away, Julia, because, you know, as we're having this conversation with Alicia, I'm really just seeing why PTC is almost the answer to everything. That's kind of what I'm. Wow, that's a heavy lift. But you know, I think the thing of it is we have said, and you and I have said this privately, we've said this on the nonprofit show, but that whole no money, no mission really is is a central theme to how successful you can be. No matter what your mission vision and values are. And so you can get this component in place, automation, AI, understanding how you can be more efficient. I think it's really that magical key that unlocks potential. I mean, just to hear Alicia that Blumerang has an interface with QuickBooks is stunning, because Blumerang is a really forward thinking company in the digital space. And so it's fascinating. And I think if you could look for those types of alignments as you're going on this journey, that in itself is going to paint a picture, I would think would be a big help because it's such a new way for us, especially in the nonprofit sector to be thinking about. I mean, when we started the nonprofit show, people didn't have zoom accounts. Yeah, they were freaked out about zoom. I mean, really, right, Jared? Oh yeah. And now, you know, board meetings are pretty much predominantly zoom or a hybrid of that. Yeah. The technology advancements in our sector has been exponential since 2020. You know, I've seen it at conferences. I've really seen this tech forward, but really like just a huge advancement when it comes to technology in our sector. Yeah. And you know, it's so tied to people. It affects people. It affects our mission. And I keep thinking when, when you keep it connected to people, it'll help you make better decisions. Like if the technology can help you serve your constituents better, it's always helpful. And I think we jump into technology. Like if you're not a technology person, I see people jump in, their organization starts growing. They realize there's data everywhere. And now we need to think through, oh, I could be doing something with this. I need to be tracking my donors. I need to be tracking my account. I need to track my grant of success. And I need to have metrics for things, all of that. And you just naturally see, I could do this manually. And I'll probably have errors, the quality of my work. I'm seeing it. One of my forecast sheets, I just looked at it yesterday, had 900 formulas on it. 900. If this is a very basic monthly forecast, 900 formulas so much can go wrong. And you spend all your time checking it, right? So you see the time that we spend doing that. And you could see automation could change that. And yeah, we're seeing it white BTC. We're as much focused on tech as accounting. It just flows right together because it touches so much of what we do in the nonprofit world. And it intersects a lot with our finances. So in our storytelling, how we visualize this data that's coming at lightning speed. Yeah. One of my favorite departments is the data vis team. Truly, I'm just a group. I really do a mesmerized by, because finding it's like counting, it's not my jam. Like that plays eyes over quicker than anything. And so really having, I'm very visual. So seeing the visual element, you know, like the, the data vis team can help to provide. It tells the story and it tells the story in particular to me, that the numbers, like just the numbers. I don't read numbers very well. Well, context now. And I think it's, I need to see it simply. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, to go back to your point, the 900 formulas, you know, which one of those is the most important? And how are we going to use that to make our decisions that impact so many people and impacts trajectory of our service. To our communities, to our teams, to our clients. It's really a daunting thing. So this has been a fabulous conversation. Alicia, I think that you've taken a lot of fear out of it. You've given us a lot of really tangible paths that we can take when looking at this, you know, the intersection of AI and how we really need to be automating the processes that we are required by law to do. In many cases that we have to do in order to run our businesses. And so this has really been fun. Check out Alicia associate at your part time controller. You can go to yptc.com. Alicia on the website. There's a fabulous story about you and your family and work in Africa. Yeah. Really an amazing story. And if you have the opportunity to find out more about some of the members at YPTC, make sure you stop and what read that piece or some really cool images. And it's it humanizes your work and your commitment to our sector. And so check that out. Alicia, you've been a wonder to have on again. We mentioned YPTC.com. They're uploading all of these episodes. You know, you can find them on our portals as well, but you can also find them on YPTC.com. This is all free. You don't have to be one of their clients. And there's just tons and tons of information. They produced many of their own, much of their own content. And so you can learn even more about what they do and what they think and how they are approaching this new dawn with nonprofit financial management. And so that's