What can that miscommunication look like and why does it happen? Oh my gosh, for so many reasons, Thomas, right? So the first... There's a lot of things, yeah. I've got a list of things to go through. So I'll tell you some of the big ones from my marriage that I didn't understand. So first of all, I am extremely emotional. So whenever I cried or whenever I shared more than one thing with my ex, I flooded him and the flooding led to a shutdown on his part. So what I learned in my next relationships is to bring up one topic or issue at a time if I could prepare my partner ahead of time. Because of course, I have a type and now I pretty much date mostly autistic men or neurodivergent men, right? I know someone else like that, yeah. There's something that I'm really, really attracted to about a lot of neurodivergent men. They're amazing. So the flooding piece, knowing that sometimes what I needed to do was send a text or an email and say, these are some of the things that are really affecting me right now or that I'd like to talk to you about when would be a good time. Because I did that after we divorced and the conversations we had after that were so different than the conversations we had in our marriage. Because number one, it gave him time to really think about how to address those issues. I wasn't super emotional and flooding him because I had time to think about what I wanted to say and I could be more concise and specific, which I learned I am or I wasn't in my marriage concise or specific at all, right? So those are important.  The flooding, being emotional, not being concise and specific and giving your partner the space and the time to really think through the topics that you want to talk about. I think that's really, really critical. I suppose there's some aspects to that that I could probably tease out a little bit, I think. Go for it. Yeah. I think there's definitely in terms of that kind of prepping people before having a very serious or perhaps negative or controversial. Controversial? What are you saying? Yeah, just a controversy. Now, what am I saying? My brain is very foggy today. You'll have to be very understanding. That's okay. Yes. So a confrontation, that's what I'm trying to go for. A confrontation, okay. I think there's definitely an aspect of, you know, we talk a lot about transitions and I think even in terms of socializing, understanding like or having time to ease into a social transition is quite important for me and I think for a lot of people. I think when, you know, I'm looking back at times in my life where, you know, someone's been upset about something and they've kind of just come at me with this, as you said, kind of like a flood of emotions. It's very overwhelming because I'm not in the headspace where I'm like, okay, right, we're talking about something. And also, as you said, you know, having time to think about things, it's really important when you are quite a lexifimer, can you struggle to identify and understand your own emotions in the moment specifically. So having some time to really like understand how you feel about certain things and what you want to say I think can be really important. I think as well, it can sometimes be a bit anxiety-provoking when someone's like, oh, right, we're going to talk about this at some point. But I think in every single case that someone has done that with me, it tends to be a lot more easy. You know, I think there's probably another element to miscommunication that might come more from the autistic side of things, which can be things around like PDA, pathological demand avoidance, which, you know, it's very apparent when we're younger, but when we get into adulthood, it's a little bit different and whenever there is kind of expectations put on us to speak or we're, you know, thinking about some expectations that someone's going to have for us in a relationship, it can often be quite difficult not to kind of shut down and stuff in those kind of situations. Like it's kind of like a defence mechanism sometimes when someone is saying, right, this is what I need from you and expectations are like a very core part of why PDA occurs when we have someone who puts expectations on us. That's the main thing. It's not about being difficult or being like aggressive or single-minded or anything. There's a motorbike gone by. It can be very noisy at this road. But I think that that's also another thing and I feel like the situations where I've had the most productive conversations which do kind of touch on perhaps negative things is when there is kind of an air of slow pacing to the conversation or, you know... Totally, absolutely. And I was guilty of telling off. I was guilty of rushing conversations. I was guilty of not understanding my ex's need for transitions and all the things that you said. Also the issue of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. Say that three times fast. So I didn't understand that my ex, when he came home from work, what he needed was time alone to decompress. And that might be in front of a computer. It might be in front of a TV. It might be sitting alone at the dinner table eating his dinner by himself. And the thing is, Thomas, I took that personally. So if I had understood that those were things he needed in order for us to have a conversation we could have avoided so much miscommunication, right? So if you know that you are in a neurodiverse relationship and you know that one or both of you is autistic or neurodivergent I think one of the most important things is to understand what your needs are and what you want in a relationship and to be able to communicate that with kindness and compassion with your partner rather than doing it, which this is the way I did it often. I didn't know we were a neurodiverse couple. I was a screamer. You know, I grew up in a house where we screamed and that's how I got my ex-husband's attention. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine the dysregulation in his nervous system. Every time I opened my mouth he didn't know if I was going to scream if I was going to speak to him with kindness, love and compassion. I can't even imagine how that must have felt to him. So I think that miscommunication comes a lot of times from not understanding what each partner needs because if you can communicate that to your partner then if they care about you, especially if they love you, they're going to want to do that. But they're thinking you need what they need and you may be thinking that the same thing, vice versa, they never talked about it. Right, you've made assumptions and you know what happens when we make assumptions, right?  Well, we're all kind of the centres of our own universe, aren't we? So we all kind of believe that, oh, I'm experiencing this, I'm human. So it should be the exact same for every single person. And it isn't. And it isn't. Right. That's not that. So the other thing that I was not aware of was sensory sensitivities. Right, so if we were in a place where there was a lot of extraneous noise, I remember my ex telling me that he could not necessarily hear me or he could not necessarily hear conversation because he was focused on all of the noise around us. And as he got older, I think it got worse for him. And I couldn't understand that. I'm like, I'm sitting right next to you. Why can't you hear me? Again, judgment, not a compassionate kind of curious mind. Because I didn't know about our neurological differences. I think it's interesting, isn't it, with the sensory things. Because I came across a concept. I think I was talking to someone about it on a podcast. I think it was a happy autistic lady where we were talking about a concept called habituation. Which is basically, it's best described in terms, someone came up with the analogy of a snail about habituation. It's like, if you were to boop a snail, usually it would go into a shell.   It's not a threat. And that's kind of the idea of habituation.  So if you were to translate that to perhaps the sensory environments, like going to a bar or being in public in town where there's lots of busy stuff going on, lots of people, lots of noises, most people they might be able to, they are able to kind of tune that out to some extent. Whereby it's kind of like isolating a voice when someone's talking to you. But when you're autistic or when you have sensory differences, sometimes it's a lot of the time it can be quite hard to tune that stuff out and actually focus on someone that's speaking to you. It's like your brain's being... It's like a roundabout and there's loads of traffic coming in from different parts of the roundabout rather than just one car going round and processing like you would do if you were having a conversation somewhere quite quiet. Yeah, and it can be overwhelming, but I didn't know that. I also discovered that when I used a certain tone to my voice, it literally caused pain for my ex-husband and he got special earbuds that were fitted just for his ears so that he wouldn't hear the things that were painful to him and I thought, oh my gosh, that's... Is that something to do with volume? Or is that like the pitch? I think it was the pitch and the volume. So imagine, I took these things personal. I took so much personally and I think that happens in every relationship, but I think in a neurodiverse relationship if you understand the underlying reason for the things you're taking personally, you can give your partner grace and hopefully you can accept the differences, but we didn't know. So can you imagine every time I sat next to him or stood next to him and I think it was on his right side, he would move because my voice, the pitch of my voice and maybe even how loud I was hurt his ear and at first he told me that then he would just change location. Trying to be kind, but I didn't take it that way. So I think... And then you get those non-verbal cues, you're like, oh, they're moving away when I sit down next to them. What are they trying to say? Or are they trying to insinuate? Yes, instead