Hello. I'm Tony Allen. I'm going to talk about load shedding in Envoy. I'm a software engineer at a MechaCorp and you can find me at those social media platforms. So this talk is going to kind of take the form of two halves. The first half is not going to have all that much to do with Envoy specifically, but I am going to talk about some concepts, which I think are important, and it kind of sets the stage to talk about all the different load shedding mechanisms in Envoy.  So let's start with what is load. When I'm referring to load in this talk, I'm talking about layer seven requests that are proxied through Envoy and that are using resources on some application that the Envoy would be proxying for. So the resource on the application could be time on the CPU cores, memory, the often overlooked network bandwidth and disk bandwidth, and as the load increases on a server, these things are contended and there's not enough of it to go around for all of the active requests on the server. So I'm going to talk a little bit about Little's Law here, which I'm sure folks have seen this before, but it was kind of brought forth in 1960 in some operations research journal. And it's the expected number of units in a system is equal to the expected time spent by a unit in that system times, well, the rate of units entering that system. We can interpret this as average concurrency equals average rate times average latency. So it seems obvious to a lot of people, but there's some nuance here. It's independent of the arrival distribution of the requests. So it can take as long as the average is whatever you're plugging into the formula. We can have giant tails or it can all be that exact same value. It doesn't really matter. And the concurrency in a system, and by system timing and application here, is going to mean or it can take on any form, right? It can be a queue or we can just have a bunch of floating requests that we're interleaving between and juggling until we tip over. And another interesting thing to keep in mind here is that the time spent queued in the system is what's contributing to like observed latency, right? By whoever sent that unit into the system. So this kind of explains why our latencies go up as concurrent work increases because we're interleaving between it or we're waiting in line until there's some kind of service. So if we apply this to a server, right, request comes in, response comes out, we can explain it. Some servers have an executor that's pulling from some kind of work queue, right? So you have some worker threads pull from a queue and go like a channel or something, right? And there's a fixed service time. So I process a request, it takes me some unit of time and it always does that, right? The latency that's observed from a client is going to be the amount of time it would spend in the queue. So it's the queue delay plus the actual service time, which doesn't change depending on the size of that queue. Okay. In other cases, we just have a server that just like takes a request, spins off a go routine while it does its thing and then just keeps doing this, right? And we end up in this scenario where we're interleaving between all of the requests. So the service time for a request is some function of the number of things that we're juggling, the number of active requests we have in the system, right? And in this scenario, the service time is going to increase as you get more requests into the system, right? And since the latency is the queue delay plus the service time, right? We're increasing directly the amount of time it takes to work on that request as we put more requests in. And then the increased latency from that means more concurrent requests because we're slowing down. And then the service time increases and you kind of get the idea. We end up in this feedback loop, right? So there was a recent, like a 2011 paper where John Little revisits Little's law in a computational context. He's like, let's graph some things that are active requests and latency, right? So on the left side, we have requests per second on the x-axis and the requests in process, right? So in envoy terms, this would be our active, upstream active request or something. On the right side, we have requests per second on the x-axis and latency on the y. And you'll notice that they both kind of have this linear relationship, right? Or this linear curve in the beginning and then things kind of go real bad at around the same time. So this is that feedback loop I was talking about earlier, right? It's also referred to as a congestive collapse sometimes. So to avoid this kind of scenario, given that Little's law relationship, there are a few things we can do here, right? If what we care about is like fixing the latency, right? If we want to limit concurrency, we think of it as bounding queues, right? Putting an upper bound on how many we can have there. In envoy, we sort of do this with circuit breakers or adaptive concurrency, which we'll talk about later. And in an application, right, you can do this with worker threads in a work queue where you put a bound on that or queue timeouts in some cases. With a rate, we can adjust that by just sending less things, right? Or rate limiting. So we do that in envoy or the application. And then what some people don't think about is latency. We do have control over what the request latencies are in the service times. We do this with timeouts. So we place an upper bound on the amount of time that we spend servicing a request, right? And assuming we have some kind of cancellation mechanism in the application, we can also make use of deadline propagation. So I'm going to do some simulations because I think it's nice to see some of the stuff in action and to understand how it works. I'm using this buffer bloater project on my GitHub, which has 19 stars. It's a very popular open source project with a thriving ecosystem and community. So feel free to send a pull request.  And the client's proxy requests through some external envoy process and they're sent to one of the server go routines. Okay. So the actual server go routine, what it does is it, you know, can juggle any number of requests and what it does the interleaving business, right? So it'll randomly pick some active request and each of these requests will have some service time associated with them, right? And we'll just decrement 100 microseconds of remaining work, sleep for 100 microseconds. And if we've completed that request, right, we've decremented it to zero, then hey, send the reply. We're done. Otherwise, just, you know, keep just keep doing this and put it back in the pool. So the output of that program looks like this, right? So at the top, we have an offered load, which is an RPS, the clients are sending to the servers. We have an observed latency around there in the middle, right? You see this banding because you can configure that generator to have a distribution of various latency. So each one of those points is an observed latency and good put at the bottom. So good put is the amount of useful work that a system is doing or system is working with there. So it's a portmanteau of good and throughput. So 510 requests and I reply 200 to all of them. Then I have a good put of 10 for whatever unit of time that was. If I time out half of them, then I have a good put of five requests per unit of time. And I should mention, I made this program before Nighthawk existed, and then I figured it's just easy to reuse. So don't actually use this for anything substantial. So the active requests on the server are also plotted, and you can see this.  The good put slightly increases too. And then the number of active requests kind of spikes up. So you're seeing that the concurrency as that increases is affecting the latency. But we're getting more productive throughput through it. So this is like your classic latency versus throughput trade off. In case you didn't see it, there they are. So I'm gonna kind of go through all the different load shedding mechanisms. And first, we'll talk about no load shedding and the scenarios I'll bring up. We'll talk about rate limiting circuit breaking and then the fancy mechanisms towards the end there. Are we allowed to just take questions in the middle before we go on? I want to make sure we're all on the same page as far as queuing goes. Okay, cool. We're all experts now. So here's a scenario. I have some reasonable amount of load, and then there is a spike in traffic, and it increases it by, I don't know, 50, 60% for a short period of time. And then things go back to normal. So we can see this at the top with the offered load. You'll see how it affects latency. Okay, latency is whatever the service was doing. And then it climbs up until it hits whatever three is the the actual units don't really matter. We're just looking for the relationship. So things will start timing out, right? And you can take a look at the good put there at the bottom. So those vertical bars are the area in which the offered load was higher than what the normal steady state is, right? You'll see the good puts like kind of fine. It's, you know, hobbling along until eventually crashes to zero. We're timing out all of our requests because the server spending all of its time juggling active requests, the majority of which are timed out. So it's not doing any kind of useful work, right? But we're just we keep sending it more traffic anyway. So this is your classic overload scenario. And we know that this thing works because you know, this is we see this in real life all the time. So let's use the local rate limit filter, right? So in Envoy, we have the local rate limiting and the global rate limiting global rate limiting. I'm not going to talk about because that's like you need an external service and there's this interaction