Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video today We're going to talk about making your own custom iconography and simple freehand. We're here today in my D&D room This is my D&D table below you. These are some of the books, but we're here because This is whiteboard and we're going to use that today when we talk about creating your own custom symbols and icons for your armies The strict techno-mancer that is Vinci V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vinci V Now one of the great things about wargaming is that when you get these little plastic toys This is your world. You're the creator. You can do whatever you want paint them. However, you want make them your imagination brought to life and Certainly we can do our painting in the style of what it says in the box And if we buy a space marine, we can make it a blood angel or a dark angel or Some other kind of angel because I guess that's what they all are You can use an existing thing or you can make your own If you've got those space brains, maybe you create your own chapter or Legion or what's the name of a group of them? Oh, yeah a gaggle. You can create your own gaggle of space brains That's the right word And when you're creating that new army that new symbol you want to make something that's cool and fun, but yet It's really easily replicable because let's be honest if you're going to put that logo on 50 different space marine shoulder pads or 40 different storm cast shields or whatever whatever the Whatever the army you happen to be painting is you want it to be something that you can replicate over and over again So today I'm going to take you on my journey and how I created the custom symbol for my new rat cast army And how I hope that can help you and then I'll actually show you how I painted it And how you can break down these simple freehands into something very repeatable. So Let's get into it Our journey begins by looking into the past now You could certainly sit down and just try to sketch things out a whole cloth Imagine some symbols into life. Maybe you're that creative. I'm really not So I began my journey with the old Skaven heraldry book. I Looked to that book is that all the different plans and the different markings and iconography and banners that all of them used It's a really cool book. I love it It's a great resource and I looked through that and found the symbols that I thought would be a neat part of a hybrid for My rat cast which are redeemed Skaven, you know brought back by Sigmar as stormcast Now they're good guys now. So it can't look too Skaveny, but I had to find somewhere to start Then I looked through all of the storm cast symbols and sadly, there's actually not as many here unlike the The space Marines they're sort of 40k equivalent. There isn't a huge number of different symbols So I looked and looked and found a couple that were interesting So now the next part is let's see if we can create something and slam them together My first thought was well, let's take an anvil which is kind of a classic storm cast thing And just put the Skaven logo over top of it makes sense, right this Skaven on the anvil So I kind of drew that out. I said, okay, let's take the basic anvil shape That you see on the storm cast Something like that. Let's just put the Skaven logo over top of it But when I looked at that, I didn't love it. It seemed hard to repeat It seemed like there wasn't enough shape there There wasn't enough to really grab on to to think like well, what color am I gonna make this? How is this part gonna stand out from this? It just didn't pop it up. It didn't feel right So, okay, well lightning bolts those are a storm cast thing, right and Skaven traditionally would use the sort of Diamond pattern so they have like this diamond pattern shape. I Thought maybe we can do like some lightning bolts Coming down here. I was like no that just looks like a goofy alien head. That doesn't work. That's that's a non-starter That's not gonna apply So I kept thinking about it and I tried other little ones like well Maybe we can take the larger Skaven pattern, which is like this sort of diamond right here That comes down. Sorry it comes down like that and Has a little like that maybe we can kind of Now that still feels too Skaven-y. There's not enough storm cast in that, right? And then finally I found the symbol for the old storm cast shield And the old storm cast shield was effectively was these sorts on the circle shields and it was effectively a big circle with a little moon over top of it kind of thing like that and then it had this little lightning bolt thing coming down and Little lightning bolts out the side. So this is on like the Prosecutor shields with javelins or whatever and I thought now we've got something because if we put this and this together Now we could have something right because if I combine these two Well, then let's replace the lighting bolt with this down arrow That's part of the Skaven thing. Let's replace these little lightning bolts with maybe like Skaven triangles And then let's fill out this little moon To make it longer and more angular and now We've got a symbol All right, and what I can do is I can you know fill that in and shade it out and make it look like a cool circley thing So it looks like a little globe Thicken that up we can shade all of these and so on and so forth and it'll look cool All right, so after all this experimentation I found a drawing I like and finding a drawing you like is good Sketching on something big if you've got a big whiteboard like this is great But you don't have to do this you can just do this on a piece of paper as a point of fact Here's my little piece of paper that I've sketched all my things on now that you can read that but The idea here was test a lot of things out get a lot of ideas wrong There's no bad ideas here in brainstorming and once you find something that looks good Then with a pencil or a pen draw it smaller and smaller and smaller on a piece of paper until you draw it in the proper scale for Your iconography be that a shoulder pad a shield whatever so now that we've got it and we've got it broken down Let's talk about how we actually paint it on a model. So for that we're going to go over the painting desk. See there The first step to painting any simple freehand is to break it down into the simplest constituent shapes you can In this case my symbol is based on a cross. There's a circle up top There's a line that extends out of the bottom. I can base the whole thing on a cross So I just do a little cross and then around that I build the circle It's a lot easier to freehand a circle when you're just drawing the quarter sides in Then when you're trying to freehand the whole thing all the way around and spoiler alert I still don't get it perfect, but that's fine the next thing to keep in mind As you can see how when I sketch my initial lines look how light they are. I'm just barely touching the brush To the shield now. I know that makes it wonderful. You can barely see what I'm doing. I apologize There's just kind of no better way. I'm drawing super light lines But that's just it you want to draw these very light lines put very little paint down because then it's easy to adjust If you need to go back over it if you need to use some of your original color to cover up the mistake You can do so quite quickly and easily Once I have that basic shape of the circle and the cross sketched out, then I just fill it all in The next thing I do is I just reinforce the various shapes So I need to fill everything out the little tiny things like the little triangles again. I break them down I don't try to draw a whole triangle. I draw two lines to create the angle of the triangle And then I just draw the little line at the bottom or fill them in For the half moon at the top same thing thin light touch line making sure to keep my brush on