of asking, what can we both do? Do I need to walk on this side when we're together? Do I need to touch you in that ear because I didn't really understand the pain and the sensory issues. And I think there are so many miscommunications between neurodiverse couples because we don't necessarily understand ourselves, whether we're the holistic partner or the autistic partner. And I think the other thing that I realized is my ex probably was masking for the entire time we were together because he would say to me that he was going to do things and then not follow through. And I think a lot of times it was because he wanted to meet my needs or expectations. I don't think he ever wanted to disappoint me. Or for himself, not to feel like he can't do things. Exactly. There's neurotypical expectations. Exactly. And then when he didn't follow through and I became the nag or I became kind of annoying again or judgmental, it caused conflict. And so there was another miscommunication. If he wanted to do it, but he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to, I needed to create kind of emotional safety in our relationship, which I don't think that I did on a regular basis. So then he could say, I'm not sure I can do that, but I'm going to try. And this isn't what I can do right now. This is what I can commit to right now. Or I can't say yes. And I had to be okay with a no. And I think a lot of times I wasn't okay with the no because I didn't understand where the no came from because I didn't understand why he... I just kind of felt like just being difficult for the sake of it. Yes. Or why he could do something yesterday, but he couldn't do it a week later. The same task or request would be denied. And it might be because he was too overloaded, right? And I didn't know and he didn't understand why he couldn't always be consistent in something that could be very simple, like coming home at a certain time from work. So now I understand all those things, but it costs so many problems and miscommunication. I think, you know, there definitely is a kind of a glaring thing for me in terms of miscommunication, particularly between autistic and all those stick individuals is the indirect first direct communication. I've had a lot of situations where I have taken someone's words very directly, like it's... A lot of us tend to put a lot of weight on what people say to us. Like the actual words, like it's kind of... Best way to describe it is kind of like we take it as it would be written in a book or written in a piece of text rather than the different aspects of the tone and the delivery and the emotions and the facial expressions and the body language that accompany that, which, you know, a lot of allistic individuals may use a lot of. And then on the flip side, a lot of direct communication that we use kind of goes unheard because the level of like emotional or tonality changes doesn't indicate that it's necessarily as important as we are saying it. I think there's a really good example about, you know, if you go out to someone and say in this kind of tone, you know, I'm feeling 90% of my capacity at the moment. I'm very anxious and I'm going to have a meltdown. You say it like that and they kind of just say, oh, do you need any help with that? And it's like, yeah, probably. And it's communicated in a way that I'm like, I'm being very clear about what exactly is happening, but nobody's reacting in that way.   Let's get you quietly. I think from both sides, it can often feel like neither one is really getting across what they're wanting to get across because the holistic individual isn't taking the direct communication as seriously as they should. And the autistic person is perhaps not picking up on exactly what the indirect communication means in terms of what they say. I think it is a really, really big thing that even in relationships that I've had, it's something that people forget about. They'll forget that you don't necessarily always have that level of expression as well. I talk a lot about emotional expression versus emotional explanations. Emotional explanation being explaining, describing feelings, saying that I'm feeling this way because of this and it makes me feel like this. And it's very serious or it's not too bad. Whereas emotional expression is the way that you deliver it. There's kind of extra indirect aspects to how we're saying things. I love that, Thomas. I absolutely love that in the neurodiverse couple support groups that I facilitate. One of the things that I suggest to couples is to use either red, yellow, and green like cards or just the words. I'm at a red, which means I'm at a 10. I'm going to explode. I cannot talk to you. And just to be able to either use a card or say the word. A yellow, you might be able to talk about one non-emotional, not a deep subject for a short amount of time. And then green, I'm good to go. I have enough spoons. I have enough energy or whatever. I think when we're dysregulated, I think this goes for any couple. But I think it's really challenging in a neurodiverse relationship. When I have a pressing issue that I want to talk to my husband or my partner about, and they're at red, which could, you could use numbers if that's easier for you. And maybe they're at a 10 or a minus 10. Percentages, whatever it is. When your partner shares that with you, you need to respect their boundaries. Because that's a boundary. That is, if you go into a conversation with me when I'm in this place, you are no longer respecting my boundaries. And I will either explode and melt down possibly, or I'm going to shut down. And it could be for days, right? And I would notice that for me and my ex-husband, he would shut down. And sometimes I wouldn't really hear from him for days. And then he'd come back to me after he had processed and he had done what he needed to do to decompress. And sometimes he would literally use the exact words that I had said to him when I had overwhelmed him, right? When he was at a 10. He might have heard what I said, but he wasn't able to process it until he was able to process it. So finding the tools that you can use with your partner when either one of you are at a 10 or are about to explode versus at, you know, green or one, then you can be able to communicate and hear each other. Because you can listen. But you may not hear each other. I think it's really apt saying that. I mean, there is like the... I'm using apt a lot. I don't exactly know. I just like, I go through a list of words. I'm like, this word kind of works for me. This one, if I use apt a lot, that sounds good. Okay. I think it's... You know, you're definitely highlighting an aspect that's very important that I think is often an issue for allistic autistic relationships. And that's the social battery. And I don't think that a lot of partners of autistic people are really aware of perhaps how much of their social battery that being around someone for like a day or like a weekend can actually eat up like our social battery.  Why don't you go and see in friends? And we're like, well, I just don't feel able or I don't feel in the right headspace to go out. And quite often it's just because we spent the battery. It's gone. And I think that's... Even looking at it in a wider scale, sometimes for me, my ideal situation in a relationship is that I see my partner like three days a week, whereas the other days I'm kind of on my own doing my own thing. And that seems to be a good balance for me. But we will talk about kind of like the milestones and stuff and sort of managing daily life. But I think having an appreciation for just how quickly that social battery can be drained even just within the company of another person is quite important because you need to maintain your friendships because if the relationship breaks down, then you don't have people to rely on that you've talked to. You're not maintaining those really close connections which are quite important. And you're always feeling like you're not doing enough. You're not engaging enough with them. You're not seeing them enough. And so there's always the kind of that pressure that you're like, all right, I need to talk to them now. At this point and after planning this amount and it does start to, I think when someone's very adamant that you see them a lot more, it can really just break down a lot of areas of your life even if it's stuff like work or let alone friendships. And there's, I think as well, it is important particularly when that person is not in a good place and as you said, you really want to talk to them about something. I can draw on personal experiences that I've had recently. My then partner kind of, I don't know, they really wanted me to talk to me and it's something that's happened maybe quite a few times and I haven't been in the right head space. I've needed one, two, three days just to kind of process and think about it. And it was in this situation, they rushed it, like they were calling me multiple times and I was like, I really just can't talk, trying to put my boundaries in place. And it wasn't something that that person was, I guess, understanding about. They took it as me just being difficult. And I think that's kind of a common thread, I think, when people don't particularly understand. Yeah. Oh, you're just trying to play this weird power move on me and I'm like, no, it's not that. I just literally, like if you want me to process what you're saying and you want to talk about it, I need to be in a good place. And, you know, I think, you know, there is something that I could probably touch on which is sort of related to that, which we could talk about in a different question. Do you think that there's any other kind of common miscommunications that can happen? Yeah, I think the emotional piece is really, really critical in a lot of the neurodiverse couples because what you talked about with not showing a lot of emotion when you are at your wit's end. The flat effects, the vocal and the notary. Yeah. And, like, you know, one of the reasons that I actually moved forward on filing for divorce was because I was in the emergency room. I thought I was having a heart attack. My ex and I were separated. We were hooked in and he didn't say hello. He didn't ask me how I was doing. He didn't, you know, hold my hand. He didn't give me a hug, nothing. And then a few minutes later, he screamed at me that he was going to divorce me the next week. Now I know, Thomas... That's not very like... But he was overwhelmed. That seems like very poor timing. Right. But he was overwhelmed. He'd never seen me so vulnerable, right? He'd never seen me in a situation like that. You know, we've been together 32 years and I might have woken him up out of sound sleep. So I was looking for that emotional connection and I was looking for that support because I was scared to death.  