it. Thank you. Thank you. This has been a really super cool week because we have all these different voices talking about different things. And yet they all relate to get together. It's been fun. They're all women. Look at this. Fierce team. I've just really enjoyed it yesterday with Susan was a wonderful conversation as we dove deep into foundations. And so as we wrap up this week, you know, Alicia, wonderful conversation about automation. We're going to be our dedicated ask and answer each and every week. We do that. And so nonprofit power weeks, they're unique. They're special because we don't do them often. We save, you know, just a select few weeks throughout the year to provide this deep dive. It's essentially our shark week, if you will, but it's so much fun. And again, just thrilled to have YPTC with us this week, each and every day. And yes, the YPTC.com. It already has this week's conversations with these leaders that you see here on the screen uploaded. So fantastic week. I'm kind of sad for tomorrow to be Friday and wrapping up the week. It's gone by fast. Hey, I want to give a quick shout out to Geraldine Dressler, whose picture is not on here, but she's the person that I work with in order, in order to put these episodes together. We have spent a lot of time together talking about what we think are good topics, what we think everybody is, is chomping at the bit to discuss or to learn about. And she has the pulse on the finger of all of the YPTC family across the nation. And so I would be remiss if I didn't, you know, thank her as well as thanking our sponsors. And they include Fundraising Academy at National University, Bloomerang, Your Part Time Controller, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out. Hey, Jarrett, do you want to sign us off, sister? Absolutely. It's been wonderful. Again, thanks for all of you that have joined us.  This is your first time with us. We are so glad that you're here and we hope to see you back here again. We sign off every episode with this mantra and it hasn't changed for nearly 900 episodes, but we want to remind all of you to please stay well so you can do well.


The idea that you could enumerate all the different flows on the free and open Internet of technical data related to guns Not just enumerate them, but somehow license and control these flows is a hallucination What does Cody Wilson founder of Defense distributed the company responsible for the world's first 3d printed gun? Really want and how close is he to achieving it? That's the subject of filmmaker Jessica Solche's new feature documentary death athletic a dissident architecture Solche followed Wilson for seven years as he grew the world's most famous DIY gun company Prevented multiple lawsuits from shutting it down Faced his own personal legal troubles around a sex case and established himself as the leading voice and practitioner of crypto-anarchism Wilson was also a character in Solche's first documentary no control which came out in 2015 I was deeply interested in all things techno politics at that time and My proximity to his work made me want to continue telling his story but specifically I wanted to create a documentary that wasn't going to be a two-minute piece I wanted to explore the mischief. I wanted to explore the motivations the ideals The ethics and morals which is something that nobody had really tapped into and see See where the film would go but not Not really knowing how long that would take. I mean unconsciously I knew that this was gonna be a long journey But I don't think anyone consciously sets them up for such a long journey because that's a difficult pill to swallow but I wanted to create something that was You could say a historical Moment captured That's so that was that was turned into an obsession of watching the story unravel You mentioned the mischief That's really one of the defining characteristics of Cody's persona. He's a mischievous Prankster he described it himself in an interview that you conducted with him Alongside alongside a Benjamin Denio the co-founder of defense distributed knew of each other during undergrad I think but we didn't start to collaborate until we became Facebook friends and That was a process of basically engaging in the back-and-forth shit posting with a bunch of lip frogs New World Order Liberals right like yeah That's right, that's exactly bonded over trolling well, and we're still bonding today We're just trolling bigger targets now bigger marks, huh? so What is the role of trolling for Cody Wilson in achieving his political objectives? Oh interesting trolling Perhaps at the beginning of his career and we could say was more I think a literal troll filled with mischief and Uncertainty of where things would go but that same kind of aspiration and inspiration he says turned into trolling bigger marks, right and Learning the power of the symbolic turning that into something that was real that was you know in the court system that had very strong abilities to kind of change change not only law but change the the principles of how things were going to be Described and organized as First Amendment and Second Amendment issues of code. Yeah trolling is I think is is Still a strong. I don't know how to say this but um a