The surface for as long as I can now It's kind of difficult because of the angle of this thing But try not to lift your brush constantly you want to aim for a smooth Light application and then notice how to build out the volume I just slowly push the edge up See how I traced and pushed up a little and pushed up a little more and pushed up a little more Until I had it to the size I want by building up freehand slowly like that You should you run a much lower chance of messing something permanently up The next thing I do here is Outline all of this now part of that for me is because this is going to end up being in a sort of non-metallic Steel you'll see how I paint all that as we go But I really wanted to I always try to do a nice outline around it because it just makes it easier for your Eye to recognize what's going on you can cover some of the outline later as you paint But getting a simple thin outline on there doesn't need to be perfect It creates the borders of your freehand in a way your eye can recognize The same way the miniature itself has its borders Now when I'm doing these kinds of freehand symbols I always like them to have some kind of depth to them a lot of the symbols you get in Transfers and stuff like that are sort of these Monocolor flat things and there's there's nothing wrong with that like I could have stopped with just the outline and the symbol Would have been perfectly fine There's gonna be multiple points here in this journey where you can jump off for your own army depending on the amount of effort You want to put into it But for me I like to have this kind of variation Now a quick point if you're gonna do this sort of thing where you create variation in the freehand The lighting of whatever you do in your freehand should match the lighting of your Existing shape so you see how I have the light at the sort of top It's called top right part of the shield sort of there The lighting on the freehand should match that even though there's nothing that needs to be the case about that That is to say You know as a point of fact the shield could have been held upside down and then it might have been lit in a certain way But the reason you want to do that is because if you're going to add contrast to the freehand It needs to feel like it's in the same world as the shield Like it's in the same lighting conditions and being exposed to the same light and shadow As far as colors go I'm using for this by the way I didn't do a paint list because it's just white Dectan and and Vallejo dark sea blue that's it there are three colors everything you see me do here is with these three colors And just various mixes of all of them It's it's this is a very fussy sort of process as we talked about in recent videos You're gonna see me just do a lot of back-and-forth blending and When you're working in small spaces like this with freehand the key is again You're gonna see where I sort of get it to a place where it looks pretty good. You want to stop there stop there I probably spent about 45 minutes to an hour on the shield On this freehand that is to say and that might be a lot for you for your army and I totally understand that you could stop with the initial Shapes and the sketch, you know, that was maybe five minutes You can stop with some of these initial blends that I do the first time through that was maybe another 10 on top of it. It's really all of this trying to get this perfect Circular reflection that ends up taking time. I Did want to sneak a little lesson about blending in here because I think this is a really good example of how you have to think about blending on These kinds of surfaces. This is a big flat surface effectively and I'm trying to render a three-dimensional globe and When I'm doing so you'll notice that I oftentimes put down a fair amount of paint and then go to a glaze So when you like right there, I switched from a fairly decent amount of paint to a glaze ran the glaze over and then you saw me Take the brush off the screen. That's because I was voiding the brush Meaning I was eating the paint or wiping it off. You don't have to eat your paint You can wipe it on a moist paper towel and then I was feathering it out And you'll see me do that over and over and over again glaze feather the edge glaze feather the edge glaze feather the edge When you're trying to achieve these really perfectly smooth blends This is kind of one of the ways that you can do it and render something even on a perfectly flat space effectively Now one of the last things you want to do with your freehand when you've done all of the work filling things in even if you didn't go For ultra high contrast like I did here if you've painted in the area you outlined at all You want to go back and very carefully retouch up your outlines Because no matter how careful you are you will end up accidentally painting outside the line at some point in time Things will get rough. You'll eat up a little bit of your initial line and it will look rough and messy a Smooth outline like that is gonna really go a long way to selling the crispness the cleanness of your freehand So that final step of going around and re-outlining everything goes a long way Here you see me just doing the final touch-ups once I have the outline reestablished I want to make sure all of my highlights all of the sides that I want as bright as possible have more or less that pure White on them just as a very thin edge Now there's one more really cool trick you can do when you're painting freehand like this Especially these sorts of non-metallic effects Non-metallic when you're rendering it purely on a miniature is tough because it can't glint you only can paint the space of the miniature I can't paint the air around the miniature as we often see with lens flares and things But on the on a freehand symbol like this I can effectively quote paint the air because I can carry the reflection off of the object I've rendered and into the negative space of the shield and you see how I just make these little tiny scratchy lines Just over and over again in different directions switching it up And what we're effectively going for is the JJ Abrams lens flare lens flare just lots of lots of little tiny scratches Chris Chris cross Chris cross Chris cross Chris cross and then eventually I just find a nice center line and draw it down And there you go. There is our symbol all done I've repeated this across lots of scathing so far. I think it really comes out nice It's a good combination in my mind of the scathing in the stormcast I'm really happy with it. If you liked this give it a like Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future, but as always thank you for watching this one and we'll see you next time


So everyone, this is Napoleon, the Kamalama who's actually in Alpaca. No applause, please. No applause, please. This is the ambassador for our next speaker. You may have heard of the seminal research paper published in 2010 that is entitled Crowdsourcing Graphical Perception Using Mechanical Turk to Access Visualization Design, the first paper on the scene, definitely what everyone in this room knows about. It featured, it was a PDF that featured bar charts, line charts. I believe there was a scatter plot in there, a histogram. It was early on 2010, a sign of things to come. You may have also used the library polymaps, his second best-known project after the seminal research paper. A library called ProtoViz, and then there is this also this other one Can anyone remember? I think it was the 3D, 3R, RJS. I mean honestly, the next speaker needs no introduction and is working on some really really cool things and is the only speaker at this conference to be officially endorsed by Napoleon, the Kamalama. I would also like to point out that the Kamasash was artisanally made. No clapping please. Okay, well, so a quiet but warm welcome for Mike Bostock everyone.