And then they've shared that with their neurodivergent partner and there was not the response they were looking for. And I think a lot of times, again, misunderstanding that the partner may not know exactly what to say because that particular experience has never happened to them before. They don't want to say the wrong thing, right? And so I think for those of us that aren't autistic when we're having those crises we need to be able to say to our partner what I need from you right now is for you to hold my hand. What I need from you right now is for you to sit here and sit next to me and just hold me while I cry. And I know sometimes that's hard to do when you're emotional but if my partner doesn't feel emotions the way I do or doesn't process them the way I do I'm going to see him as bad for that. I'm going to judge him when really he may be kind of scared and he doesn't know what to do. And I think that's what happened over and over again in my marriage so I literally had to say to my ex when I'm crying, when I'm upset the best thing that you can do is walk over to me and give me a hug. And so I know for some people it feels uncomfortable to ask for the emotional reciprocity or the emotional response you want but if you don't ask for it, right? If you don't ask for it there's no way for your partner to know. And I suppose in kind of looking at what we said earlier or thinking about what we said earlier about being in the center of the universe and thinking everyone works the same way that you do. Am I right in thinking that if they've been in that state that that's not something that they would want? Like they might want some a bit more distance and time to think about it. Right. When my ex-husband's mother died he cried for a few seconds and then that was it. And when his father died he didn't cry at all. Where I was an absolute mess when my parents died and I, Thomas, I didn't understand his reaction. I didn't understand his response. I thought he was cold. I thought he was stoic. I thought he was uncaring. And what I realize now is, oh my gosh he's probably feeling so much inside that he didn't know what he needed in the moment or how to express his emotions. And I can't remember exactly what happened but he probably spent a lot of time alone kind of processing his feelings. And I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted him to connect another miscommunication. Right? I took a personal. I thought things about him that weren't true. You know, I saw him through a negative lens. And I share all this and I try to be vulnerable and realize what I did wrong as well as what we did wrong is a couple because there are so many couples out there that are unintentionally hurting each other. And it has to stop. It has to stop because it's ending relationships. It's causing people to be physically and mentally not healthy and emotionally not healthy. And so that's why I say understanding what your needs are and what you want in a relationship and being clear about what boundaries you need it can be a game changer in a relationship. But you have to understand each partner has to understand themselves and feel like they can communicate that to their partner and that their partner is not going to judge them, right? Yeah, for having different needs. I think it's definitely something like I'm just kind of thinking about myself in those kind of situations. I had a podcast with autism from the inside. Paul McCallus, which I think you know. But we were talking about that and he brought up like a very sort of aspect of Alexa Fimea which I resonated with a lot and that's kind of being good in emergency situations. But not necessarily with the emotional component of it. It's like when we're in an emergency situation we're very helpful in terms of logic. How do we get over this? What you need to do, you know, grounding people but perhaps not the immediate emotional responses that a lot of people might have. And also I think that there is an aspect of specifically for myself when someone's telling me something that's fairly emotional and raw or open or vulnerable. I feel that I don't engage as much. My way of respecting or understanding is that is by processing it very, very, very, very heavily. I don't, you know, I look off into the distance. I kind of focus in on exactly what they're saying and try to think about what it means for them, what I would feel in that situation. And while I'm doing all of that I'm just kind of a bit more stone face and I'm just kind of like looking off into the distance. And it's, you know, I'm feeling those emotions very, very intensely and I'm like, oh my God, like. But it doesn't necessarily appear that way on the outside. It could just look like I'm not really listening and I'm just kind of not contributing, not trying to help them and, you know, so it's, and it's the same with a lot of autistic people that I've met. It's like, you know, they, when they're expressing something they just speak about it and they just, they don't necessarily have that aspect of getting upset or getting emotional. They may get emotional upset later on when they kind of process those emotions and what those events mean to them. But in the moment it's very much like this, I'm a sponge and I'm just absorbing what's happening, what they're saying and how they're feeling. So I feel like sometimes that can be miscommunicated. Absolutely. Usually when people like think of people who are really listening to them they make eye contacts much more than usual and they make the faces and they're like asking questions and they're, they say, yeah, yeah, I get you. Yeah. Yeah. And stuff like that. All stuff that stops you from processing exactly what that person's saying for, especially for an autistic person. Right. When you're trying to focus too much on that in direct communication you're not really sitting with what people are saying. So it's interesting that kind of dynamic, you know. And it's a major miscommunication.  I'm judging you. Yeah.  How could you not? Right. You're getting here. Can you not feel anything? How could you not? I validate what I'm saying. Exactly. So here's one of the things that I say to couples. I say when you're having a conversation with each other and you know what you need from your partner, ask for it. So if you need validation, you can say, I'm going to share what happened at work and I need your validation, meaning I need you to say, I understand that sounds like it was really hard for you and you can even come up with a few sentences that can be used, you know, repeatedly. Or I just need you to listen and I just need you to hold my hand with me while I talk, you know, while I word vomit, right?  And when you can ask for what you need while you're having that conversation, then you set your partner up for success. I didn't do that. So every conversation we had, you know, I might be looking for different things, but I wasn't clear and concise about what I needed and wanted because I don't even know if I knew half the time, right? So I think definitely like the snuggling, the snuggling and the hand holding and the kind of aspects where you don't have to like look at each other and you can just kind of get that, that validation through touch is also, I think, something that works quite well because you don't necessarily have to think about all those indirect things. You can just kind of sit there and listen and comfort your partner with touch and you know, I think that's a very important part. I agree with that, definitely. Yeah, and the emergency response piece, Thomas, I'm 100% in agreement with you. I think a lot of folks who are like first responders in law enforcement in the military. I know, I know many of them. It's a perfect fit, right? It's a perfect fit. To some degree, I think some of the sensory and social components can be like, you know, it'll be interesting to do a study. What is like the paramedic and like the first responders kind of a narcissistic somatism? Because that could be something that, you know, I definitely see myself in that situation. If I see someone hurt or I see someone not in a good place, I'm always like, damn, like I'm going for it. Yeah. And my ex was the same way.  I would be like, keep going, keep going. I don't want to see anything. I don't want to see any blood or gourd and people keep going. I can't do this because I would get overwhelming like anxiety from seeing people hurt. I could not. I felt too much. Yeah. He was able to kind of remove himself from it and just act in the emergency situation in the best way possible. Unless it was me, he could do it with our daughter, but he didn't do it well with me. Yeah. So it's interesting. I think that the last thing that I would really like to talk about, which is I think I would probably say another one of the biggest ones is stuff to do with cognitive empathy. And I've talked about this before and there's been a lot of autistic people who have come back to me and say, oh, I understand these situations. Don't tell me that I don't understand these aspects. But it's very well researched and a lot of autistic people do tend to lack this aspect of cognitive empathy in the context of an allistic individual. In the context of autism, it's not an issue because you don't need to have that aspect of it because it's sort of, you know, it's understood anyway. But in terms of like picking up on signals that you're in direct signals that you're trying to drop to them or certain behavioral differences that you do in order to communicate how you're feeling, anything that's not explicitly characterizable as an emotion. Like if you're crying, obviously we know that you're upset.  