strong part of what Cody does But he doesn't do it Effortlessly or without forethought or without knowing where he's going with it there. There is there is There's meat behind what he's doing. There's one part where he talks about himself in Silicon Valley terms as a disruptor People want to talk about disruption all the time. We're disrupting industry Well, look, here's a big target and no one's trying to hop that razor wire fence over there in Virginia No one's trying to get at the MIC Well, look, we're here as basically ideological enemies I'm trying to at least be able to say I fought it, you know I fought as hard as I could and I made them earn it You know and I made them stand there and say no we control the internet we control you He rose to fame as like the 3d printed gun guy But this clearly is not just about making guns because guns are fun and cool or for hunting or even just self-defense What is your larger understanding of Cody's objectives? It's techno politics in action, which most people don't understand or report on it's really forcing processes of democratic solutions on two Stages where most people have huge debates and issues. So specifically the gun It's releasing it on the internet Once it's there as we all know it can't be taken off It's kind of like the democratic distribution of information and from there the statement becomes one of not just anarchy, but of Who gets to control so it's a demonstration of The inability of governments in this digital age to actually have Utility and their idea of controlling and surveilling Everything we see this in all digital technologies from computer to Bitcoin To anything on anything in the crypto space. I think techno politics is also the idea that Technology is outpacing politics there is Technology that can be critical it forces politics that are kind of aged and Ancient and not caught up in this time frame of the digital world to catch up and in doing so it shows It's face of control and the desire of surveillance. There's another part of the documentary that Reminds me of what you're talking about right now where Cody talks about the gun as a Way to express your political will as a sort of an alternative way to vote Guns are so important because politics is still important Yeah, what I'm saying there is a not that other people's different politics are important But the fact that like politics as an idea is still important And guns are a certain admission of the reality of the political The threat of the use of violence that's power. It's political power If you can download this and use this your vote means a little bit more or Indeed you have a different kind of vote what I've probably come to realize Far more is that the threat of guns is actually more quote-unquote dangerous to governments than maybe specifically in the United States then The actual having of them because they're they're everywhere in the US the fact that we have these like oh like these debates and conversations of like just taking little parts off of guns and everything when there's like Hundreds of millions and lots of people know how to make these little pieces that they're trying to you know outlaw so I Think definitely what changed over these last ten years regarding the politics of guns was how ineffective they actually are and how they don't really reflect a large majority of the people they're trying to Govern if you will yeah, and I know that behind the defense distributed headquarters They've got a little gravestone that has uncontrolled emblazoned on it. So that's their idea is gun control is dead We killed it in America, you know guns are so tied to American political culture, but of course They have use out their political use outside of our borders And you had a whole segment that was devoted to that idea like the freedom fighters We are we thought to ourselves. You know what we're gonna do it We're gonna try to take up the mantle the whole idea of Our world is to enable the everyday common man around the world wherever he may be to produce entire firearms the shift from symbolic to practical You reach a point in Being pro-gun where you stop caring about the second amendment you realize that being armed as a human right Every part in the assembly can be purchased in Europe or can be ordered from China almost as easy It's not easier than I hear furniture People are building FTC Nets in Brazil in New Zealand in Australia everywhere and they posted pictures and videos there and People are sharing their ideas and gun control is fucking dead a lot of things Cody was doing at the beginning where You know performance art in a way Those are my words, right? They were symbolic. They were They were to really ride like get people riled up and understand that we were Entering a new era of like digital performance if you will and at that point there was a lot of other creators engineers makers that started putting their creations online in a far more visible fashion and Even though it's still a pretty niche Environment it definitely has exploded with different groups and different kind of like known figures and YouTube channels and we'll see how long those channels stay up so Cody Wilson Launched this movement with his mixture of showmanship Trolling his