Bump it up to the 14 U, Northern Heat hosting Aiken, two to nothing in the fifth, John Clavin with two on, crosses first base, just fair. That's good for a double and two runs score, same inning, rikin' downs, two in scoring position, just out of reach at the third baseman. That gets Clavin home to make it five to nothing, still in the fifth, it's six to nothing, Dylan Sweeney goes swinging into the dirt, rounds one to third, but it's just enough to score downs, that's where we'd wrap it up, Northern Heat wins this one easily by a score of seven to nothing. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Did Babu talk about Samson being the strongest man in the Bible? That was incorrect. Delilah was. Did she beat him up? No.  That's all. Right? So again, when we can get back to the essence of who we are as people and women understand it's about persuasion. It's about seduction.  Do you believe in monogamy? Cause you don't seem like it, based on your responses. Yes. Can men be faithful? Yes. Let me hear your answer. Do I believe in monogamy? Yes. I think it's a beautiful thing. I think it's very effective for child rearing. I think you can make an argument that polygamy is effective as well or less effective, more effective. I think that's a conversation. But I do believe in monogamy. Can men be faithful? Yes. There's a caveat here. After he's grown up. Okay.  You feel like that's necessary.  Like the reason why a lot of dudes have that midlife crisis is because they weren't able to be young.  So, you know, when it comes to like stages in life, I think that's a necessary stage. And what's complicated again for men is that typically, as men get older, we get more desirable. Right? We get more money, more status. We get this distinguished look, our beard starts to connect to some women even like gray hairs. So it's like, I'm becoming sexier to the dating market. But you're telling me I got to lock away the juice. I just got the juice.  So for a lot of women, the juice isn't valuable because every time I've been going to the gas station since 13 and niggas have always been googly eye to me versus nigga, I just started at 35 years old. I'm just now getting women in my house.  You've been there, done that, it doesn't really faze you. I think then, you know, monogamy is possible. Yeah. But again, like I said before, men want to be faithful. We want to. You believe that inherently, that's what they want. Absolutely. Okay. I think, but the separation is ... Or Kelly, my mind is telling me, but my mind, yeah. I think there's the separation like our minds and our hormones and stuff are in conflict. But men want to do the right thing. I think there are steps though along that way, but yeah, I believe in monogamy. Okay. Okay. Are you surprised by that answer? A little bit. Some of your other answers is seeing like, well, there's these ones. It's not a one. It's like I'm compatible with a lot of people. Like it did kind of give a polygamy, polyamory desire there a little bit, but I take you for your word. Yeah. That's the thing. I've even done panels. Okay. I think polygamy is a worthwhile conversation. Really? Whether or not polygamy is for me is a separate thing, but I think it's a worthwhile conversation because going back to the same girl from Grapevine, she said that a polygamous society actually benefits women and a monogamous society benefits men. Here's why. Women are hypergamous. Whether we like it or not, it's something we can't change. Women are biologically predisposed because you have a finite number of potential people you can make. You're biologically predisposed to find the best possible male of your species to give those eggs to and to procreate. With that being said, of course, women are going to be choosy.  So she was saying in a polygamous society, you and you and you and you can all choose LeBron James.  So you can scratch that itch of getting the best possible man you can get versus in a monogamous society, oh, Elon is gone, so I have to go down a little bit. So even the plumbers make good money. Even the garbage guys make good money, but just for the sake of this, right? The Jetter, he's going to get, he's kind of guaranteed a woman, right? Because they're more, you know, eligible women biologically. Yeah, you parent them off and somebody's going to be left for him. So I think from a societal standpoint, from a black community standpoint, I think you couldn't make an argument for, all right, we need to replicate our nuclear physicists and our, you know, contributing members and intellects and things like that. I think that is, I don't know if we can go back to that because I know where people come from polygamy, but I don't know if, like, in a modern era, we can actually go back to that, but I'm not as dismissive of it as most people. OK, here's a question. What do you think women can do to make men commit quicker? Because we all know what Kevin Samuels was saying about men know in, you know, in six months and you shouldn't be waiting longer than X amount of time and all this. And I believe it. I believe men do know very quickly, quicker than six months, for sure. I think men know rather quickly if they, what their intentions are, what they want, what their end goal is with women. But that doesn't mean that they act on it when they know. Because, again, it's not about you. That's I think that's the at the foundation of understanding it is understanding it's about him. Is he who he wants to be? Is he ready to be a husband? Is he ready to be a father? Right. And I know, obviously, I'm a testament to that. Some of those things happen when you're not necessarily ready. Yeah. But you could be a wonderful woman, but if he's not ready, it doesn't matter. So then your advice, if this was your daughter, you would tell her to do what in a situation? So number one, right? Unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't know.  Right. But you're going to have to date above your age. Right. I'm not a fan of significant age gaps. Like my parents are like 12 years apart. Oh, are they? I thought she was weird as fuck. So I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan at all of that. But I think there are some some some men who are going to be relatively quick and eager to marry. Typically, those aren't the men women want. For the men that women want, either you have to get them after they've created the version of themselves that they're happy with. Like right after. Yeah.  