But a lot of people, when you do that, they say they're okay.  You must be okay then, great. You know, and so you have that situation where I think there's a concept that I'm not totally on board with it, but like the idea of like the Cassandra syndrome that's talked about a lot, you know, that feeling unemotionally heard by your partner and people not really believing you that they're like that. I don't think that that's necessarily right because it's a lot to do with that miscommunication. You know, on one side, if the autistic person is really hyper aware of that, they will be asking you all the time if there's any differences to the communication that the indirect communication that seems to be coming across. And on the other side, the person will feel like, oh, hey, actually, they don't care about how we feel. And they don't pick up on this stuff and they're just kind of brushing it off even though I'm making it obvious to them. No, they're not. If you communicate directly, that's always going to cancel out that feeling of, you know, what's up because of the indirect stuff. So you get a lot of situations where people are like, oh, they don't care about me. They care about me in these ways. And I say, you know, have you told them that you're feeling a certain way? No, no, I haven't. They should just read my mind. But I think that's something that even a lot of just neurotypical relationships struggle with to a certain degree. It's just a lot more heightened. And it's kind of like if you have situations where that person is trying to communicate indirectly very subtly over a long period of time, it comes to a breaking point with like, why don't you care about me?  I didn't know you were not feeling okay. So you have that kind of reactivity just off the block and it kind of, it feels like it just comes out of nowhere at all. It just comes out of nowhere. And it's very frightening sometimes just like for us, feeling like at any moment a partner could just tell us that we're not being a good partner and that we were not caring about our feelings. I'm like, I can't remember a time when I didn't. You didn't say that you were feeling that way. And I'm like, well, I didn't need to say that I didn't. I picked up like, you know, so you have situations like that. Yeah, where you're flying on the wall of my marriage for 30 years, that's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened, Thomas. And you know, so the Cassandra syndrome was coined by Maxine Aston. And I think that if we kind of take it apart, like we peel the onion a little bit, I think it's about misunderstanding. I think it's about miscommunication. I think it's about not being clear what we each want to need. I think it's about having different perspectives and not respecting each other's perspectives. I think it's about so many things that we didn't understand when Cassandra syndrome was coined as a term. It's a very pathologizing thing that's very medical model kind of autism is the problem. And looking on my relationships and talking to other people, they feel the exact same thing. They don't feel like what they're communicating is being heard because it's not, you don't have those indirect aspects to it and the other person doesn't understand. So I would agree with you there. The miscommunication is definitely the core of that kind of thing. Yeah, and the double empathy piece, right? Because there are so many couples that don't have empathy for each other's way of doing things or way of communicating. And so there's that constant judgment. I mean, that's what happened over and over again in my marriage. And thank goodness that I learned about neurodiversity because I would have kept making the same mistakes in every relationship thereafter, right? If you don't know better, how can you do better, right? So now, I ask when we have an emotional issue that we need to talk about or something that's pretty deep and is going to take more than a five-minute conversation, where's the best way for me to approach you so that we can have that conversation when we're both in a good place? I would have never done that in my marriage, ever. Another area that we didn't talk about is like vacations. I know a lot of the vacations that we went on, oh my gosh, there were lots of arguments and fights of anger, right? Because I didn't understand... The routine. I didn't understand the overload, right? I didn't understand the routine changes. New places. The changes in routine, new places, new beds, new bathroom, new everything. And again, I don't think my ex understood what he needed. And oftentimes, he would end up sleeping until two, three, four o'clock in the afternoon on vacation.  So here's another place where we had repeated conflict. And here you are spending money, Thomas.  And then because you don't understand each other's needs, there's conflict in judgment, right? Well, it made that kind of time to adjust to the new environment and to feel comfortable. Right, right, right.  All those things that we don't take into consideration can be really challenging. So I think the Cassandra syndrome is something that a lot of folks feel comfortable talking about if they're the holistic or neurotypical partner, but I don't think the double empathy piece is something that enough people are talking about, right? And I think it's critical. Any relationships, you need that sense of compromise and that's the same with... I think that's even more important in neurodiverse relationships. There are so many things that you can bring to the relationship when you have a different neurotype, different perspectives, different ways of viewing things and tackling problems that are in their lives. And obviously there are those things that need to be understood first and also to be communicated about, talks about managed and interpersonal over a long period of time. It's not like you say it once and it's completely embedded for the rest of the time. There's been a lot of circumstances where people have understood that I make a lot of content about autism and people have understood that I work this way and this is just how I am and I'm not going to magically change and switch and there are some things that you need to meet me on and I understand there's some ways that I need to meet you on as well. And I'm not necessarily... It is a compromise. I mean, with any relationship it's kind of like a... It's somewhat of a loose idea of a contract in certain circumstances. You are getting something from the other person, you are giving something to that person as well. It's a bit businessy to think of it like that but I think it's definitely worth highlighting. Yeah, because imagine if you got into a relationship and you could be honest about these are the five things that I want you to know about me, right? That are really critical, right? Maybe something regarding the emotional piece, maybe something regarding the sensory piece, maybe something regarding taking trips and transitions and change, maybe something regarding how you process and communicate or like to communicate. What if you could share those things after the first date? Don't share them on the first date, right? I don't want to spill all this information on the first date because you might scare somebody away but maybe like the third or the fourth? This and this and here's the form of an education pamphlet. Are you going to have to read all the, memorize all of these? Yeah, and sign on the dotted line if you want a second date, right? Yeah. But imagine if you knew those things about yourself and you could communicate them in a kind, compassionate way to your potential partner, right? So that's one of the reasons I created the neurodiverse love conversation cards and I don't remember if I said them. I think I said them. So those are 52 questions. I wish my ex-husband and I had asked each other early on in our relationship because if we had understood how the other needed or processed all those topics, oh my gosh, we would have avoided so much conflict and so much judgment, so much. And I think we don't even know the right questions to ask each other oftentimes, you know? Sure, sure. What do you need when you're transitioning from work to home? I wouldn't think to ask that of my ex-husband. A buffer time, please. An hour or two to decompress and then we can chat. There you go. Right. Yeah. So but it's not that kind of romanticized mainstream idea of how relationships have run.  