legal knowledge. It's clear to me both from the film and my conversations with him that Getting jumping into these legal fights are kind of what gets him up in the morning and gets him going And these legal cases reach far beyond guns. There's a part where his attorney Alan Gura Talks about what a ruling against defense distributed would really mean the government at a really hard time explaining the most basic Issue here in the case. How do people create information and release it to the public? They like to say sometimes sometimes not that if the information is already in the library It's in the public domain. You can then use that information But how does the information once a person creates it get into the library for that? They have really no consistent answer. Of course our concern is that this covers much more than guns it can cover just about anything and There's the case happens to be about guns Maybe guns is what got the government interested in the first place But the concepts that the government is trying to establish here will allow them to censor just about any speech Really, it's any topic one of the most interesting parts of this documentary Which I think will be new to most audiences because they still think guns were being distributed was the fact that this is a discussion about the ability and the legality of distributing Self-made code. It is an issue of the first amendment in the middle of You're making this documentary Cody was busted for sex with an underage girl. He met on an adults only app What was that experience like from a documentary director's perspective? It was it was very rough and trying It's a strange moment when you Work with and are allowed into someone's life for such an extensive period of time And you're building trust and something horrible happens And you have to figure out where you yourself stand What information that you can gather and also needing to do your job and get things on film and Trying to figure out Specifically for me because I'm always creating in the terms of I'm not putting myself Onto this film. It's not about my opinions. It's about really trying to capture as Undultrated a moment as possible. So not feeling like a vulture and That was a very intense. It was a very intense moment What was your point of view on it if? Cody had been and this is in the film so people in the audience I won't go into too much description if Cody had been searching out specifically a minor Cody will be in jail right now period And Because of a lot of information that was brought up during During the trial everyone does their own investigations. It was obvious that there were lies and You can have as a person Issues with prostitution you can have issues with the idea of sugar babies. You can have issues with You know extreme differences of ages, etc. But if the intent was not to you know Search out a minor and it was proved Then you know at one point People have to take responsibility of what is happening and I I personally and definitely believe that if The situation was different and if the young lady did not have such an extensive history They would have pushed harder but Also her identity would have probably come out so There was a lot of other factors This was not I think a clean and cut case that maybe the government or officials were hoping for That it would have been far more The victim would have been far more victimized if you will I noticed there are several points in the movie where Cody talks about the mental and physical toll that constantly battling the government has taken I'm gonna be screwed up because of the highs and lows I'll spend every dollar that I have suing the fuck out of them They want to put me in my place they want me to know where the boundaries are and they want me to know that They set the rules as somebody who spent a lot of time with him What do you think motivates him on a personal level to take on that kind of burden? I mean, I think that's just part of who he is I think he loves a challenge and at that point what you're seeing what we just saw in 2015 The ghost gunner had come out. He's tasting the first moments of like his payment services dropping him of Losing money. He's getting legal issues credit cards Banks like it's coming at him at all angles, right? But there's definitely a part of him that although the challenge is Hyper-destructive to your, you know courtesal levels at minimum, right? He loves it at the same time. I think people that live this kind of like life of like really Challenging any kind of government or control or building new things they have to I think they have to actually like it He talks about this doomed historical figure James Fannin Fannin 32 when he died shot in the face. He asked for three things. So says Wikipedia, but also Lone Star I read it in Lone Star he asked That is the facts be sent back home That he'd be given a Christian burial and that he'd not be shot in the face, right?  