You see what I'm saying? But typically, and I'm like in that age range. But typically, you're just about ready if the right one come. Well, the right one. He's just picked from the ones. I got a couple years. But, you know, but typically, it's about the dude, you know what I'm saying? It's about the dude and what he's ready for. But again, I don't want to seem like I'm minimizing women's power. But this whole turning future to Russell Wilson shit, we better try to that's not going to work. I used to have the right raw materials. Yeah. Yeah. Although I will say I've always believed that for certain I do. I do believe certain women have the ability to shift men's behavior if it's the right, like, I don't know. I think it's if there is when you think about it, like a chemistry experiment or something, the right chemicals, the right elements, I think together, like the right man. And I think there is a woman that can change every man. I think there is a woman that has the ability to do that for every man that is acting out by change, like bring out the best version of him. I think there is a woman because we like we've all seen it. Where he was out playing around and this, that and a third. And then he came across her and then his whole life shifted. And he I can, I can agree with that. But the only reason why I won't or I won't like put it on a megaphone is that that is an anomaly. Exactly. Right. So but a lot of us like to latch on to an anomaly. I agree with that. And think that we are that woman. I agree. Mostly 99 percent of y'all watch it. Exactly. I think there may be a man that you are capable of bringing that out of. But is that the one that you're trying to bring that out of? Probably not. But I think most especially you talk to, I think I would say a good portion of married men, they would say that their wife has brought out a better version of them or she has done this, that and a third. So I don't think that's a farfetched idea that that's what happens when you meet someone that is a good fit for you, that a better version of you comes out. I would take that with a grain of salt because this.  We've had we have more options than they've ever had.   Right. So it's a different. And I think because of that, there were things that were able to work back then.  I feel like I'm 20 now and I'm 29. Right. You see what I'm saying? Like adolescents are so much longer. Muffers don't feel grown until later on in life. So it's a different. It's a different landscape that we're trying to navigate.  No, I agree with that. I do agree with that. But I do think and I think it's with any any relationship. I think even friendships, your friends, good friends, bring out better versions of you. I think when you're paired with people that are a good fit for you, it does manifest and create a better version of you because you want to do better. And when you're in connection with good people, you just want to be better. I feel and then you just you get like a a surge of inspiration or something to just be better. Sure. But there should be a value added to the other person, too. I think most relationships that are healthy are also reciprocal. Exactly. But if you're if if people go in saying because I think at its unhealthiest, that's where the rehabilitation mindset comes from, you know, because, yes, he might not be everything that I want, but I know that he can be. But he's doing all this for me and he's benefiting me in these ways. I'm learning from him. I'm growing with him in the whole night. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. But for some people, that's not the case. It's just I'm coming in with my gloves and my tools and I'm going to fix this and I'm taking care of him and I'm his second mom and whatever else. So from that perspective, you can't raise a man. You can't build a man. You can like nudge him to inches this way or two inches that way. But this whole he was this and I turned him in. I just don't think that's even a worthwhile. Like just don't even try because I just think then you end up in a situation where you're just you're poor. You've poured so much and then you're bitter if it doesn't work out. Yeah, like I feel like I used to say this. You have to calculate your risks. So if you're not going to be OK with the worst case scenario, like just don't even do that. Because worst case scenario sometimes is I loved him and I poured this into him. And then he was this great man that I wanted, but he was that for someone else. And there are some cases where you might love someone enough to want the best for them, even if it's not you. But if you don't feel that way, don't do that. Like don't do that with the intention of like and he has to be with me in the end. Like he needs to be me. Like do it because you want him. You love him and you want him to be better. And that sets you apart. Right. That gets because like it was that in the song. If he ever left me, I wouldn't even be sad. Because he's a blessing in every lesson. Right. Like a lot of unfortunately, a lot of us like we have that anxious attachment style where like somebody owes us something. Yeah. And because of that, even the ways that we move, people talk about vibes, energies, it's different. It feels very needy. It feels very entitled and manipulative, manipulative, right? Versus there's mutual benefit in us being in community and communication and sex, whatever we decide to do. If it doesn't work out, you're such a good person that I wish you the best and that you were a net positive to my life. Yeah. And that's the problem is that it's there's again, unclear expectations. If your expectation is that you're doing these things and he needs to marry you, then you need to have like there needs to be a plan for that, like not just one day he'll see my value and he's going to choose me. I'm all about setting actual deadlines and communicating. Like I understand that we've been dating for, you know, three months. We need to put a title on it or we need to go our separate ways. And if you're not ready, that's fine. But this is a boundary that I have. This is an expectation that I have in order to have access to me. I can't control you. And that's what sometimes men will say that because it makes it seem like it women feed into it when they say this, like, I don't want to be controlled and I don't want to be forced to do this and that there I'm not controlling you. I'm controlling me. This is what's required to have access to me. This is this is why femininity is so powerful. And I think it's it's it's under appreciated how powerful it is. And when I tell women, you have more control than you realize. A lot of women try to compete with men on on a masculine playing field. So like men, it's about domination and force. Women try to dominate and force men to do dot, dot, dot versus persuasion and seduction. Right. Even like, biblically, the Bible talks about Samson being the strongest man in the Bible. Yeah, that was incorrect. Delilah was. Did she beat him up? No. She gave him some cookies.  That's all. Right. So again, like when when when we can get back to the essence of who we are as people and women understand it's about persuasion. Yeah, it's about seduction. So not necessarily like it's funny. There was this dating coach, his white dude's name is Matthew Hussie. And I've heard of him. You have? I think I have. You probably have. He's like Australian. The last name sounds familiar. Yeah, he's an Australian or British. But a woman asked him, like, you know, how does he feel about women shooting their shot of dudes? And he was like, women have always shot their shot of dudes.  