Let's have a conversation and have a meal and all this stuff and then let's do this and that. And it's like, oh my God, Jesus, that's a lot to do after you've burnt yourself out from a day of work. Right. And imagine if neurodiverse couples understood that at the beginning of their relationship, right? And Thomas, you're a lot younger than me, right? You're 559. You're my daughter's age. And so your generation is coming into the dating world knowing so much about neurodiversity, which we didn't when I was dating. My ex and I, we started dating at 21. We married at 23. There was no such diagnosis as autism spectrum disorder. Autism was something that you saw in children, right? And there were other diagnosis for adults. I mean, it could be even schizophrenia. There was anxiety and depression and all these other things that we didn't know autism in adults. And now your generation and the generations that come after you have this knowledge and you can have these conversations with your partner and you can say, I want to understand how your brain is wired. I want to understand what makes you work well in a relationship. I would have never said that. I think you definitely, you're definitely right on that part. There is the knowledge out there. I just, I wish that it was more of a mainstream conversation because that's where that's the relationships that people need that in. If someone's already part of the autistic community, they can talk to their partner about these things. It's not everyone now. Might not even be a majority of autistic people who have that. And then talking about relationships and dating, that's also very niche within a niche of the autistic community. It definitely, it's there. I just wish that it was more accessible to people because I get a lot of people who come on to like my lives or they send me messages and they're like, hey, this happened. It really helped me understand my partner and we've had conversations about it. It's like, good, that is brilliant. But not a lot of people, you know, would perhaps search for things like that and find stuff around that. And perhaps they don't even know that they're diagnosed or not. I would also say that there are additional issues with dating nowadays, which I think probably would make the process very, very complex and difficult. You can imagine situations where people are kind of have this phone and they can swipe and they can find people and if something, my new happens in the relationship, they're like, oh, this is like a power thing and I'm gonna be independent, I'm gonna push them away and when I'm gonna talk it over and develop things further and communicate about it, it's done. I'm not having it, I'm gonna go find another one and it's gonna be easy. Yeah. I totally can relate. I actually did an episode on, I think, I think we called it something like, am I dating somebody who's autistic around the spectrum? And I think that, remember I'm 59, right? So a lot of the men that are on the dating apps, what's interesting is they're in IT, they're engineers, they're in finance and many of them, when you go out on a date with them, you talk to them, this is a generalization so I hope your listeners will see it as that. I'm just putting this out there. Many of them ended their relationship or multiple relationships and oftentimes it's marriages. I can't tell you how many men I've gone out with and I've talked to you who've been in two or three marriages, remember they're my age or older and they're trying to figure out how to get this right. They do not know that they're neurodivergent. They do not know that they're autistic. But when I tell them that I have a podcast called Neurodiverse Love, they're like, what is that about? And I tell them. Yeah, they don't know what neurodiverse means. And some of them are like, I have to explain what neurodiverse means and I can't tell you. I probably had a half a dozen men listen to the podcast and say, I think I'm autistic. So I'm like, and these are men in their 50s and 60s. I think it's really underrated. Just like, I think it's good to think about the experiences that we have, but with relationships, it's much more of such an emotional investment and it's such more of like a time spent with another person that if you have experiences which are similar in terms of relationship, I feel like that's very compelling evidence. Because it is, it's a clash of an autistic and an allistic person and living. So those differences are obviously going to show up a lot more. So I think definitely I can see why. I am aware that we've been chatting for a while and we've only kind of gone with the first question that I was going to ask. I think it would be really good to have you back on another point to talk about perhaps the more dating side of things. Okay, anytime. And sort of how to, I guess, the more kind of finding a partner and sort of the early stages of things that would be okay. Absolutely. But I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of the challenges or the positives to neurodivergent relationships but also about like life milestones. Things like moving in together, holidays as you mentioned a little bit about getting married, engagements, what that means. All of that stuff. I kind of started off phrasing it as a question and now it's not but do you get what I'm asking? Yeah, absolutely. So I think there are major milestones that occur as your relationship moves on, right? So the first one might be that you're monogamous or that you're dating only each other or you're dating maybe two people or whatever, right? There's something happening that you're more committed to each other. And so being clear about what that looks like because one person, I remember my ex saying because you thought about cheating during our marriage as far as I'm concerned, you cheated. I didn't understand that logic. Really? Yeah, I didn't understand that logic but then I had one of my... It's a natural thing that people have curiosity about. It's nothing that you can stop. It's just about not doing it. Right, but you know what was so interesting, Thomas, one of my autistic co-hosts when I shared that with her, she says I understand where he was coming from because it hurt him just as much to know that I was thinking about cheating or at least this is what she thought as if I had done it. It was like for him, there wasn't a differentiation and so I think being clear about what monogamy means if you're in a relationship with somebody who is a different neuro type because is monogamy that you can't sleep with anybody else, like have sex with anybody else or that you can kiss other people, right? So being clear about what the definition is. So those boundaries. As I said, it's like a contract, isn't it? With two adults consenting to a relationship, you don't have to follow all of the things that the mainstream is telling you that you need to do. You just need to both be agreeing to it. Right, because then the guy I fell in love with after my divorce, he said to me, he didn't consider cheating unless he slept with the person. So kissing somebody going out on dates wasn't cheating. Okay, we need to understand that, right? So that's the first milestone that could literally break the relationship, right? You cheated on me, no I didn't, right? Did I hit it there? You bring up like an experience that I've had. Okay. Well, I've never cheated on anyone or anything like that, but I have been in a lot of situations where I didn't understand that the situation was a date or it was something akin to a date or the conversations that we're having were akin to not a conversation with a friend. And that's because I didn't really understand the greater social context of what was happening. And it goes so far even with flirting, you know? I don't really, and to be honest, it is a very misunderstood idea that flirting is just very easily characterizable. It is to a certain extent, it's very explicit when you are making like sexual references and things of that nature. But for the majority of situations, sometimes for some people, just having an interest and talking to someone or if still talking to someone, if they put their hand on your shoulder and perhaps like tap your leg or like, you know, so it's very grey that area. And I think that there has been times in my life where I've understood my relationship with someone as a friend, but then, you know, looking back, it didn't really seem like that was how that went, but I didn't flirt with them, I didn't confess my love, I didn't kiss them, I didn't do anything.  But it's not in my head and I'm like, I'm not going for a day, I'm going for a drink with a friend and, you know, it's not really understanding the other person's intentions with me. Yeah. So sometimes I think it's best just to ask, you know, is this a date or are we just going as friends in that particular situation if you're going out with somebody that you could potentially be in a relationship with? I was very young. I was like, well, one time, age of 14, one time the age of, age of 18, 19. I got you, I got you. My ex talked about those kind of situations in middle school too, where these girls had crutches on him and he didn't know and he didn't know what to do. Yeah. And he looks back and it just, when you see it through a different lens, you're like, oh my gosh, I could have had that girl, whatever. Oh yeah. Understanding flirting is elusive. It is really important. In the dating context, but also... I think it's hard for a lot of people. Yeah. Because it's individual, isn't it, to the person as well, isn't it? Because it's not like this easily understood concept. There's no playbook. There's no, you know, dictionary or encyclopedia of different ways to flirt because everybody does it differently, right? Yeah. I think that that's hard for a lot of people.