He went down to ignominy or something. He's not considered a hero. He didn't But he wanted to be one You know, that's a pretty hair-raising bit to me because it makes me seriously wonder Does Cody want to be a martyr? What do you think? Originally when I used to talk to him in 23 to 25, he would say no, but I do absolutely think he wants to be remembered But he doesn't want to be a martyr. He wants to be the winner So very two very very different things But I think at that moment in that film, he's definitely in a place where He realizes that all his work might end up being just him being scalped If you will and Cody is very good because he understands to him I think something that's hyper motivational is the symbol is the idea is the the Connection and correlation to like important parts of the past and you see that in his, you know, his symbols that he uses, etc But no, I don't think he wants to be a martyr. I think he wants to be the winner at the end of the day and a bit of a historical figure That brings me to my last question. I've interviewed Cody several times and it's always Fascinating, but he can come across as fairly enigmatic. He sometimes speaks in Riddles or highly theoretical terms. You spent so much time with him. You met his parents What are your impressions of him as a real person that are maybe different from his persona and What aspects of that personality do you think have driven defense distributed and this larger project forward? He is that person Cody is constantly reading and absorbing He's he's thinking in terms of philosophy and history. It is his jam This is his motivation. He loves all these parallels that can be created in today's society versus Past, you know past fights past wars past Ideas so Cody I think actually correctly represents himself when he speaks in these like high-philosophical terms This is completely his internal motivations There's always something theatrical when a film or a camera is involved, but this comes from a very personal and centered place for him and why do you think that That type of personality has been able to drive this project forward so successfully, he's also extremely charismatic and Doesn't shy away from a challenge. So you have to be Anyone creating something in a space not only has to be smart that definitely helps But they have to understand the game and then they have to understand that to play it They have to both be entertaining and Quote-unquote correct correct in the form of your motivations and Possibly knowing the law which he does right so the majority of things are instigations to the law And that's why he keeps being in the main frame. It's because it's constantly being on top of what is happening in the moment like Gat GPT and also Skidding across everything that's in between legal and non-legal, right? So he's he understands the terms of how to get a message into the mainstream and This is all very Centered to who he is as a person. So I think that's why it's so successful And to have anyone follow you especially from the beginning or not even just follow but work with you or get behind these like kind of Intense and possibly very dangerous principles that could get you in trouble you have to have a level of I Guess charismatic integrity and one thing you can dislike Cody, but from the very beginning He has not changed the principles that have motivated him And that is what I hope the film also captures but in far more in-depth than what anyone else has seen I think it has captured that it's a compelling documentary about a fascinating political figure the movies death athletic It's available for purchase now at deathathletic.com and on Google Amazon iTunes on October 21st. Jessica Solcher. Thank you for talking to reason. Thank you for having me Zach


tlo wasp We are on kick k i c k dot com We are not live, but you can leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification bells Man, let's continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK If we do go live on kick and you happen to miss it on kick This is where the highlights will be this channel right here Also We got merch. I am wearing it if you did order merch is being sent out soon or it's already sent out So salute to y'all for purchasing. I appreciate it and don't forget. We do got the patreon Right after this video on the uploads. I'm gonna be uploading on patreon today as well man That's where we watch things. We can't watch on YouTube The link to all of that is down below in the description. It's a link down there called link tree click it Boom. This is the British fugitive who evaded police for seven years. No, let's get into it Like did he evade them in Britain in the UK? When a crime takes place Not everyone involved always has the stomach to face the justice system Some suspects flee the country becoming internationally wanted fugitives living secret lives in remote hideouts all across the planet This was the case for young secret low key. That's how I want my setup to be soon W said, I mean this for something else But mine would have kick like up here And all my reaction times in remote hideouts all across the planet This was the case for young David ungee a Liverpool resident who stood accused of partisan gotta be a scouser Salute to all my fellow Scousers painting in the murder of 18 year old Vincent Waddington He evaded police capture for seven whole years and his recent trial has become the talk of the town in all of Liverpool Stick around to find out the jury's verdict. It might not be what you think You're watching OCG