that's kind of complex, right? So we'll just look at the local rate limit filter local decisions with a token bucket. Okay, and the way the token buckets work is there's some refresh time we refresh a bucket with some number of tokens. And then whenever something wants to make it through the filter, right, it grabs a token. So 510 tokens in the bucket, only 10 requests are going to get through until I refresh again. So I see a lot of people in places I've worked that want to protect a microservice or something by performing rate limiting. And I mean, it tends to work out, right? So you see this like thrashing this up and down motion with the latency in the middle there. That's just because we keep refreshing with tokens. So we just have these bursts of requests and then we stop sending requests and we burst the request and then we stop sending the request. So a queue forms, queue burns down a queue forms a queue burns them. So we observe that but it didn't tip over, right? You'll notice that the good put is good. It's about 2500, which is what I happen to configure the rate limit at. There it is in case you missed it. But what this doesn't really protect us against is a server degradation, right? So in that previous scenario, right, we have a server that is, you know, some number of milliseconds servicing a request, right? And there's not really distribution is just, you know, a synthetic three milliseconds per request. And we offered more load, which is we increase the RPS term in that little's law relationship. But if a server degrades, what that would look like is the service time for request increases, right under ideal conditions. So if we bump it from like three milliseconds to 10 milliseconds, right? What ends up happening? Oh, no, this is trouble. We we're not doing anything useful. We don't we don't shed. We just drop good put down to like half. And then we go to zero, a queue formed somewhere, our latency increased, right? Our good put is lower. That makes sense because under ideal conditions, we're taking more time per request, right? But then it we had our congestive collapse anyway, right? So it's because the rate limits config is derived from some kind of latency snapshot, right? We normally just look at some service, we go, All right, yeah, things look good. And it's at, you know, what 10,000 RPS, let's set a limit of like 10,500, right? But then, you know, somebody, some intern pushes code, performance degrades on our system, or like just years and years of baggage, and we never tweak our configs, or we move to a new instance type, right? We end up in trouble here. And we don't want to keep tweaking our rate limit configs. So what we could do instead is put a bound on the concurrency, right? So we could say, All right, well, I mean, if I'm getting these high latencies, because some queue is forming somewhere, let's just go ahead and put a limit on how big that queue can get, right? And obviously, this will only work if we have control over that, like, if I have a fleet of envoys, and there's one server, and all requests are going through this whole fleet of envoys to that server, we have zero control, it's not a closed system, right? We can't apply any of this hand wavy queuing theory stuff, right? And circuit breakers aren't going to be a much help. But that's not a scenario we're talking about here. So let's see how it performs. Traffic spike occurs, our latencies look like it looks much better, right? And then the good put increases to about 2500. What's interesting here is that it increases 2500 just like that rate limit did, right? Because of what I did. So we have eight threads on the fake server, okay? Each request takes about three milliseconds. So I think if you just divide 8 by 0.003, you'll end up with about 2500, right? It's pretty cool. Like, all I did was I just bounded the queue, and then I got the behavior I wanted, right? If I take a, oh, okay, there's the math, boom. So we divide 8 by 0.03, we get 2,666 RPS, that's, you know, the error bars on that are good enough for me, right? Especially since all we're doing is saying, hey, the queue can't get any bigger than this, don't admit anything through until it finishes this plate, right? So we nailed it. Circuit breakers don't use rate limiting unless, well, we'll get to that. Let's look at the server degradation scenario. The request latency does go up a little bit, right? Which makes sense because the server degraded, like under ideal conditions, the latency would have increased anyway, right? But our good put did not drop to zero this time. It dropped down to some other value, right? We put a bound on the queue. It doesn't matter how long it was, like what the capabilities of that server are, right? So this is pretty sweet. I get excited easily. So let's compare the two. Local rate limit filter versus circuit breakers at the bottom. We're looking at the good put graphs. We see that the local rate limit filter had its congestive collapse, you know, somewhere in the middle of that degradation region, right? And the circuit break didn't. It's just, you know, it's another day in the life for it. So yeah, you'll notice that the good put dropped to zero at the end of that simulation. I think that was just how long it took. And I didn't, I forgot to plot, like, there wasn't anything fancy going. There's only one event in these simulations. So, okay, so rate and bandwidth limits versus concurrency control. If you're trying to be resilient, right, you're like, I want to protect this microservice from tipping over under load or something, right? Just use circuit breaking limit concurrency somehow, okay? Whether that's an application or via Envoy, right? But I mean, you need rate limiting if you're like charging someone for an API, right? Like someone pays you for some plan, then, you know, this is what you get and why would I give you more, right? Even if I have the capability to service those extra requests, right? So that all depends. But you, you would still want to use circuit breaking under the circumstances, right, to actually protect the back end server. Yeah, in the rate limiting cases, the precious resource is number of requests, not server latency. Circuit breakers have their own shortcomings, right? So I have to know, like, I knew how many worker threads that fake server had, and it was an ideal condition, right? And a lot of times you can kind of have more requests than are necessary. You can have a juggle, you know, as many requests as it needs to, and it's not how many worker threads it has, and you get good performance. And it circuit breakers are very unforgiving at birth. It's just this is the limit where I don't care if we go up temporarily, right and burn that queue down. Yeah, so they are notoriously difficult to configure properly. I don't have a citation for that. You know, there's just some anecdote, right? Just in my experience, when people have to configure Envoy, and they they just kind of guess at a circuit breaker value, and then you know, you don't check to see if the seat belts work until you get into crash, and then you find out, whoops, didn't configure that well at all. So what if I told you that was a better way? What if I told you the adaptive concurrency filter can, well, it's not perfect, but what it's going to do is it'll adjust the concurrency limit real time based on latency measurements, right? So I didn't tell you why this is called for evil wizards in the adaptive concurrency talk last year. I didn't go too in depth about how this thing worked. I just showed you how it worked. And I hand waved away all the complicated, you know, hellscape of YAML to actually get it to work. We're going to go in on that. So put on your robe and wizard hats. It's going to take a measurement of ideal latencies as a baseline, right? So imagine this, I'm an envoy, I'm fronting some incidents, okay? Requests are coming in, and I'm just kind of letting them through, right? But I picked some like lower bound for the concurrency. I'm like this thing can handle like five active requests. And I only let five active requests through and I'm just seeing how it does, right? I'm 503 anything in excess of that. And I'm just getting some kind of baseline latency. And then, once I'm, you know, satisfied with that, right? I measure like whatever the P95s end up being. I open the floodgates, I'm just going to let everything through, right? And I'm just going to sample all the latencies that are coming in. So we're going to divide it up into periods, right? And then we're going to say, I have now an RTT ideal, which is just, you know, shorthand for round trip time, that's center requests, I got to reply back, right? So an ideal time for that. And then I have sampled round trip times. And I'm just going to look at the difference between the two, right? I'm going to have this thing called a gradient, which is the ideal round trip time divided by the sampled, which has the convenient property of if the sampled latencies start to climb higher than what we would actually want them to be, this gradient gets smaller, right? But then if it is pretty much what the gradient is, or sorry, if it takes on the ideal value, that gradient is about one, right? So if you multiply it by things, it doesn't change because you're doing something right. So this is based on latency based TCP congestion control algorithms. So normally, you know, like in school, you're like, how does TCP work? I dropped a packet and I have now cut my, you know, concurrency window in half, right? And then I additively increase it again. Okay. In a latency based case, I've measured what my handshake, like how long that took. And I'm like, yeah, this links, that's how fast it should be. And then I start tweaking things based on, you know, whether it's latency there, if I'm