And he was like, what do you mean? There's never been a time when there have been hollering at dudes. He said, he said, no. But there was a time when women would drop the handkerchief. You'd walk past a guy who would just mistakenly drop your handkerchief and literally leave the ball at his court to come up to you and give you your handkerchief back and say, and spark it. So again, that's not going up to the hey, shout out to doing, you know, my name is Delilah. You know, it's it's about the seduction piece is about the nuance of it. But again, I think I don't want to start talking about white supremacy today. But I think part of what happened was on your brain. Man, listen, I think what happened is our women have been encouraged to be more masculine and to be more domineering and forceful. And you've kind of lost the essence of the seduction and the persuasion. So a lot of women don't know how to drop handkerchief. So they think it's all up to the guy. It's more it's more up to you than you realize. I agree with that. And I think the way that you said with men, it's like the domination and like control. I think women's power is in backing up, like removing themselves. So I think even like in the handkerchief situation, they dropped it and then they let it go, like you leave it alone. It's not or when you talk about persuasion and stuff, people talk about it in sales. That you have the most power when you stop talking as a salesman, when you're willing to walk out of the dealership or, you know, disconnect from the sale. Like that's when you have the most power. It's the same with women. So I'm not going to force you. I'm not going to stay. Say we're like living together. I'm not going to stay in the house, be in the bed, all this stuff.  You need to marry. I need to leave the house and then let you understand what it's like when I'm not there. Come on. Yes. And I don't that doesn't require me to say anything else to you because I have to have the knowledge and understanding that I have shown you what I can show. And now I'm done doing that. I've given you all the exhibits exhibit A, B, C, D through Z that I can show you. It's up to you now to make a decision. So you still have the power to decide for yourself. But again, I get to make the decision on what's required to have access to me. Yeah. And either way, to the point earlier, either way, it's a one win. Because number one, either you weren't as valuable to him as you thought. Yeah. Or number two, he wasn't as adept in evaluating value like you thought. Exactly. So then I would have sat there and continued to try to prove something to someone that can't see it and it's not meaning anything to them. So now when removing myself, I get him a chance to find someone that gives value in a way that he can see. Come on. And then I get to go somewhere where my value will be received, understood and evaluated properly. Women don't understand that, though. It's a fear that like if I'm not there and I leave, he's going to go find he is going to find someone else, but in him finding someone else, that gives him the opportunity to evaluate. So if he chooses her, then did you want him? If it was that easy for him to choose her? Or do you not believe in your contribution enough to understand that if you leave, he will miss you? In any case, he got to go and you got to go. Right. Well, and I think what makes it complicated is a lot of us would rather be, let's say, Cam Newton instead of Tom Brady. Tom Brady went in the sixth or seventh round of the NFL draft. He is not the greatest football player of all time. He wasn't flashed. He wasn't coming out of college with all this hype like a Cam Newton. Yeah. Right. But you know, we see all the bad bitches on TV and I just want to be like her own. We flew out this, this, this, that, not realizing a lot of that stuff is not sustainable. So how do you translate it to the young girls coming up? Because that's what I'm concerned about. I think it's that instilling some of those that self worth and like the confidence thing, I think confidence is so important because based on how you allow people to treat you, it tells a lot about how much you think you're worth. I think that that's something that you instill in little girls. And I think so often we tell the girls, like, you're so pretty, you're so cute, you're so, you know, these things.  You are so funny.  Like she knows that. Like it's not like, oh, I'm smart. It's like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Like I am smart. So I think that that's the important thing because it translates over time because if I understand that I'm all these great things, I'm less likely to put up with anything making me feel like I'm not. So I saw something the other day and I said, there's a difference between how you feel about someone and how someone makes you feel. Oh, talk about it. Yeah, because I can feel like you're great and I can feel like you're smart and you're all of these things and that you have the ability to treat someone well. But if you don't make me feel like I am also smart and I am also, you know, appreciated and all of these different things. It doesn't matter how much I appreciate you if you don't make me feel appreciated. And sometimes we create narratives in our head and we're like, oh, but we fixate on the positive fleeting moments a lot and we allow it sometimes to overpower the consistent negative things that might be happening or maybe not negative because I always say you can be a good person and still not be a good fit for me. Oh, come on. So you may be great, a great fit for someone else.  And that doesn't mean that anything is wrong with me necessarily. But you may just not, like you said, timing is such a big thing. You may not be in a space mentally or, you know, physically where you're able to receive or appreciate me. And that's fine.  And it doesn't make me unworthy. It just means that we're not a good fit for each other. Absolutely.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to another International Relations Capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. Today, our topic is the Raisina Dialogue, India's premier conference on geopolitics and geopolitics. The dialogue is a multi-state holder cross-section discussion involving government leaders, local government officials who are joined by thought leaders from the private sector, media, and the academic world. This is the seventh edition. I've been started this in 2015. This is the seventh edition of the Raisina Dialogue. There are many dialogues taking place all around the world as far as India is concerned. This is organized by the Ministry of External Affairs together with ORF, and this has become the premier conference in India. The topic this time was Terra Nova, because it's the same thing as New World. Every time we have to invent new words to express the same idea to make it novel. So this time, the title is Terra Nova, which means nothing other than a new world which we are confronting. And the subtitle is impassioned, impatient, imperilled, all three feelings or images that we have of the new world. Impassioned because we have to deal with it with great energy and passion. We have to be impatient about it. I would have put it the other way. The first thing is imperiled. The future is in danger. The future is in danger. Therefore, we have to be impatient and impassioned and work together. That is the message. It's quite obvious what the issues are. The Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi and the President of the European Commission inaugurated the conference together, even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not speak. As for participation, it is 100 sessions and 210 speakers from 99 countries. This is enormous. Nobody could really follow all these things which are taking place in different parts of Delhi. But the Rabindra reports, and we are relying on the reports coming out of the conference to make an assessment of what happened. This is supposed to