TV Liverpool as a city is sadly no stranger to periods of intense violent crime in the mid 20th century The bustling docks served as the perfect avenue for the import of illegal narcotics Liverpool gained a reputation for being a central transport hub for the drug trade and Even earned the nickname smack city Similar to how the Amsterdam Rotterdam and Antwerp docks are used by organized crime syndicates to transport contraband Where there's smoke, there's fire in this case illegal drugs are the smoke and violence is the fire The city became racked by turbulent gang disputes OCG TV, this is a well put together little documentary Okay, let me go ahead sub up. Let me hit the like button. I like what's going on Got W editing. I've probably edited it myself. I'm one of the best on the platform So the cargo and territory to Liverpool's credit the city undertook a massive Decriminalization project in the 90s and today the city's crime rate is equal to the national average markedly low for an urban center One of the infamous crimes that shook the nation involved someone heavily linked to the killing of Vincent Waddington David Unge's father David Unge senior David Unge senior has been involved in a dispute with local hitman Johnny Phillips The two arranged a bare knuckles fight to settle the argument which Unge won But Phillips claimed Unge cheated From that day forward Unge had to watch over his shoulder for signs of hitmen At the age of 36 when his son was only around three Unge was shot and killed while driving on Dingle Street Organized crime was so rampant. There's so many. How would you have cheated in a bare knuckle fight like that? Wow Worried his enemies could strike within the emergency room. He'd been taken to The murder sparked massive rounds of protest in Liverpool drawing crowds of 600 people who the riot police had to control After two months of violence the anger finally subsided Nobody knows for sure who was behind the killing and the culprit is still presumably at large today This was the world David Unge junior was born into one of violence death and crime The people he grew up around and came to be friend were born into this same community of crime On the evening of the 14th of July 2015 Unge was according to prosecutors Riding along in a car with two friends on Bank's Lame in Gaston a district of Liverpool One was Ryan Bate a convicted heroin dealer and car thief The other Luke Kendrick had racked up a long list of offensives on his criminal record Dating back to when he was just 12 years old He'd just been released from prison after serving a sentence for a case of racially aggravated assault By all accounts Kendrick was a known problem to the police his mouth often got him into More trouble than he bargained for Kendrick was the driver of the vehicle an Audi a3 at around 845 p.m He struck a motorcycle carrying two people the passenger 18-year-old Vincent Waddington hit the ground When he stood back up one of the three young men took out a 12 gauge shotgun and fired a slug straight into Waddington's chest The teenager reeled from the shot Managed to walk a few paces away then collapsed to the ground They hit him off the bike He got up he was cool It makes maybe because he had out they had all them weapons in the car and things of that nature Then when I had to deal with no police that was dumb now round and died 21-year-old Francis Humphreys the driver of the motorcycle was injured but survived Parts of the motorcycle had gotten tangled around the car's wheels So bait Kendrick and Ongie allegedly fled the scene on foot The incident shocked the residents of Liverpool and many feared that another wave of brutal organized crime Could be looming just over the horizon police found Kendrick and bait soon after the murder They were both found guilty and sentenced to life sentences in prison Ongie on the other hand remained at large The 24-year-old was put at the top of the UK police's most wanted fugitives No one could find him for seven years. It was as if David Ongie had vanished into thin air The May 2022 a young British man signed up for a gym in the Costa del Sol a famous holiday Destination located on the southern Spanish Mediterranean coast Exactly anything out of the ordinary British men often flocked to Spain for their spring or summer holidays And this was far from uncommon to see some take up permanent residence in the sunny region What did stand out was that this young gym goer had the exact appearance and name of a British fugitive Wanted for the murder of 18-year-old Vincent Warrington When police discovered his location, they immediately dispatched agents to arrest Ongie and raid his residence After seven long years of hell Warrington's family would finally know the truth of what happened to Vincent and could see appropriate justice met out During his stay in Spain. Ongie had been living a secretive life in coin a town Malaga he shared an apartment with three other compatriots When the police uncovered his possessions, they found 33 pounds of cocaine 42 pounds of hashish and a small quantity of cannabis Did they just say 32 pounds of? They're like 32 legitimate pound like one two three four or 32 pounds like 32 dollars worth Most notably agents also found an unlicensed