sitting in a nick buffer somewhere waiting to be routed. So I told you about how great the gradient is, if the ideal is less than the sampled, a queue is formed, right? Because our latencies are climbing for some reason. If the ideal is about what the sampled is, we did it right. What I failed to mention, and I go into great detail and another talk is that we periodically re measure this thing, right, the ideal, because, you know, we migrate VMs or we, who knows, AWS has a bad day. I don't know, right? So let's look at this gradient, like, how are we calculating this concurrency limit? Well, we are adjusting the concurrency limit by just multiplying it by gradient, right? This works out. And then, you know, what about headroom? I want to burst, you know, like, yeah, no problem, just like add on some headroom value, make it the square root of the new limit. This has, this is nice, because now I just keep probing up against like, I'm just going to keep letting more stuff in until you know, something goes wrong, and I'll clamp down aggressively on it. So this is a simulation of that, right? This isn't real. But this is the behavior we would have this orange ideal concurrency, look at this, it degraded and then it went back to normal. Well, this concurrency limit in blue, just follows the ideal, it bobs up and down, right? We're probing, we get latency, we cut it down, we probe again, we get latency, we cut it down. So this is an adaptive concurrency configuration. Okay, this is, this is awful. This is in one of the downsides of using this thing, but it's really nice once you get it dialed in. The sample aggregate percentile, that's like, when I'm summarizing samples like the RTT, I'm looking at this percentile, like I'm not taking an average, right? So if you care about tail latencies, you would set this to like a P95 or something, right? So that's what you're tracking and keeping under control. But you know, if you don't really care, like set it to immediate, whatever, you know, the concurrency update interval, how often are we updating this concurrency limit, right? I'm taking samples. And then in this case, after point two, five seconds, I do something with those samples and update concurrency limit. And then I clear all my other samples and start again. There's a buffer value, right?  Who cares? Right? So you just kind of give it some wiggle room, right? Before you clamp down aggressively on it with this buffer. And the request count is just how many requests am I going to take in before I go, okay, this is the ideal round trip time now, right? So you have like a super high RPS service, like who cares what this is? Because you'll just, you'll make your measurement very quickly. The actual math and stuff behind how this works is well documented on the Envoy docs. Let's, oh, sorry. And then there's a min concurrency. This is basically like, what am I going to clamp to when I'm measuring my ideal latency? Okay, so in this case, I'm like 10, you can handle 10, right? Of course you can. If you can't, like who cares, the adaptive concurrency works, we have other problems, right? So that's, that's usually how I go about figuring this out. So let's see how it does with the traffic spike. Okay, scenario. You'll notice there's this huge spike, but that's, it's not really that bad. So the, the latency, the ideal latency is three milliseconds, 0.003, right? And this goes to 0.125 shortly. There are some requests that did this, and then drops down to some value I don't even know, right? But you'll notice the good put, like it's didn't even sweat. Nothing didn't notice anything, right? So what this did was it was like, Oh God, like I let too many things in and then it clamps down, let's know more requests through and then it does the bobbing motion, right? So there it is in case you missed it. Server degradation scenario, right? Same deal, same behavior with the latency pretty much, right? Good put drops down to about where it was when we had the perfectly configured circuit breaker. So all right, it works. Now, when does this not well, here's some drawbacks. It's real, it's spectacularly complicated. Like you're dialing this in like it's a PID controller, right? So if you understand your environment pretty well, you can just set the, you can set these defaults, right? And then just let it go. It's nice because you're not like looking at a service and making it bespoke for that service, you're looking at your environment and then setting some values and that kind of just blanket applies everywhere, right?  And requests need to be a proxy for resource utilization, right? Like if I have a database query, like who knows what that thing is going to do to my server? I don't know what's in it and I'm not looking. So I can't, you know, circuit breakers kind of break down here too, right? Database people are on there and I'm sorry, I have no answer for you. Let's talk about admission control, okay? What does the admission control filter do? It probabilistically rejects requests based on a sliding window error rate, okay? So basically I'm like, how many of my requests were successful in the last, you know, period of time? Okay, let's derive a success rate out of that and then based on that success rate I'll reject requests, okay? We all should know what a sliding window is, right? We look at the success over the total. That's our success rate and we use it. If you want to know where this came from, this Google site reliability engineering book is just a goldmine of wisdom and this was in there. I just saw it and was like, let's do it. But first, let's change some things. That site reliability engineering book only has this linear relationship, right? Which it may be fine for some people but it wasn't for the use case we needed. So I threw in this threshold value and this aggression term which did awesome stuff. Check this out. X-axis is success rate and then rejection probability is on the Y-axis. So this kind of makes sense. You're like, okay, well as my request success rate drops to zero, right? I am more and more likely to reject a request. This is kind of nice. Somebody sent a pull request that also added a upper bound to the rejection probability. So, you know, it's defaulted to 80 now. This is a little out of date but I don't remember how I generated this graph. Okay. Don't use this thing in this configuration. All of the other load shedding mechanisms I talked about, I'm assuming like I'm an envoy, I'm fronting this one instance, come at me requests, right? In this case, we do not want to do this because here's why. If I increase offered load and then I, sorry, hang on. How am I doing on time these two minutes? Okay. We're almost done. You'll see this kind of behavior. We don't want this because our success rate drops to zero. We're like, oh no, I'm shedding load. I'm letting things through. Things are recovering. Okay, awesome. Success rate climbs and then I let too many things through and then I'm waiting for more errors. So we don't want that. What we want to do is client side throttling with this admission control filter. Okay. Why is that useful?  There's so many requests or like the network is saturated or you have so many clients that one request from them is just, you know, well, a raindrop in the flood. So that's it. Sorry. All right. Can we do questions? Want to do questions if people have them? Do I, yeah, sure. I had a question about the, you mentioned that the, it wouldn't be protecting databases but I'm wondering from the client perspective wouldn't any like database latencies or issues just be reflected as like server side, server degradation anyway? Right. Yeah. Yeah. But so if you think of it, like if I'm limiting concurrency to like 10 requests, right, I'm thinking of this in terms of like, okay, well I'm using 10 units of resources on this server, right, which makes sense for a lot of services but a database it doesn't because I can have some like just bananas, insane query, right, and then another one could just be a no op, right. So if I have like 10 no ops, I'm good. If I had 10 of these crazy queries then like I'm asleep at the wheel, right, and that's what I meant by that. Got it. Yeah. I saw another hand, I saw another hand somewhere. Okay. Go on once. Oh, okay. Oh man, at least I'm just making them work. So I guess the same question kind of applies to a heterogeneous service, right?  You'd have the same thing as with databases, right? Do you mean, are you asking about like, like if you have a bimodal distribution or something? Yeah, if you have however many APIs guarded by this envoy config, I guess how finally can you slice this, I guess, the question? Right, that's a real good question. This comes up a few times and there's new information since I last addressed one is, okay, if I have a bimodal distribution, right? Like I have, you know, a bunch of requests take one millisecond, that's one that take 150 and that's totally normal, right? And there's, they have their own little distributions. If you're tracking the like p99 latency for this whole batch, right? Then you're really tracking this, this, the mode that's in the tail and you're kind of crossing your fingers hoping that the distribution of those requests doesn't really change, right? And that, you know, it seemed good enough for at the time. Now some issues were opened regarding this and now we're thinking about, by we, I mean, like who knows who's going to do this, right? But making it per route, right? So you just have like a type whatever the filter config is where you can have it per route and then you basically have a concurrency controller for each route because they're like super cheap, you know, to make and track. Admission control will really benefit from this too. A real rent, that's it. Okay, I'm gone. Goodbye, everyone.