Ever wonder what all the numbers and letters in the side of your tire mean stay tuned and we'll tell you roll the intro Okay, so today we're going to cover tires We did a little bit last week on tires in last episode But winter tires and summer tires and all seasons and kind of the difference of those three We'll get Phoebe to drop a link somewhere over my head to let you guys click on that if you haven't seen it So what we're gonna do today is kind of focus on the actual tire itself and let you guys know with all those letters and Numbers in the side of the tire mean so it'll help you if you're trying to purchase some tires How to pick the right tire for your car? So we'll go ahead and start off obviously you get on here and you can see it This is a Firestone tire and if you look underneath you'll see this number here, which is your 235 50 are 19 So this is the size of the tire So your 235 is how wide your tire is in millimeters So it's 235 millimeters wide across the across the tread And then you got this 50 which is the aspect ratio so that means that 50% of that width is the total height of the tire The next one here is your R and the R stands for radial tire, which is the construction of the tire So this is a ready radio tire You can also get belted or by supply tires They don't really apply these days on any passenger cars or trucks So we won't delve into that too far, but that's what that R stands for The 19 means the dimension of the rim or the dimension of the tire as far as Inches in diameter. So that's what size tire This is would go in a 19 inch rim for your car When you move a little farther here, you'll see there's a 99 inch your first number here is your low rating So that'll tell you there's a chart you can go to online. We'll be almost done. I got work to do here I'm almost done. Just give me a minute. Okay. Okay. Thank you Sorry about that folks. So if you look at the 99 that's going to be your low rating So there's a chart I'll get Phoebe to throw it up on on the screen there So you'll be able to see you can find it online if you Google it tire charts for speed or for low rating And so that'll correspond to how much weight that this tire can take So obviously you have to take the what you're all four tires can take add them together And that would be the amount that your vehicle could handle for a gross vehicle weight so That would kind of play into a factor if you're someone that Pull out set of you know passion your tires on your on your truck that you haul a trailer or a fifth wheel camper And you're overloading your tires. Of course, you don't want to do that So that's what that's you want to make sure that you're getting the right tire for weight The next letter here the H that stands for the speed rating. So same thing will get Phoebe to throw up a picture there You can check and see what your speed rating is. So if you're someone who you know, if you're into performance driving Or your truck, you know taking your car to track events or your drag race or whatever You might want a higher speed rating like a Y or a Z rated tire and that just adds to stability for high speed so You just move along here a little further rotate the tire you can see here You've got treadwear traction and temperature and each one of those come with your treadwear comes with the number The higher the number the longer the tread pattern will last why they didn't you know make it 100 was 100,000 kilometers or 50. They don't so this 520 doesn't mean 520,000 or even 52,000 This same thing would correspond to a chart that would tell you how many Kilometers that tire would last now of course The weight of your vehicle what kind of drive you're doing where you're driving it We'll play a factor into into that just the same as few miles does just kind of an estimate or a calculation So the higher the number when you're buying tires you bet a better quality tire It's gonna last you longer And then you got your traction your temperature both of those are going to be in letters A, B and C you can have two ways and On there as well, and that's basically just telling it that this tire here traction is really good traction in In warm weather and you've also got your temperature here is a B meaning It's kind of a middle of the gray tires Flexibility stays pretty decent for colder weather and for warmer weather and that's why this is an all-season tire So if we roll around here a little further you can see you got your DOT Number here This isn't really too important I guess as far as what you'll need to know most of the time you have tires will Either weather crack or be worn it long before you ever come you know have to worry about this But just for your knowledge, this is the date for your tire So this this number here this four-digit number this means that it's the 27th week of 2019 at this tire was built Which ends up being a July 1st to July 2nd is when this tire was built in 2019 just kind of a build date on the tire The rest of the stuff here. You'll see on most tires. You'll also have a Tell you what you can inflate to and cold cold PSI for maximum Inflation of your tire The best thing to do for your tire is to check the inside of your door and I'll get Phoebe to throw a picture of it up Most cars have the same same picture same little sticker or deco. It's inside of the door Jam it'll tell you what size tire you need for your car. It'll also tell you How much inflation you should run on the tire as well because some vehicles have obviously different front and rear The only thing this tire doesn't have on it that a lot of a lot do is ahead of these numbers here for your size Sometimes you'll see a P which means passenger You'll see some to say LT which is for light truck so If you're having a half ton truck or three-quarter ton truck and you're hauling a heavy load a lot of trailer Camper stuff like that. You want to make sure you put on a LT tire usually a thicker ply tire thicker wall to either a 10-ply or sometimes even a 12-ply So you just want to be careful of that. We also see a T as well, which is a trailer tire You'll see see for commercial as well. So just a few things there, but for vehicles It's going to be the either the P or the LT So that's pretty much it for tires best thing to do is check with the person that's in gonna sell you your tires You want a true professional to tell you You know what tires should be in your car Reason I do that's the most important. It's only you're going to be ten minutes at One ten to one. It's ten after one. I got work to do. I know Okay, just just chill it and relax. Okay? Sorry again folks, so Yeah, you definitely want to check with whoever's selling your tires to give you the best You know give you the best advice on your tires That's the most important safety feature on your car. It's actually only part of the car that actually touches the road So it's real important to make sure You know that the least you're a little educated now You can know at least what those numbers mean the side of your tire If you have to fill your tire, you know your tire up there Sorry, you can go and check your door and at the very least we don't have one You can find at least the maximum pressure your tire here So hope this video has been helpful. We better move it along here Jeremy's in a rush we don't hold him up anymore and any comments or questions just drop them the link down below and We look forward to seeing you get some more content out for you. Thanks


working from home can be nice but it's also much harder than working from an office especially in these days when there are so many distractions around you. So in this video I want to give you five tips that I'm doing by myself in these hard days when everyone works from home to stay focused on the business and make my work on the best way. Hello everybody so let's talk about the five things that I'm doing for myself to stay focused on the business and make it on the best way. So the first one and the very basic one is workspace. Make sure that you have a desk dedicated for your work, a screen and all of the workspace that you need. It can be a notebook, it can be a pencil or a pen, everything that you need for your job should be on the same place. It should be a very clean place which focused only on work. You are not doing there anything else and it should be outside of the place where you sleep. It's very important that it will not be in your bedroom where you're also sleeping. If you don't have this option so just try to put a desk somewhere where it can be really focused. Another thing here is and it's very important is that most of you I guess have kids. I don't have but many of our viewers have so I saw how hard it's to work when there are kids at your home and you should make discipline there. You should put a door that you know that the kids know that when the door is closed you are working and they should not disturb you. The second thing is that wake up always at the same time. Wake up every day at the same hour at the same time. You should put an alarm every day because if you don't do that you will not start your day at the right discipline with the right mindset and that's bad. You should go sleep every day at the same time and wake up at the same time. This way you will have actually a routine for your life which you know when you work and when you are not working. You cannot work always and you cannot work whenever you want. You should set up a specific time so you will be concentrated in this time and you will not know that on this time at this time you are actually focusing on work. The third thing that I'm doing every day is that I'm taking a paper and I'm writing there all of my tasks for the specific day. Do that every day and make sure that when you are finishing your work you just finished all of the tasks. It should be just line per task that you're just writing with the pen that you've done that. The next thing and that's one is a bit different one is dress. It's very important to put on yourself clothings that you're wearing where you go to your job, to your daily job or to your office or whatever you are doing. I put every day even that I'm working now from home. I put everyday jeans and t-shirt that I go with it for my work for show not the Autodesk t-shirt but you know the t-shirt that I'm usually wearing because it makes you feeling that you're actually going to work. You're not sitting without you know with home clothings when you're working. You should understand that you're coming to work and to put yourself in the right mindset. Tip number five and that's actually I'm doing also on the job but when you work from home to concentrate it's very important so I put some playlist with relaxing music so I can really focus only on work and not be disturbed by anything else that are going on on my home from other people or anything else. Make sure that you are not jumping between tasks like things that you need to do at your home during the work time because your work time is just to promote your business take it forward and improve it. I hope that these tips help you. See you in the next videos. Don't forget to subscribe our YouTube channel like this video and share it with everyone who is working now from home so we can really help them. See you in the next videos. Bye-bye.