have six thematic pillars. These are the six main ideas which were discussed in different forums by different speakers, different people, regardless of the rank that are associated down to journalists, all kinds of people, they all participate in the equal manner. This is no precedence for governments or ministers. This is the same pattern as followed in the Davos Summit. Everybody has treated equally and everybody has equal opportunity to express opinions. The first item was the end of multilateralism. It's a question mark. Has multilateralism ended or is it still in force? What is the future of the UN? This is one topic. Then the rethinking democracy. There are questions about what exactly is a democracy. Many of the countries which are considered democratic, are they really democratic? Is there a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism as the Ukraine situation is described by several people? Democracy, we have to think. Then the communities, the people who are the first responders to health problems because before the systems of the governments come in, the community, it is the people who are first affected by crises like that. The fifth is the turbulent tides in the Indo-Pacific. It's called the water Caucasus. After communities, then your water Caucasus, that is a reference to the maritime security, the situation in the Indo-Pacific, then the quad will come in it. Then technology warps because technology is not even, some countries have greater technology than the others and they are trying to cope with the technological innovation which comes every day. It has its own challenges. How do you prepare a level playing field for all countries with technologies varying from one another? Finally, achieving green transition, which is of course the essential issue of climate change, that is we need to have a green transition. We have to become conscious of the fact that a green economy we need to have and less of industries which cause greenhouse gas emissions. These were the six broad areas which are allocated to different groups. As I said, 100 sessions, all these were discussed by various people and I'm sure very many good ideas came up and some of them may be implemented, otherwise the discussions will carry on from one Raisina dialogue to the other.  This has become a standard, very prominent dialogue to which people from various countries come. There are several of these in different parts of the world and many people go to all of them, but some people go to some of them and this was Prime Minister's idea, it was floated in 2015 and in the last two years it could not be held because of the pandemic, but again this time it was a phase-to-phase conference. So we noticed that soon after the Korean War started, there has been a lot of diplomatic flooding of activities in India. Virtually every important country sent some representative to the other, some had to state themselves and others came to Delhi more than to any other place. There are not two reasons for it. One, people are a little bit amazed why India took a particular position of neutrality in this particular case when there has been a war against a democratic country. This has aroused the curiosity. People knew about it and plus then they started seeing that India was not cooperating very much in the sanctions against Russia. So these two parts of India's policy were being criticized and questioned everywhere and many of them came to inquire as to what the reasons were for it. We had no evidence to show that they were satisfied because they still keep talking about India having to accept the reality that there is a country that is Russia which is violating all the rules and regulations. So this Raisina dialogue came at the end of this flurry of activities and therefore more and more people, they thought this was one opportunity to go to Delhi and discuss all these issues and therefore the Europeans dominated this. Most many delegates because the European Commission president herself was there as the chief guest plus a large number of European countries were represented. But the interesting institution was there was nobody from China, nobody from Russia. So this became some kind of a European meeting or others of course from African others but many European countries participated because of the crisis in Ukraine that they were concerned about. So what are the things that they were focusing on? They were focusing on the changes which are taking place in the world. It's a reality that geopolitics is changing and it is a reality and how do you deal with it? Even when we do not know exactly in what way it is going but it has to be understood, anticipated and dealt with. Then the globalization. Globalization had suffered a little recently because people started thinking that it is necessary for countries to be self-reliant. Where is globalization going? How about rebalancing because the world is all waiting for something to happen. People are not taking their choices. They are waiting to see what kind of new world order will come and what their position will be in this global order. Then specific issues like COVID-19 which seems to be subsiding but still it is very rampant in China, in some other countries. So COVID-19 remains a reality and how to deal with it is one of the major problems within the parameters of the agenda of the conference. In Afghanistan, there is no solution. Taliban is still very much in power. There does not seem to be any kind of liberalization by the government and they are receiving assistance, humanitarian assistance and they are managing with that but nobody has recognized the regime and so the uncertainty continues. China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan etc. They are supporting the Taliban. So that is another peculiar situation where democracy versus authoritarianism and finally Ukraine. But if you look at all the discussions and the questions raised, most of it came from questions about Ukraine because of India's particular situation. And since the Prime Minister did not speak at the racing and dialogue, the main sports person became the external affairs minister, Mr. Jay Shankar. So everybody agrees that this was a Jay Shankar show as it were because he was formulating ideas, expressing them, sometimes being very tough, sometimes very reasonable and the whole conference seems to have been dominated by this very powerful personality of Mr. Jay Shankar. He was sometimes very agitated and therefore he gave some replies which may not have pleased the interlocutors but he was making the position very clear because for India, Ukraine is a problem, Russia has invaded, we accept that. We do not accept the idea of one country invading other and occupying it and so on. But at the same time, we also recognize that Russia has its concerns and therefore the only answer to this is not war, not intensification, not giving more money to Ukraine but dialogue and a solution via and India has been trying right from the beginning for that. This is the point that he has been making repeatedly but still questions were being asked, what are the justifications? What did Russia tell you? So he was not willing to give these answers. He gave those answers in a general sense that is our concern is peace, tranquility, negotiations, solution and nothing else is possible. And then he pointed out in