Good afternoon Pastor David. Hey John. Welcome everybody to Unfiltered. Pastor today wanted to ask a question that I was asked that came in through one of our social media platforms in and it was regard to Christians and marijuana use and this particular question that came in had asked can Christians outside the medicinal purposes recreational can Christians smoke marijuana and still be considered Christians. And here's some of the argument. It's natural. It's the green herb. It opens my mind more to study God's word. Hear these things. It needs the spirit when you got smoke. What are your thoughts on that? I just said it. You know there's obviously a controversy related to it. We already know that we've been in conversation about that recently and all you know there is a controversy concerning the use of marijuana in a medicinal way and so I was told that there are jowls and things like that that will have certain marijuana properties you know the cannabinola whatever it is I'm not quite sure what the what it would be that's there that they're extracting from the marijuana plant and all of that but I've heard that there are certain things you rub on or whatever to help you with various things even cancer stuff like that I've heard that. So that's a difficult question from that perspective because if there's a medicinal purpose and non recreational you know and you're applying it as an ointment a salve of some sort that I would say is different than saying that you relax by smoking pot or that you can actually read your Bible and get in deeper now that to me is though it's it's wrong it makes me laugh to think that I my kids have asked me I'm real open with with this with my church and all as you know John my my my drug of choice was pot I mean I enjoyed it you know and then I had reasons to enjoy it it did relax me and you know how many times have you heard of a bunch of guys smoking a lot of pot then looking for a fight I mean that doesn't happen right maybe Twinkies but yeah they're looking for a liquor store to get something to eat normally you know and we laugh about that because there's truth to that you don't see people normally smoking marijuana and then getting angry and want to fight you there are other things that provoke that marijuana not being one of them but here's a problem recreational use is a problem you know even smoking marijuana as a way to to calm your spirit down or to help to diminish some of the pain you're feeling I have told people in this fellowship that I truly believe that there are other forms of medication that you can you can use that will more than likely and most probably alleviate those things so because I had a real not an addiction they didn't claim it could be addictive at that time but I most certainly had an emotional addiction to it I I smoked pot a lot um for me on a personal level I could never I couldn't do it I could never smoke a joint again I can't do it it's three times more powerful now than when I was a kid it can even be more more it could be dangerous in a different kind of way it most certainly contributes to a variety of things that that even tobacco does because they are researching it more there are those who research it more now John as you know who are finding properties even the causing of cancer in the lungs and things that they're discovering that there are properties in marijuana that are that are dangerous so recreational smoking a pot because it calms you down or helps you read the bible or gets you in touch with god that's that's that's just not true that is just not true recreational use of a drug is is not a good thing any more than recreational drinking is a good thing when Paul said be not drunk with wine wearing his excess but be filled with the spirit I think there's a general tone in that which is saying don't give yourself over to the influence of something else that will bring you to a point of no longer being in control because dissipation simply means to be out of control so rather than being brought under the control of something else where you yield yourself to something else in his day it would have been wine that he's referring to well when you extrapolate from that scripture and form a principle what is he saying he's saying don't give yourself over to the influence of something else give yourself over to the influence of the spirit of god and so from a recreational use perspective even if it's legal it doesn't make it right even if it's legal it doesn't make it moral because there are there are laws on the books that that are regarded as as moral because all laws are moral and I don't understand the argument that that restricting human behavior is not a moral thing it is a moral thing so that's why you don't drink and drive and and things like that I mean there's a morality involved in it that that here especially in the United States are civil laws based on so even if they have made it legal it doesn't make it morally right even if it's legal it doesn't make it spiritually safe so any person who who says that they connect better with god they're using the argument we used to use over 50 years ago I come in touch with the power of the universe or I I see the cosmic mind you can use a thousand one different ways to illustrate that that's what what I tried to do when I began taking acid as a kid you know I thought I would somehow connect with the universe and all of that when in fact it was it wasn't useful for that of course at all so in answer to the question you know if if it's something that's in the form of a salve that you would rub on because it helps to diminish and you're not getting high from it but actually being soothed I'd say that and again I'm no doctor but I would say that that is more acceptable right but for you to smoke it and say I'm getting high because I'm closer to God when I do that that's just not true and the the other component that people are also or researches and I'm a research expert that the removal of the THC in the salves or everything else aren't in that on those properties and so that takes that away what really kind of concerns me is the mindset or the heart set of some of the believers who are saying I want to get in touch with therefore I'm going to smoke and it's and it kind of bothers me a little bit with that because it's not that they're smoking and going to go listen to a Pink Floyd album this is God's word and it's the spirit itself that will lead and draw in that's deception I mean it's deception deception of the highest form if you say I get closer to God they're using a substance rather than opening my heart to the spirit that's deception of the highest form not only that there's no way that anybody's going to be able to convince me because I had years of use there's no way that anybody can convince me that you can understand and discern the scripture with the spirit's help while you're in sin while you're while you're doing something that is prohibited I am not to give myself to the influence of something else bottom line and so any person who is saying that one I don't want to say they're unsaved because God's the judge but that is certainly the behavior of someone who does not know Jesus Christ that is the behavior and to try and spiritually qualify it by saying God gave us the herb so that we can use it in the scripture all the herbs yeah all the herbs in the field yeah but he also gave you poison ivy and you don't use that for toilet paper it just makes no sense so I don't I don't agree with such an argument well thank you pastor that it's a comment and again people interchange that with even alcohol you know and a lot of different things and it's carnality and that's what it is an excuse to give into carnality we've had the arguments I have never seen an alcohol evangelist winning people to Jesus Christ they're winning them over to their argument that it's okay to satisfy my desires of the flesh it's okay and then they come up with convoluted argument to give them the opportunity or the permission to do that john you know what I know we've been around a long enough time to know it's just an excuse to cater to your flesh and don't judge me yeah don't judge me well you know what Jesus said judge with righteous judgment how am I going to be able to correct someone's behavior if I don't make judgment pertaining to it so once again it's just a twisting of scripture where people haven't got an idea because they're not reading their bible as much as they're they're looking to the alcohol content of this whiskey or you know how many joints they can get right well thank you pastor and thank you guys for tuning in and you know this is a topic that uh that comes in circles you know and again it's it's related to a lot of different things and so thank you for sharing with us a couple things that are coming up Sunday evening uh Sunday morning we have our services at 8 30 10 45 look for you to come on out as you're taking us through mark chapter 15 verses 21 through 26 the crucifix crucifix call it's entitled at the execution of Jesus it is a powerful portion of scripture powerful to imagine yes well we couldn't imagine a great opportunity to invite your friends and family to come out and join us uh min this sunday is our last sunday to purchase your Super Bowl breakfast ticket uh it's you can actually go to the gazebo or to our website or stop by the business office before sunday after sunday it's uh we'll just have uh admission tickets only look forward to having you guys come that's going to be saturday february 4th uh as anthony munez will be our guest speaker again pastor thank you so much for sharing with us thank you guys for tuning in and god bless you


It's a very special pleasure and honour for me to have been invited to join you at this 12th annual conference. Very few professional gatherings can make the scale of impact on our collective prosperity and national development as the Charter Institute of Bankers can. Indeed, your professional association would have been number one among professional associations, but for the fact that it is second only to the Nigerian Bar Association. I see that a few of my friends of the Nigerian Bar Association are defected into the banking profession and finding it difficult to agree one way or another. But quite seriously, we are at a crucial point in our economic history as a nation. After emerging from a recession, we have attained a reasonable measure of macroeconomic stability, positive growth for almost two years. We've also seen inflation falling sharply from close to 18% to about 11.02 today. While the challenges remain significant, our population is growing at about 3% per annum, and roughly 1.7 million young men and women are coming every year into the marketplace. We will have the third-largest population in the world in just under three decades from now. We all know what we need to do, no question at all. Every one of us knows what we need to do. We must create good jobs and opportunities. We must rapidly industrialize. We must provide the environment for local businesses, small and large, to create wealth and value. We must also address the concerns of young entrepreneurs and startups and the small traders, the millions at the bottom of the economic value chain, the millions at the bottom of the pyramid, those who sell from their trades and table tops all over the markets in our country. We must develop the housing sector, both to provide much-needed shelter, but also to boost local opportunities in the local building and building materials sector. We know that we must ramp up agricultural production and provide a more efficient farm-to-market value chain. Again, creating millions of jobs in farming and agribusiness generally. We cannot successfully do any of these things without a massive improvement in our infrastructure, in power, in rail, in roads. But little can be done with industrialization without cheap credit to MSMEs in particular. Retail and service sectors need consumer credit to scale up. If you have to pay cash for everything from TV sets to cars, consumer spending will remain stunted and so will the real sector. The major housing