Hello everyone, this is financial author Ahmed Dan of Ahmeddan.com. On this channel, you'll find financial travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now. If you like what you see, please give me the thumbs up and consider subscribing. Hello everyone, this is financial author Ahmeddan of Ahmeddan.com. Today I'll talk about WestJet's new ultra low cost air carrier, Silk, which will be offering services between canned Canadian cities at a very low cost starting June. The lowest cost one way of using soup would be $39 and the catch is that you'll not be able to take major airports. For example, if you're in Ontario, then instead of taking Toronto Pearson Airport, you'll have to go to Hamilton to take soup to British Columbia. And then there's no, it will not be going to Vancouver Airport, rather it will, you're going to have to go to Abbott's Food, BC using soup. And another catch is that you're only allowed to have only one personal item. And if you'd like to do anything extra, then for everything you're going to have to pay. For example, wifi, mail, carry on luggage or any other anything you'd like. So I'm going to take you to my laptop screen and then I'll show you what is the round trip cost from Toronto to Vancouver and what is the one way cost from Toronto to Vancouver. So let's take, let's go to my laptop screen and then we'll see how low soup can offer us. Thank you. Hello everyone. This is Amit Dan. So I'll be showing you what is the lowest cost you can get using soup to fly from Ontario to British Columbia. What it means that if you're in Toronto and let's say you'd like to go to British Columbia, then the catch is that you're going to have to go to Hamilton Airport. Soup doesn't operate from the major airports like Toronto Pearson Airport. So we'll see what's, you know, what the lowest fare you can get to go to British Columbia, which is going to be Abbott's Ford BC. And now on the main screen right here, you can see that there's a $39 fare from Abbott's Ford to Edmonton, but we'll check from Toronto or Ontario to British Columbia. So we'll choose one way here and then let's choose Hamilton, Ontario. And here on this screen, as you can see that soup is operating from these cities only. So Abbott's Ford, Edmonton, Halifax, Hamilton and Unipeg. So one, two, three, five cities and we'll choose Hamilton. And then because this is one way, so we're going to choose the target city, which is going to be British Columbia. And then we'll see what is the deeper date. Soup is going to operate from June, but we'll see what is the lowest cost we get for this fare, even in July or after. So here I'm looking at June. Okay, it doesn't make sense. Maybe I have to, sorry, I have to hit search. So if I hit search here, then looks like there are no flights available for the date you selected. So let's go to modify. And here again, so deeper date is going to be, okay, so it looks like starting June 20. So here we can see 339 June 21st, 179 June 22nd, 149. And if you look at July, then I can see all fears, but I don't see anything below 179. Okay, let's try August. And same here, September, same here. 179. I see 149. I see 149 here, which is September 14. Let me go back to July to see if there's any 149. So for July, I don't see any 149. So 179. So for September, I was able to find for these dates, September 14, September 21, September 28, 149. So we have our lowest fare from Toronto or Ontario to British Columbia, which is $149. Now let's go back and search for return trip. And we are going to change it to round trip. And we have Hamilton, Ontario and Abbots for BC and deeper date is going to be, let's see, we have here June 22, which is $158. And looks like that's the lowest deferred date. I'll just quickly check August and September. And same here. I don't see anything lower than that. So let's choose June 22, $158. And then we're going to choose our return date, which is now, okay, looks like June. Okay, so July, June 24. That's not realistic if you're living on June 22. So we'll see what's what we have in July. So I don't see anything lower in July than $196. Let's check August and September. August is actually up and September is $131. I see $131. So September 21. Let's click on that. So we have these two dates. And let's search, hit on search flights. And we have Friday, departing a flight is Friday June 22. And let's hit on here. Okay, so let's hit on here. And departing. Oh, I have to put a check tick mark here. And so we have the departing flight and returning flight is September 21, which is right here. And we get our total fare right here, which is $317.85. 375, 317, and 85. So these are the lowest fares we can find for one way and return trip from Toronto to Vancouver, which is not bad either. With the regular airline, my guess would be if you do a round trip, it would be close to $1,800 to $1,000. If you get lucky, you might get lower than that. And one way would be similar. For example, it would be $400 to $500 or even more depending on where you're looking at. So again, it's not bad at all. Even if you have to pay a little bit extra for the extra items, for example, Wi-Fi or carry on or small things like that. But still, you're getting a good deal. And if you don't mind driving to the nearest airport, which is, let's say, for Toronto residents would be the Hamilton, Ontario. So you are getting a good deal. So hopefully there will be more ultra-cost care coming in the future. So that's all for now. If you like what you see, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing. And I'll see you shortly with another video. Thank you.


From Austin, Texas, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Dell World 2015. Brought to you by Dell. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live at Dell World. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events, they start the sizzle noise. Our next guest is Chairman Sherry, the CTO of Dell EMC, federal now. Dell EMC, but mainly Dell, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much, John. I got to get used to this. Dell EMC and, you know, we got the hashtag trending certainly in our community, but welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Austin, the federal is used to buying things kind of steady, getting all these flyers. Certainly the acquisition will have a big part of that change in your job. But it's an interesting engineering exercise. You now have to cobble it all together and actually provide solutions. But there's not much of a change for you. I mean, the whole acquisition just gives you more canvas to paint from. Just talk about the quick impact of the acquisition in context to the keynote that Michael just delivered, which was all about building out. Absolutely. It's a brilliant platform for our customers. I think they gain a lot of leveraged advantage of the combined companies. When you look at the difficulty of government acquisition today, and then for the government to have to integrate these capabilities on site themselves, bringing these two powerhouse companies together really has streamlined that process. And what we really measure our success in is time to mission value. You know, we have the best customers on the planet being able to serve governments around the world and bringing time to value and that time to mission value is just hypercritical in this environment. And the government relationship you guys have, it's pretty extensive. Share some quick figures and then talk about what you see as the criteria for the agencies. Because each one has their own little requirements. Ossie Secure is a big part of it. How big is your business now? I mean, technology-wise, any scope of the offering you have now and where is it going to change radically? Specific numbers for me are kind of challenging. We are pervasive and every government customer that you could possibly imagine around the planet. What I would say to you from the end user compute workstations to laptops, desktops, deploy capabilities, and the data center footprint in the infrastructure is just incredible. I think for us, the landscape's gotten much larger in that arena, but also has provided us an opportunity for our customers to really transform their data centers with all these new initiatives, right? The FDCECI initiative, FITARA now coming into play, which is a great advantage for us. We are fully supportive of where the government's headed with this because it's allowing them to shift a mindset that was built back in the era of World War II, which is now we can shift from buying things to buying outcomes, which really helps transform each. So FITARA is the federal IT acquisitions that are being formed. Talk about that. What is that? What does it mean? FITARA really is the next generation of where we're headed with the Klinger Cohen updates, which is now empowering a lot of the federal CIOs to really take advantage of the transformational efforts that are occurring with technology. As we all know, the government has a path to the technology, but it's the business model and the acquisition strategy that now gives them a newer platform to be able to get into the budgeting discussions and really shift their optics into a strategic format rather than a tactical and operational format. So they get this great healthy blend of both. So is this kind of like a little bit of agile meets management kind of strategic technology? In a way. In a way. Agility, if you will. And it's stimulating a lot of new innovation in the way that we run IT as a business in the federal government. Like what? What do you mean? So transforming the way we do IT processes, we start leveraging things like IT service management principles from idle. You get to be able to leverage those advantages. You get to shift what you're buying from specific products and services to actually outcomes that support emission. So now you can rank and rate us as a global company on availability and scalability rather than just delivering the piece parts of a solution. I want to get your thoughts on this because in the news this past year, Amazon won the CIA against IBM, big court battle, Amazon won. You get the judge actually saying, hey, this is a more superior solution, which is kind of like everyone took note of that. The federal's on the sales side's got some salesmanship things that have been in motion. But from a technology, everyone took notice and said, hey, a cloud player like Amazon would not enterprise ready at the time, so to speak, won a big cloud deal. What has that done for your view into the agencies because does that make cloud more viable as it changed the game? And how does Dell respond to that potential new trend in Amazon winning the cloud business? It's a great question. It's actually helped us bolster the business, which is a little antithetical to what most people think. It did validate cloud as a strategy and cloud as a business model and technology platform. For us though, I firmly believe, which is why I voted my feet and came to Dell, our value proposition is much greater. So when you look at the business model and the service delivery model of what Amazon employs today, it really works on the premise of you have to come to them on site. Dell's cloud strategy not only allows us to deal with the onsite requirements, but as in most things that are mission driven, you have missions that are expeditionary in nature and require you to have to take a cloud capability in a global context. And when you're talking about war fighting or the DOD markets or intelligence community markets, sometimes that involves disadvantaged users that have no comms access. So a cloud in that context is very limited with Dell's power, Dell's capability and our portfolio of offerings now, we can take the cloud