loaded gun Stashed in Ongie's shoulder bag, which he took with him every time he left his residence according to the investigators Ongie might have believed someone other than the police was out to get him So he carried a loaded firearm on his person at all times in He's seen he did act in self-defense The police know 32 pounds. Okay. Wow He was in Spain getting it done He's began the extradition process to return Ongie to the UK so it could stand trial for his involvement in the murder of Vincent Warrington There was a concern for a time that the 31-year-old would have to serve jail time in Spain before standing trial in the UK and Ongie even tried to contest the extradition outright, but Spanish authorities found no legitimate reason not to send the man back home On the 7th of September 2022 Ongie was flown to the UK and awaited his trial before a jury for his involvement in the murder of Vincent Warrington To make matters worse the prosecution also bought charges against him for his participation in the Liverpool drug ring Considering video footage of his friend Luke Kendrick bragging about the killing had been shown to the courts and Dozens of pounds of illegal narcotics were found in his apartment Ongie's future didn't look particularly bright You're going to tell buddy David Ongie stood accused of partaking in the murder of Warrington The prosecution believed Ongie played an active role in the killing but didn't truthfully know which of the three young men shot the victim Somewhat related to the murder was the case of Vincent Warrington's senior the victim's father who faced charges of conspiring to run 160,000 pound drug operation in Liverpool when questioned Vincent Warrington's senior claimed that he was only in contact with the known criminals In order to gain information on the whereabouts of his son's killers he broke down in tears and said After the 14th of July the only thing I care about apart from my family is catching the people who'd done what they'd done to my son The jury wasn't convinced they found Warrington guilty but the testimony confirms that emotions were still incredibly high Even seven years after the murder coupled with newspaper headlines calling Ongie the baby faced assassin It appeared the 31 year old would be fighting an uphill battle to prove his innocence Ongie's defense before the jury was very straightforward He claimed that he was never actually in the car that struck Vincent Warrington and Francis Humphrey's motorcycle in the first place Ongie said that he was at the gym at the time So he couldn't have been involved with the murder An eyewitness of the event described a six foot man with a slim build exiting the back seats of the car Ongie struck back at the witnesses questioning how it possibly could have been him Given that he's only five foot four inches tall Right Six foot five foot four are not the same. They do not look the same From far up close and nothing the prosecution wouldn't give up so easily however They hit back and said the investigators Discovered traces of Ongie's DNA on the water bottle in the rear passenger side of Kendrick's abandoned car To onlookers this might have been the evidence which finally saw Ongie put away for good The defense claimed that his friend Ryan Bates must have picked up Ongie's bottle and placed it in the car On the 19th of May 2023 the jury's decision was heard before the court To most people's shock the jury comprised of five women and seven men Declared David Ongie not guilty after that's not shocking. Honestly from what I just heard It ain't shot five foot four and six foot one. All you got to do is bring up reasonable doubt That in my mind that created doubt five foot four and six foot like that's not the same I'm six two So I know what a five foot four person is nowhere near my head like I'm almost a foot taller than a five foot The over 16 hours of deliberation Ongie and his family were naturally relieved Though the young man claims the treatment he received by the press was unwarranted And that he was treated as if he'd already been found guilty before even arriving home It's not all sunshine and roses for Ongie. However He must still continue serving his six years sentence in spain for a legal possession of narcotics and an unregistered firearm still A six better than life just and in prison is far preferable to a life sentence We might never know who exactly pulled the trigger and killed vincent wallington Or we do know however Is it in the eyes of the law? David Ongie was not the one who did it His story shows how the emotional impact of a murder can run deep within a community seven years after the fact The victim's family was still more than ready to see justice meet it out The uk judicial system found David Ongie not guilty. What do you think? Do you believe his account of the events? Why do you think he left the uk for spain? The only reason that I would think of any suspicion is because he left the uk for spain But maybe he just was spooked and he didn't want to be a part of it. I don't know because they was looking for I don't know but six foot and five foot four two different things and See y'all don't leave a like comment subscribe turn on the post. Let me know what you think man. I'm gone