reform, which we are undertaking with the family homes fund, needs a robust mortgage finance market. The bottom of the pyramid traders need micro-credit and financial inclusion. But the signing by Mr. President of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, there are great opportunities and challenges. We have great opportunities to extend the reach of our banking and financial services across Africa, where we are already making waves. And export more, where we are already exporting, especially in fast-moving goods, in cement, even fintech now. Services account at the moment for up to 50% of the GDP of most African countries and has accordingly been included as part of the phase one of the AFCTA, that's the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, in phase one of the negotiations. Five priority areas have been identified for liberalization, namely transport, communication, negotiations, tourism, financial services and business services. The approach that is being taken is that countries will make offers to liberalize these sectors and also agree on regulatory changes that will make it easier for the African sector operators to do business in other African countries. That's an interesting phase because it involves the financial sector, how that will be negotiated. Phase two of the negotiations will focus on investment, competition policy and intellectual property. Although it's a bit early now to know what the negotiations will yield, it is clear that the objective must be to ensure national treatment for African service operators in the different African countries where they all operate. This holds potential for the Nigerian banking sector, which is already present in several African countries, and is poised to take full advantage of the level playing ground that the AFCTA will offer them. But we must improve infrastructure to expand our manufacturing base and produce cheaper. This is crucial because we are also the target market for all of Africa. We are already dealing with the threat of smuggling. Practically all of the smuggling that we are seeing come naturally from our next-door neighbors. But we will now have to contend with the threat of dumping with the AFCTA. This is why the negotiations going on at the moment are crucial. And I think it's important for the banking sector to pay attention to what is going on and to participate in this entire process. We already have fairly robust participation from manufacturers as Asian and several other trade and professional organizations. But I think the chartered institute of bankers must pay close attention to the negotiations that are going on because a lot of it will affect the banking sector in Africa. But the substance of what I am saying is that our financial services sector now has to also redefine itself, challenge itself to partner with the public sector and players of course in the capital markets to reap the immense benefits that await our economy and our people in these changing times. We must jointly think through how to really lend to MSMEs and the entire real sector how to deepen capital markets on financial mediation, how to partner in developing our market market. What we need to do to deepen consumer credit, how purchase schemes etc. How about lending to agriculture? The CBN has already in partnership with Sundance successfully given loans to almost a million farmers under the anchor boroughs program. But the need is far greater. There is a series of measures we have taken to unlock lending to critical labour intensive sectors of the economy. In agriculture in particular we have seen how the Nigerian incentive based risk sharing system for agricultural lending otherwise known as NERSA has given the banking industry greater confidence to unlock new capital for agribusiness and troponials or those who are called agroponials today. By risking value chains across the nation, the immediate dividend of the enhanced agricultural productivity is of course a sharp increase in the population of employed and banked Nigerians while reducing our foreign exchange expenditure on food imports which can now of course be expended on expensive intrastructural needs and other investment programs for further job creation and enhanced financial inclusion. We are leveraging on the success of the knowledge and experience of our work with NERSA to also fundamentally reform the Solid Minerals Development Fund to risk value chains in the solid mineral sector with a risk sharing mechanism to secure lending from the banking sector for private capital to inflow and build new allied industries. We are also in discussions with PENCOM and some of those discussions we have had with some banks already along with PENCOM to do risk pension funds to enable lending for infrastructure development. There's a lot that's going on, there's a lot of talking that's going on, a lot of engagement that's going on but we really need to move this forward. We really need to start doing and implementing a lot of what has been happening. Of course there's a great deal of shyness because this is new territory for everybody but I think that we really need to move quickly and we need to move efficiently. Financial inclusion of course is the key to realizing so much of what we expect as an economy and the president promised in his June 12th speech to lift 100 million people out of poverty in 10 years. That is the commitment of the government of Nigeria. We started that journey with our collaboration with the Bank of Industry to deliver the Jeep program that's unknown as trader money and market money. By providing micro-credit to almost 2 million petty traders the Bank of Industry has now brought this huge bottom of the pyramid into the formal financial system and that has been recognized worldwide. Recently they won the AFDB prize for financial inclusion because of the work that they did with trader money. This is a huge task. Going forward we now need to embark on financial training for all of those who have been brought into the net. As you know when they're given 10,000 naira, just 10,000 naira when they pay back they're given 20,000 and 15,000 but it goes all the way. But at that point they're given their BVNs, they're given BVNs they're formally included in the financial system. They're formally included as formal traders and so we're able to train we're able to give them financial training and all that. Now the important thing and I have seen that sometimes we do not recognize real needs that they are and for very long that bottom of the pyramid has been completely excluded. And yet informal training is a significant, of course the most significant part of training that is going on in our country. But what we found is that these individuals were given the bottom who have small inventories, very small inventories as I was saying the other day. I was in KB state to commission to launch the trader money scheme there and I was speaking to a lady who had vegetables, selling vegetables, small vegetables after how much her entire inventory was. Everything she had on her trade was 500 naira. All that she was going to sell for morning to evening that day was 500 naira. I was very evident that clearly this is someone who obviously wants to work but there is no way that we are going to make any significant impact on your own life or the lives of your family if your inventory is only 500 naira. And that's the story of petty trading, that's the story of informal training across the country. Even here in Abuja, I met a lady who was selling pommas in a bucket and I keep telling the story every where I go. In her little bucket you have pommas, I'll tell you how much, I hope everybody knows what pommas are doing, because people are looking at me rather strangely. I see what is that for when I'm here.  So I said to her how much do you make profits from 3,500 naira? She didn't even answer the question. She just pointed to another lady standing beside her, who had her own pomma in a little bowl. So she was just telling me that look here, I'm a big player here. Do we have any problems? You can ask this lady here how she is coping. So there is a real need out there and we must devise the methods by which those at the bottom of the pyramid can be uplifted. And we must look at how we can even resource the entire valuations. What we find is that those who are selling the petty trailer, who just has a trailer, is usually selling little bits of pieces from many of the manufacturers of fast moving products. And we found that just by giving them credit, we can resource that entire valuations all the way up. And we're working with the bank of industry with several players in the market, especially the marketing services people, to identify how to work through those valuations so that more and more of these people can move from petty trading higher up in one valuation as their resource. But all of that will depend on what the banking industry is prepared to do, how adaptable the banking industry will be to giving loans, especially micro-credit. Everything is changing very quickly. There is no question at all that the world that we're living in is disrupted daily by technology. On Azure is a very fortunate place. We are today the second largest users of mobile, of the internet on mobile phones, on our mobile phones. We are the second largest. We also possibly have the largest mobile banking business already. We already have the largest. In other words, because we have such a large number of telecom users, and I think we've got 117 million at the last count, there's a huge market out there that appears to be, I mean, the FinTech business and all of that, that appears to be somewhat outside the former banking system. I've been speaking to a lot of the telecoms, and I've had meetings with telecoms and banks, and there's a fair amount of tension going on, because obviously the telecoms appear to want to take the launch of the banks, and everyone is saying, no, you can't go that far, you can't do this, you must become a licensed bank and all that. And a lot of the FinTech companies are doing incredible things across borders, and we're at a point where you cannot stop anything, you can't stop the progress that is going on. There's no way, so we must sit down and develop policies, policies that will enable the FinTech companies to grow, policies that will find space, proper space for the telecoms also to grow. The banking industry is being disrupted and it simply must change, and this is happening everywhere, everywhere. But I see that the responses of many of the banks is a very progressive one, and the Central Bank also. We established something called the Creativity and Technology Group as part of the industrial council. And what has happened is that a lot of the young men and women, especially in FinTech and entertainment, who are part of that group, are showing how we can modify policy, especially policy that will help them to be able to not only access credit, but also change some of the rules for banking licenses and other financial services licenses, so that the FinTech companies can play a better role, so that all of these companies that are involved in the financial space can play a more active role, and we think that that is the way of the future. So we are living in exciting times, these times are the best times possible for business and for the Nigerian economy. I am extremely pleased to see that the theme of this conference seeks to address the changes that we should expect, not just on the banking sector, but on the entire economy. I want to congratulate again and commend the chatter of bankers and the leadership of the institute for thinking so forward-thinking and for thinking so clearly about what the future will be. In the next few days, I really hope that we will see and hear a lot of very interesting and exciting deliberations and conclusions that will enable this country to solve the problems that face it, and to take up all of the opportunities that awaited. So it is my very special privilege to formally declare open this 12 annual conference of the chapter institute of bankers. Thank you very much.