reply saying that such things have happened in Asia. Look at Afghanistan, what is happening in Afghanistan? Is it acceptable? But how many in Europe or any other countries lifting a little finger to solve the problem in Afghanistan? And how much support are people in Asia and Africa waiting for COVID? So these are some of the issues that he raised are more urgent for us and how to deal with the new situation arising out of this. So he wanted to want in the world to have a more global outlook and how can you resolve all these problems and not merely concentrating on Ukraine. So Ukraine did not elaborate much on our policy. He said that we are critical of what Russia has done. We even condemn the massacre. We are not joining the sanctions because there is an energy crisis coming up, a food crisis coming up and therefore India has to handle the situation in its best interest. And it was pointed out by some that only 41 countries have joined the sanctions which have been imposed by NATO and the United States. So out of the 193 countries, if only 41 have really agreed to join the sanctions, why India alone is being criticized. And he made it very clear that we are buying oil, yes, for Russia, for our energy needs. But as he said, Europe is buying in one afternoon what we bought in a whole month. So a certain amount of hypocrisy of the West be exposed. But the comment was made by Mr. Shamsaran in one of his assessments that it is fair enough for us to put up a very strong position. But knocking them on their nappies as it were, you know, a kind of conflict in dialogue is not helpful because we need Europe more than anybody else in the new orientation. Because if Russia and China are together, United States and Europe are together. And then where else do we go except through the Quad, to Europe, to United States and Europe. So therefore, this kind of agitated approach is not much appreciated in certain circles. But there is great enthusiasm for Mr. Jay Shankar's intellect, his ability to express things if necessary very, very strongly. And in fact, an article appeared just a day ago that he could be, Jay Shankar could be equated with Kissinger. He has that kind of capacity to deal with crisis in the world. And he was even suggested that Jay Shankar should take the lead in trying to put together an international negotiating group to deal with Russia. But of course, this has no possibility as long as the war is raging, there is no ceasefire. I think that contest can be done. But what I'm saying is, in the context of Jay Shankar's performance during Raisina dialogue is being raised to a level of people like Kissinger who can really deal with international issues. But that is by the way. So we were really being questioned very thoroughly on this question. And we were a bit on the defensive because we are not with the international consensus. But at the same time, the fact that all the countries have not imposed sanctions against Russia also indicates that what we are doing may be right because we have to protect our interests, we have to protect the balance. And just as we have concerns about Afghanistan and others, we also have concerns about Ukraine. But our concerns are such that it has to be resolved not by any kind of strengthening of the military or giving more weapons to Ukraine. We need to give them humanitarian assistance and try and resolve it. So the Raisina dialogue provided an opportunity for a large number of people to engage in these discussions. We do not have a full picture. So the themes were quite inclusive. Nothing was excluded. Questions about Afghanistan, questions about COVID-19 were also made. No clear conclusions were reached. Many ideas came up. And since Russia and China were not represented, we could say that the discussion was not entirely complete because they were not there and they did not participate in it. So the question being asked about India was whether India as a democracy will object authoritarianism. So we are clear about that. We will object. But it has to be done in a manner in which our national interests are protected. So it is not a question of time for international norms to be redone. Yes, we know that international norms are being violated, but it's not only in Ukraine that international norms are being violated. And wherever democratic regimes are upset, that must be dealt with. They reminded the West about its culpability in leaving a mess in Asia, which India had to contend with. This may not help India to deal with the challenges of the changes in the global order. And so this has to be sorted out further. And that is probably the reason why the Prime Minister is leaving to Germany and is also visiting France. So maybe there is a linkage here that we do recognize that we cannot really isolate Europe in the context of Asia. We need to have relations with Russia as well as with Europe. So the Prime Minister's visit to Germany is going to be very significant as well as France. And that may be the reason why the Prime Minister is going there because he is aware that some sparks flew in these conversations and those have to be put in their proper context so that things can be sorted out. And Europe is showing some impatience with India's relations with Russia because they all know that there is a legacy factor that is many years India and the Soviet Union and later India and Russia have been cooperating in defense purchases, general trade, various issues. We are close working together with Russia. This cannot be immediately separated and that the people understand. But how we are doing it is going to be a question. But others are also pointing out that our trade with Russia has reduced but dependent on oil supplies from Russia is not gone up very much. The Americans themselves have said that Indians are not likely to buy too much oil during this period and they are doing it in a very balanced manner. So there is a certain amount of understanding developing and this legacy has to be maintained because Russia still supplies a large amount. It is to be 70% maybe it is a little bit less. The only nuclear plant, a foreign nuclear plant is from the Kudankulom and we also have to think in terms of the new relationship between Russia and China. But some people believe that this relationship between China and Russia may not last. Russia may have not done it simply in the context of Ukraine and if the problem is solved maybe Russia-China alliance will not be as strong as it appears to be. And that there is a hope but as of now they are quite close together. And so that is how the situation in Ukraine and the generally global reordering was discussed. As I said no particular conclusions but many ideas have come up which governments and thinkers and strategists will bring out one by one and we have further discussion. There was an interesting debate on multilateralism that was the first topic as I mentioned and the future of the UN. There were several people who have worked in the secretariat, ambassadors who have worked at the UN and NGOs, people who have been assisting the UN with various issues etc. The question has asked whether UN was doing anything in the question of defense. So it was rightly pointed out that UN is not sitting back. Of course UN's first role was to prevent the war. Having not done that we have to stop the war, we have to bring about a ceasefire