anywhere around the globe. And with Atari, you don't have options on being more choosing, if you will, for available technologies, which means code word for, you can mix and match faster rather than going through some long, long ass procurement process or validation. Absolutely, the way I would couch that is being customer centric as we are as a company, it allows our customers choice. It allows customers options where they can take a cloud model into a very non-traditional type of IT environment. So I just want to make sure I understand that the point you're making is that from a global footprint standpoint, you have an advantage with your network, your partner network, your ability to deploy cloud services anywhere, anytime, versus somebody who's, you know, public cloud, they've got to have a point of presence there. Is that what you're saying? That's exactly right. So when you look at cloud at a macro level from a strategy perspective, Amazon's done a brilliant job talking about the messaging with regards to public cloud computing. For Dell, we're in all the other three quadrants when you talk about private cloud computing, hybrid and community clouds, which is where the cloud is going. I really think public cloud has reached a precipice where its value proposition is becoming more limited. As we've heard today from Michael Speak, businesses are implementing hybrid strategies around the world. And some of these strategies require clouds in areas where you can't gain access to a public cloud. So a couple of tentpole macro trends in the last decade, we're talking about cloud. And the other is, because we saw Vivek Kundra came in and there was a lot of noise, and I don't know if there's been a backlash of, not backlash, but hey, wow, we can do that on-prem and simulate some of those benefits. But that cloud mentality clearly has permeated the federal government, whether it's on-prem or public. And then the second is data. Since 9-11, the US government has become one of the most sophisticated users of data and exploiting value from data. I wonder if you could talk about that trend and how Dell has responded. Absolutely. In the heritage product lines that we have, we've always focused on data management, information management. When you start to subscribe to the principles of unlocking value, which is really the information hidden in the data, when you look at the suite of offerings we have in the analytics space, it's more than just collecting and storing. It's about how you unlock the business or mission value of what's in that data. So a lot of the portfolio like Statistica and a lot of the analytical capabilities that we provide are not only dealing with the heritage data problem but the emerging big data problem that's occurring in government. The big data problem is exacerbated by not only constituents, but also government employees now getting into a mobile context with the way they work. So now the data explosion is exponentially worse than what we're seeing prior. So I wonder if you could talk about end to end in the context of the EMC acquisition, which I know is going to be about nine, 12 months before it closes, but thinking ahead, how does that give you competitive advantage in federal, just in terms of the way the federal government consumes? Are you going to be able to craft wire RFPs in a way that other people won't be able to respond to? How will that all shake out? The fair it opens always the best way, as you know, as a practice in the United States government business and the government business around the globe. For us though, in the end to end solution story, it really does provide us all the way from the end user back into the data center in a more robust way the way their missions work. The role of the federal government's only getting more complex as we move forward is a world and as a nation and as a country. So the end to end capability being able to manage information, secure information, but also give that access to users all the way from the user endpoint through the networking layer into the data center and the way we then manage and secure this at the data center and the data management layer is vital for all these missions. So I think bringing the two portfolios together is absolutely the best value for the customer. There's the guy, and it's probably the answer is both, but does the government buyer value more best of breed or convenience? That's an ongoing argument in the commercial world and the pendulum is tilted. It's clearly this idea of having a zillion companies each with the best of breed and then you are the integrator is shifting. People don't want to be the integrator anymore, but what about the federal government's mindset? Best of breed versus sort of convenience of one throat to choke and greater integration. It's mixed depending on what your role is within the government. It's a great point you're making here is you still have to offer fair and open competition into the end of the government to make things fair and balanced for the taxpayers. For us though, when you talk about this, when you're in the mission side of the government and mission space, the optics you're going to look at the problem are very different and it's all about time and mission value. So if you can go to a single provider that offers a broad portfolio of capability and solutions that I can bring in to enhance what I'm doing from a mission perspective, there's tremendous value there. If you talk to acquisition leadership, acquisition leadership likes fair and open. They like best value. They like competition for all the reasons and value to provide to the government to make sure from a business case they're getting the best deal. So it really depends on what role you play within the government and what optic you choose. Cameron, I want to get your take on the hype term and also mega trend that's happening. I'll see it was headlining the keynote, internet of things and its impact to federal. Obviously the government's involved in a lot of, obviously from surveillance, intelligence communities to a lot of just- They got a lot of things. They got a lot of physical infrastructure. The government runs a lot of stuff. Absolutely. So from public transportation, education, I mean, it's out of this mind, it's mind blowing actually. What's your take on the internet of things aspect of the government and what they need to do to change and what technologies will they be looking at and for their build out plan? Sure. This to me is one of the more exciting trends since the foundation of the internet. Because we're not getting visibility and realizing the dreams we had yesterday today. So now everything is going to be connected. The real trick with the internet of things is what value we're going to drive out of the information that's being collected. From a government or federal perspective, this allows us to really attenuate constituent services and this will sound a little crazy but actually for the government to save money in the process. Because now they can focus the agency missions, the execution of those missions into where services are being consumed the most by constituents. You could take the intelligence community just to be able to preserve and prevent the loss of life when you're in these types of situations that's paramount for everybody. So I think that point is right on.  And new devices, don't forget the supply chain in fact. For Dell, I mean, Amazon builds their own service for their cloud. I mean, Dell could make their own both set. So I mean, I'm just speculating, but I just. So the reason I'm getting excited about when I hear somebody say that, like Cameron just mentioned, is that the internet of things, there's a premise out there that says it's, you know, we'll have to talk about disruption.  And you know, we're seeing all kinds of waves. Joe Tucci used to talk about waves and waves got a little too gnarly. He said you're not out for the next wave, you're dribbling. He'll crash your bow, you're not careful. Okay, but so the internet of things, is it disruptive or is it the existing infrastructure out there is going to take advantage of it?  It's driving value on existing infrastructure from existing organizations. How do you see the IoT from the Fed perspective? That's the point is spot on. For the federal government, I mean, do you think about where we have sensors in the world today? We can do things like manage roads and infrastructure, physical infrastructure better if we know how to deal with wear and tear and proactive maintenance. We can look at public safety with the sensors, with cameras and other things that are in cities today. So that first responders can respond better and respond more quickly to incidents where there could potentially, unfortunately, they may have a loss of life. There are so many use cases. This is really not only us just connecting the planet, but now understanding how we participate in the ecosystem. So the incumbent here, John, has a huge opportunity. It's the innovator's opportunity versus the innovator's. Well, it's not a rip and replace a lot of Uber to use that term. It's not a really, the Uber's disrupting an existing industry that's been waiting to be disrupted that had, you know, obviously certain legacy incumbents. What they're talking about here is actually building on top of pre-existing stuff, changing the world and just extending technology. So the guy who owns a parking meter has an advantage, though, is the point there, right? But I know they're getting the cut here. I won't get to one last question. But the question I want to ask you, Cameron, is you bring up things like safety first responders. There is a Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you will, from a low-hanging fruit standpoint. Can you just kind of give us the teared approach of some of the things that you see? Obviously, the Internet of Things is, oh yeah, my refrigerator will be programmed to turn on the ice bucket when it needs, I mean, that's low-hanging, you know, not a critical infrastructure. Right. So you first responders, safety, tear out the things that you see, that you see would be opportunities that would sequence out. So if we look at the context of Maslow's needs, right? Food, water, basic safety, basic needs for humans. Leveraging the Internet of Things type of strategy, we can now do things like predict food spoilage, right, working all the way back as far as farmers and crops. We can look at planning cycles, we can look at soil content, we can look at all these different things that have a long stream, downstream impact on food safety, water safety, and all these things that we need as just citizenry to be able to survive as human beings. So the Internet of Things, it's not only where we place sensors, it's what we do with the data, how we really capitalize on that information to really streamline the entire ecosystem. You know, something that's fascinating is the United States wastes almost four billion pounds of food. Imagine using the Internet of Things to be able to either prevent that waste or ship that food worldwide as a new opportunity. And people are things too. People are things too. I mean, thing one, thing two, I read that to my kids. But the thing is that connected devices are humans and machines. That is a really big opportunity from voting to food spoilage. Absolutely. Karen, we went over a little bit, it was worth it because the Internet of Things, we could go in a whole segment just on that. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for sharing your insight and the data, if you will, here inside theCUBE.  We love coming to the events and instructing the civil nerves. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back after this short break.