er which is roughly 27,000 deaths. Out of that 27,000 deaths I think it'd be fair comment to actually suggest that some of them possibly make the criteria for notification to the Crown Office and the guidelines issued by the Crown Office and again I've got an FY pending to see if that's the case to see if any of these 27,000 deaths have been retrospectively submitted to the Crown Office for greater scrutiny and if you look back into the I don't know going into great detail but if you look back into the findings of the shipment inquiry that's something we need to have in place that's the important safety net in your society that I believe is missing. Thank you. You're saying that 27,000 went how long was that over what period? 2015 47.1% of deaths this is the deaths are this is medical certificates that are sent to national regs of Scotland and I believe there's an organisation I don't know what happened before then if anything but from 2015 an organisation called the death certificate review service which is under the umbrella it is starts to the sampled 5% and out of that 5% they found it 47.1% in 2015 but not in order and has that work been continued? Yes in 2016 it fell slightly to just below 40% I don't know what processes and improvements were put in place to actually drive that improvement but it fell down to 39. something percent in 2016 and within that have they identified what the issues are? Well that's it I mean if adverse events are indeed a springboard from which we drive improvement and again if you look at patterns you're talking about you're seeing inaccurate death certificate yeah so therefore have they identified what those inaccuracies are? No not in the document I looked at no okay that's helpful thanks. Sandra are you okay? Yeah my question's been answered thank you. I've noted at the start that I have a relative working in NHS Ersin and Arwm so apologies for not saying something like that. I kind of wanted to go back I think what's interesting here is we've got two completely different experiences here I think for me the key here is the implementation of recommendations once we get to that point and from reviews and from your own experiences and I wondered again if we could highlight the differences in the way that these investigations have been implemented I'm also very aware of Mr Morton's case but you seem to have a much had a much much better experience and I think for me that's the key to this. Yes I did and that's why I wanted to bring that to him and I came down the last time as well is to prove that I had got a much better experience I was not abandoned well I was for the first month but after that I was much more accepted and done what I wanted to do and still I've been taking on to do interviews for patient relations jobs and just anyone that we've come along with and I'd just like to do things like that and just get from the public perspective and I feel they're much less frightened of suing and everything else now they've come right from behind the barrier and getting in touch with the public. So your experience is the implementation of those recommendations that come out of that are they positive? All of it's been very positive. Okay and Mr Morton you would perhaps say something slightly different. Immediately when the terms of reference to the recent review were announced I believe there were two in a row. I believe the time frame is too short the time frame was based on improvements made by NHS Airson Arran and then we find that one of the findings of review team is that you know they would expect material improvement so again in the terms of reference only looked at the maternity service and the adverse event policy covers every directorate so right now at this moment we actually don't know the full extent of the avoidable deaths of NHS Airson Arran because it's a common policy and they've concentrated in one small area. So who's set the criteria then? I believe that was the Scottish Government in conjunction with healthcare improvement Scotland and if you look at the time frame as well it conveniently missed encompassing the 2012 review. It's almost if healthcare improvement Scotland didn't want to actually look at their own partners process that's how it seemed to me and I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary and I wrote to Robbie Pearson you know and if you go back there's a lot of talk there now if I kind of digress a wee bit there's a lot of talk on the Parliament about health and social justice or sorry health and justice you know a collaboration asked for the terms of reference to be expanded asked for a memorandum of understanding to include the health and safety executive to include the crown office and also include an expert in human factors because one of the things we were told specific to our own son's death is that we can't see what happens inside people's heads when we question why my partner June was not escalated as per the guidelines so I think it was a reasonable request for an expert in human factors the health and safety executive who actually found that agreed there was systemic failures and failings in clinical governance and that put them the HSE and a diametrally opposed view to the actual health board and it's just been left at that you know they agree clinical failings the hospital initially did not admit to any clinical failings but we just move forward without anything being addressed and in terms of memorandum of understanding that was reasonable that was a feature in a more conveying inquiry so I don't know how it could have been expanded within the recent review within Scotland okay we've come to the end of your time can I sec me greatly appreciate you coming forward I think you've done your families very proud not just by giving evidence today which is obviously a difficult thing but by the fact that you are pursuing the issues that you care so passionately about and hopefully will change the system for the better so that other people do not have to experience what you have experienced so thank you very much for your evidence this afternoon and I think we're now going to private session


Good evening and welcome to another episode of the Private Property Home Shopper Show. My name is Chad Rivera, and I'm going to take you around some of the most exquisite homes across South Africa. Behind me, a four bedroom, three bathroom, home a stone's throw away from Santon. So if you're looking for a home for you or your family while working in Santon, this is the one for you. So without further ado, follow me as we take a look at what makes this home so special. Let's go.


Hello in this presentation we're going to work some test type problems smaller type problems that could be in a multiple-toys type format so we're going to start off here with this problem. Note that a longer type of problem like this might be useful to actually read the last sentence first might save some time so we know what it's going to ask for at the end and then when we read through it it's good to just plot down those numbers that we can then use at a later point. So we're going to say that to maintain a 10,000 I'm reading this last sentence. To maintain the 10,000 required balance during June the company must do what? So we can see we're talking about a bank account I see a bank account here we want to retain a $10,000 balance so it sounds like we need to basically measure the activity in the bank account so as we read through it I'm going to list out kind of a data and punch that into Excel so we may be able to record that information. So company so I'm going to read it from the top now. Company is prepared a cash budget for June cash budget for June the company has 11300 cash at the beginning so I'm just going to say our beginning cash and I'm just going to say beginning balance we're talking about the cash account so we'll just say the beginning started off with 11,300 11,300 and anticipates 30,007 in cash receipts so I'm just going to say all right receipts we think we're going to pull in another 30,700 cash receipts and 35,900 in disbursements so we're going to have to pay out this is a budget of course disbursements and receipts we're estimating I'm just going to abbreviate we're going to say 35 I'll make it I'll make it a negative negative 35,900 and you'll note that I underline that with the underline here already that sales been underlined okay and see what else we have the company has has an agreement with the bank to maintain a minimum balance I'm just going to note that over here minimum balance we want a minimum balance in our checking account of 10,000 that's like our cushion we don't want to go below that we're told our bank hey if we go below 10 then give us an automatic loan because we need 10 in there at any given time in case of emergency we currently have a loan to the bank of May 31st 15,000 all right so I'm just going to note that on the side so now we need to read that last sentence again to maintain the 10,000 required balance during June the company must do what well let's see where we are at the ending balance as of now we said that we I'm just going to sum these up we had a beginning balance of 11 3 plus receipts of 37 that's what we think's going to happen at least in disbursements of 35 9 so we sum that up equals the sum of I'm going to say this plus this minus this that's the sum of these last one being a negative number we say enter we get these 6001 of course all we did was in a calculator say 11 3 plus 3007 minus the 35 9 gives us the 6 1 now we see that that is below 10,000 right that's below 10,000 that's our minimum balance so we need a minimum of 10,000 so what's the bank going to do it's going to increase our loan then so I'm going to underline this and I'm going to say we need then a loan equaling 10,000 minus what's currently in there the 6 1 that means we need another three nights what's going to happen what's going to be you know in the answers when we look at a multiple choice question we're going to have to get a loan we got to increase the loan for this 39 what's that going to do to our total loan because the current loan balance happens to be this 15 so that will increase our balance to it's going to increase it by the 39 and we currently have a balance of 15 so the answer key could say we need to increase the loan by 39 the answer key another type of variation of this problem might say that well what's going to be the loan balance after this month is over and that would be 18 9 all right we have the next one here once again I'm going to try to read that last line and see if I can get some information before reading the entire thing so the last line here says start in here compute the projected sales expense to be reported on the selling expense budget for the manager for the month ended June 30th so we're going to keep that in mind as we read through it I'm going to start from the top now company sells a product for $700 so unit price is going to be 700 I'll just log that in units sales