and we need to have to build peace in the region. This is the priority of the UN. But that has not been possible because a permanent member of the Security Council as a veto is already a part of this and therefore any effort by the United Nations Security Council to solve the problem is unreal that everybody understands. But it was pointed out that it's not true that the UN is not doing anything. The various agencies of the United Nations whether it is Development Program, whether it is UNESCO, whether it is WHO, various specialized agencies are working to bring about some solace, some comfort to the victims of the war. So though the UN is doing the job it is meant to do to stop the war which is not able to do. At the same time a lot of effort is being made by these agencies and once the war comes to a halt all these agencies will be able to go in there and help the people. This was pointed out as a plus point as well as the UN is concerned. Even on COVID situation though UN was not able to work cohesively now it is putting together various ways of vaccination and other things have come. So all these were pointed out but at the same time there was criticism that the UN is not able to perform the functions outlined in the charter because of the veto and so this is raised as to the veto, what kind of reform we will get in the UN, all these there were no answers. There is no agreement on any expansion of the Security Council. There is no agreement on any reform of the other organs of the United Nations. These are all in effects but the general consensus among the people who spoke as well as the people who asked questions was that United Nations is indispensable. It cannot be replaced, maybe reform but it cannot be replaced because it has become very essential. Why?  So such an organization has immense value however its deficiency is rare and therefore there was an unambashed defense of the UN by many countries. Some people asked questions, look at the situation 1945 and look at the situation today. Is the UN partly responsible for all the good that has happened? Standards have been set for economic development, standards have been set for human rights, there are various activities humanitarian, atomic energy, all these areas UN is spectacular. So to say that since the UN has not prevented war the UN cannot be ignored and so that was agreed in this context but there was also demand for reform to be making more participatory, make the UN more functional in the light of the current situation in the world. So all these were raised but at the end of it all they said there is no alternative to the United Nations. So we have to work with it when its relevance has to be considered in the context of the many activities of the not just peace and war and that was a consensus that was agreed upon and therefore it did not ask for a very strong push for reform. It was more about accepting as a reality about UN has to be an active player and we'll have a role in the post-war reconciliation and rehabilitation and therefore the UN is part of that effort and that came out quite well and to briefly summarize Raisina dialogue was an important instrument for global leaders to get together and discuss ideas that is unquestioned but because of Ukraine the focus was a little too much on India and India had to be a little bit defensive because we are not defensive we were quite aggressive in dealing that issue but some kind of peace making has to be made by between India and Europe so that these exchanges do not leave an impact on our relationship because Europe is very very important for us and therefore it has to be looked after and perhaps the visit of the Prime Minister to Germany and France will lead to that understanding after which perhaps too many of these questions about Ukraine will not be raised and there will be a better understanding of India's position. There is a speculation that Raisina dialogue may lead to India reviving the non-aligned movement because this is tight flying. People think that India is left in a situation where it has to lead a group of countries of its own and for that the best is the non-aligned world the non-aligned movement which was established in 1962 still going on but without any particular influence so there was some speculation that perhaps one result of the Raisina dialogue may be India moving towards reviving the non-aligned movement because there is a necessity for countries to get together without joining either of the military groups and at the same time there is talk of this not being possible because we are part of the Quad and we are already part of a western grouping and we have an interest in the Indian Ocean and therefore we need to work together with the great powers so much is yet to happen so what happened in the Raisina dialogue is basically a forum where all these issues were discussed and further discussions will follow at the governmental and non-governmental processes and what happened in Raisina dialogue may be beneficial to the world in this current situation of re-globalizing and re-ordering the new global world. Thank you.


In the political area, most of the attention right now goes to tackling the climate ambitions generated within national borders, of course. But I think that we will hear from the other speakers today that that actually hides a large part of the problem. The red countries, and you'll see most of the EU member states are included in that category, have net, are net importers of greenhouse gas emissions. So that means that the emissions associated with their imports are higher than the emissions associated with their exports. And here we can clearly see this gap that we were commenting, the trade balance and the import impacts are higher than those of the exports. So we are externalizing impacts to countries. And in achieving the European Green Deal, the EU needs to act as a global leader because global challenges of the triple planetary crisis require a global response. We are becoming more affluent and therefore this tilts the development of the consumption footprint upwards. And then the fact that we're becoming more efficient in our production holds it down. And that's why you see more or less stabiliting the consumption footprint. So this goal clearly demonstrates Sweden's recognition of the fact that the way we live and consume in Sweden risk having a negative impact on other countries where goods are being produced to satisfy Swedish demands. There's a guiding principle in the Climate Act saying that Danish measures should not simply relocate all the greenhouse gas emissions to outside Denmark's borders. We have decreased our domestic emissions by 33% since 1995. But at the same time, we have increased our imported emissions by 32% from 1995. We need to understand how and what we consume and where the environmental and sustainability impacts of our consumption are the strongest, but also where the value is created along the relevant value chains. So that eventually we can address our consumption based emissions in the right policy framework and in a just manner for exporting countries. The parliament actually supported introducing binding targets and the final legislation of negotiation with member states says such targets should be introduced as appropriate. But to me, it's obvious that it is very much appropriate right now.