for May so we're going to say May I'm going to put a header here May and we'll say unit sales unit sales for May are going to be 400 and we just know we already know that we have this unit price so I'm going to put that down here and I'm going to say okay well the unit price is going to be down here and you could retype this in I know I'm formatting and formatting is half the half the issue whether you do it by hand or in Excel so we're going to put it try to put it in this kind of grid type format so we're going to say all right well unit sales are here unit price is here so that's what we have for May so far 400 and sales are expected to increase the prior year months by 3% so we know that we're looking for if we look in the answer we're looking for June so we have May here and then we have June so we need to think about okay well what's going to happen to June then based on this is that's what we want to go I'm going to format paint this and go here and we know that the unit sales are going to increase by 3% a couple ways we can calculate that we're going to say that unit sales are 400 so for May unit sales we have 400 and it's going to increase by 3% so we could say okay well the increase is going to be 3% I'm going to put 0.03 and I'm going to go back on that cell we're going to go to the home tab alignment and just remember if I add decimals 3% it's 0.03 if we move this we move the decimal over or we can make it a percent 3% and then if we multiply that out we're going to say all right well the increase then is 4,000 times 3% it's going to increase by 12 so the increase is going to be by 12 so this is the increase I'll say increase percent and this is actually the actual increase in dollars and that's going to be the 12 so note that we might do that a bit more quickly by saying all right well if it's 400 and it's going to increase by 3% instead of putting 3% we might just put 100% plus 3% is 1.03 so note we could do this a lot in one calculation this is worth noting by saying 1.03 103% of the original number means that it's going to go to 412 you know rather than taking this 412 and saying what's the new sales going to be 400 plus 12 we could do that with one calculation by saying 400 times 1.03 103% that'll give us that 412 so if I did that over over


This is going on everywhere in the world. It's a big fad in the West, particularly United States. And of course, it's infected India a bit. Be in the moment. I'll ask you a simple question. Be somewhere else and show me. Hello? Can you be somewhere else? But that's the reason why you have a mind. You can sit here and think about Mumbai. You can think about yesterday. You can think about tomorrow. You can think about what was ten years ago. You can think about what is ten years later. But you still live in the moment, isn't it? So essentially what is being said is, do not think about yesterday, do not think about tomorrow. Just be with what is here right now. See, it took millions of years of evolution to get this much cerebral capability that we can vividly remember every experience of our life. And we have a fabulous sense of imagination that we can project and create it tomorrow in our mind and make efforts to manifest that. Now, the reason why somebody is telling you, be in the moment is, because for many people, these two faculties of memory and imagination which set us apart from every other creature on this planet, know the creature on this planet has as vivid a sense of memory and imagination as we have. It's taken millions of years of evolution to get us here. But now, because people don't know how to handle it, they're saying, get rid of it. Don't remember yesterday, do not think about tomorrow. Just be with what is here right now. In a way, we're talking about how to become an earthworm once again. I have great regard and respect for the earthworm. It's very, very eco-friendly creature. But with enormous effort, this life has evolved from there to here, isn't it? Is it important to learn how we can put this memory and imagination to the highest possible usage or is it best to erase it so that you can simply be here with little peace, maybe peaceful? It's very easy to do this. If we take away half your brain, you will be very peaceful and always in the now. Yes? Is that what we are seeking is the question. This has happened because people have become capable of suffering something that happened ten years ago. Yes? You can suffer something that happened ten years ago and you can suffer what may happen day after tomorrow. Already. So you're not suffering life, you're just suffering your memory and imagination because it's gone berserk because you did not take charge of it. Or in other words, the greatest faculty of what makes us human has become the problem. The best thing we have here for ourselves as human beings is this cerebral capability. Otherwise, as a body, you're not nothing… nothing much, you really nothing much compared to a tiger or an elephant or a… so many other creatures. Yes or no? As a physical body, you are nothing much compared to many creatures, isn't it so? But because we got this, we can remember our experience of life, from that we can create an imagination, from that we can create or manage to plan and manifest what we want in our lives. Now such a great faculty has become a problem for a lot of people because the only thing, the only and only thing that they're suffering is life is not happening the way I think it should happen. Is there any other suffering? Is there any other suffering for a human being? It's not happening the way I think it should happen, that's all there is, isn't it? Today morning, sun came upon time. Hello? Now you're looking on… Okay, so what? You're not understanding what I'm saying. You know, this happened a little while ago. I was in United States and we were to fly a helicopter. It was a nice day weather-wise. So we decided to take off the doors of the helicopter and fly an open helicopter where the weather was good. Every aviator knows that for every thousand kilometers, I mean thousand meters that you rise, what is the temperature drop and what are the situations you expect? This is something that everybody knows. So based on that, we took off. But after some time, we hit a cold front. A cloud cover came and it became very, very cold. So cold that you couldn't really hold the controls properly. So we decided we'll come down. We were coming down. Just a casual discussion, okay? Tomorrow if sun doesn't come up, what will happen? So we're making a guess, maybe in six months this will happen and three months that will happen, these kind of wild guesses. After I came down, I did a bit of research and I found if the sun disappears right now, in eighteen hours' time almost everything that you know as life will be gone except a few micro... microbial life which is deep down in the earth, except that almost everything that you know as life, human, animal, plant life will be totally gone in eighteen hours' time. So I just now gave you a very great news but you just ignored and just stared at me. I said, sun came upon time. You, okay, what about it? I'm telling you again, sun came upon time. I want to hear appropriate noises. See... and planets are going around the sun perfectly well today. Planet is spinning on time. Everything in the universe is going perfectly well today. Entire cosmos, not a single accident, hmm? Wow, wow, wow, okay?  Yes? Just one silly thought is going on in your head and it's a bad day. Everything is perfect in the cosmos. So what this means is your psychological reality has become larger than the existential reality.  This is a loss of perspective. Then you will make up all kinds of philosophies. Nobody has to tell you be in the moment because you cannot be anywhere else. Yes? You just cannot be anywhere else, can you be?  So there is no danger that you may slip away from this moment that I have to teach you, please be in this moment, don't go away. There is no way to go. There is no way to go, try. No, no, mentally I'm going, mentally you're not going anywhere. Mentally you can create images of anything.  Should I take away this capability from you? Should I take? This is the most beautiful aspect of being human, isn't it? That we can be here but we can imagine that, that and that and even things that we have not seen. Yes or no? So we are always weaving philosophies as to how to cripple ourselves because a whole lot of people understand they think spirituality is a certain kind of disability. Yes? Because if you say I'm spiritual, the first thing they'll ask you is, what are all the things you don't do or cannot do? Spiritual process, if it's a disability, we must banish it, isn't it? If spiritual process is a disability, we must ban it in this country or no. If it's an empowerment, then everybody must have it. If it's a disability, we must get rid of it. But unfortunately it's been seen as a disability for a long time to such an extent. All kinds of things. You know, a few months ago I'm in Chennai. There's an important event and traffic in every city in India is becoming undrivable. You can't plan in how many minutes or hours you can reach from one place to another. There's no... There's no sense to it. It can go anyway. You may land up there in fifteen minutes or you may take two hours. So I find I'm running out of time, I'm stuck in the road. Then I'll do some forceful driving. It's the way to drive in this country, okay, forcefully. And this is in some hotel, so I... I have somebody clear the security gate of the hotel and I drive in nearly eighty-hundred kilometers per hour into the port to go. Stop and I get out of the car and I run in. Because I have a reputation that in the last thirty-five years I've not been lead to a single event in my life. So I don't want to break it today. So I run in. Then after the event, this journalist comes and says, I saw you coming into the hotel, how you came. In ancient times yogis used to walk. You drive your own car.  Not just the yogi. Everyone was walking, you think others were driving cars? Everybody was walking, yogi also was walking. So we have these ideas that if you're spiritual, you must be incapable of living in this world. You must just talk about that lala land that you have not seen. Yes?  Spirituality or spiritual process is the highest level of empowerment that a human being can have. Because if it is not so, you have no business with it. Nobody should have any business with it. So you never try to live in the moment. It's just that your problem is this, you have been given a super, super computer. Do you agree with me? This is the most sophisticated machine on the planet. I'm asking you, have you read the user's manual? No. That's all the problem is, that is all the problem is, you don't know how to manage this.  No. The damn thing is doing all kinds of things except what you want. So this is the case with anything. If you do not know how to manage something, just about everything is a problem, isn't it?


An ITIN will not be issued to you once you have been issued an SSN. So, the ITIN would be another identification number. So, the primary identification number is going to be the Social Security number. Typically, if you don't have the Social Security number, then you might have an ITIN. But if you get issued a Social Security number, you're probably not going to go back to having an ITIN after the Social Security number. So, if you receive an SSN after previously using an ITIN, stop using the ITIN. The Social Security number is the one that should take precedence at that point. So, IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Identification Number. So, let's get into those ITINs, which are IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number for Aliens. So, if you are a non-resident or resident alien and you don't have and aren't eligible to get an SSN, that's a Social Security number, you must apply for an ITIN.  So, it takes about seven weeks to get an ITIN, apparently. So, if you already have an ITIN, enter it wherever your Social Security number is required for your tax return. So, obviously, first page of the 1040 and any other kind of location, you've got to give them the name and the ITIN. So, some ITINs must be renewed. So, if you haven't used your ITIN on a federal tax return at least once for tax years 2019, 2020, 2021, it expired at the end of 2022. And you must renew, must be renewed if you need to file a federal tax return in 2023. You don't need to renew your ITIN if you don't need to file a federal tax return. You can find more information at IRS.gov forward slash ITIN. Tip, ITINs assigned before 2013 have expired and must be renewed if you need to file a tax return in 2023. So, you're going to want to do that. So, if you're previously submitted a renewed application and it was approved, you do not need to renew again unless you haven't used your ITIN as a federal tax return at least once for tax years 2019, 2020, 2021, because hopefully that will give the IRS the information if you have filed those that who you are and they can keep on going forward from that point. So, an ITIN is for tax use only. It doesn't entitle you to social security benefits or change your employment or immigration status under U.S. law. So, that's kind of the confusing thing about an ITIN. Well, one of the confusing things about taxes is usually the requirement is that you withhold the federal income tax. But also, you've got this issue with the social security and the social security and Medicare used to be stuff that you would pay as part of like a benefit program, and it was geared towards the idea that if people lived past their life expectancy, they would have no way of being able to save for retirement. So, we've got this safety net program in that case. But now, of course, the social security, we think of it more of like a government-like retirement program. We're paying into it, and we expect to get a benefit. And we should at this point because we're paying a lot of money into it. It's quite a high amount these days. So, then you've got questions, well, what if you're in a situation where you're not being able to participate because you're not a citizen to get the benefits of social security and then whether or not you're going to be paying into the social security, right? These benefit programs sound kind of basic when you first put them in there, but then you run into all these complications when you think about different businesses, trying to apply different business models in order to provide goods and services and whatnot. It gets all messy. Any case, for more information on ITEMs, including application, expiration, and renewal, you can see Form W7 and its instructions. If you receive an SSN, that social security number after previously using an ITEM, stop using the ITEM. Use your SSN instead. Visit a local IRS office or write a letter to the IRS explaining that you now have an SSN and want all your tax records combined under your SSN. That's the social security number. Details about what to include with the letter and where to mail it. If you're in that situation, irs.gov forward slash item. That's the place to go. Non-resident alien spouse. So now you've got a situation where normally you're a single filer or a head of household, then you can be married. But what if you have a non-resident alien spouse? What does that do to the whole, this whole crazy system we're putting together here? If your spouse is a non-resident alien, your spouse must have either an SSN, social security number, or an ITEM. If you file a joint return or your spouse is filing a separate return.


think we all need a mentor in our lives at different times. Mentoring can save us a lot of grief, a lot of tears, a lot of wasted years, a lot of wasted money and opportunities. Someone that knows something we don't that can pass on to us in a few moments can be priceless contribution to our lives and to our journey. I've mentored people from all walks of life now for decades, politicians, famous actors, people in the corporate world and so on and it's all been one-on-one but now I'm wanting to widen the circle of inclusion of my mentoring so that you can all have a mentor relationship with me through what's going to be called the Mentorship Group. Hey guys, welcome to the Mentorship Group. I really appreciate your time and your attention so let's get started. The Mentorship Group is going to be an online live mentoring session with also live Q&A and a fraction of the cost of one-on-one mentorship and also from wherever you are in the world. We're also going to have a Facebook group that will create around this mentoring tribe so that we are able to find a community of us together that are all thinking and aiming the same way in and with our lives. Now to get more information please go and log on as soon as you can at thementorshipgroup.com.


So we went to Ross Hansen's place first and he's been no-tailing since the 90s or before on most of his ground and he does some custom planting, also no-tail planting for some of his neighbors. This is the field of Ross Hansen's and he was planting this field his particular day. So there's, you can see the heavy residue on the soil from last year, obviously a corn crop. Ross was planting into there really with relative ease. There was good soil structure that was involved and he wasn't having any issues with planting. Obviously he wasn't having any issues with really any low spots or wet spots that he couldn't get through. There was pretty good soil moisture conditions out there but because of the structure that's been built on that field, soil health practices throughout the years. He was having a good day planting. In fact, he planted this whole field while we were kind of doing our shoot and he had to move on to another field. So he was really good planting conditions and you can see right there in this shot there's a lot of residue out there. It was really, really quite thick, which is good. It's good ground cover, it's protecting from erosion. You know, talking with Ross on this field it's actually pretty a sloped field. It's got pretty high percentage of slopes on there and you can see he's kind of going down one of those slopes here. It may not show up that well from an overhead shot but this would be one of those fields if it didn't have good ground cover and we get those heavy spring rains and you would definitely have a erosion out there but based off the good soil structure out there we should be fine.


Hello and welcome to my channel. I'm your host and magnificent narrator Philip Magnus. If you're watching this video, odds are, you enjoy video games, or are related to me by blood or such strong bonds of friendship that I have forced you into watching this madness. If you fancy about deeper discussions of influential and interesting titles, as well as a more comedic approach in the conversation about video games, then by all means, stick around. Today I have prepared reviews and critiques of triple-A games such as Dishonored 2, Prey, Wolfenstein and Middle Earth Shadow of War. In those videos I am tempted to make a nuanced analysis of the components that made each of the games tick and succeeded, to a greater or lesser extent. I dare say, I was even funny once or twice. I'm hard at work on several new series. You should play as a 5-10 minute format, intended to give spotlight to smaller games which can rock your world, or make you lose all track of time and die of exhaustion while trying to make sense just what the bloody hell is going on in the letter.  You guessed it, the first video in the series was just about that game. I'm also working on a series called Telling Tales, which will make Fun of Tales Tales narrative-driven games one episode at a time. You can look forward to me mocking the wonderful tales from the border lands very soon. There might even be a monthly series of videos centered on Civilization 6, but with the rise and fall expansion actually making the game a lot more interesting. Just a hint of a chance it will happen, but that's good enough for me. I'm excited for the future of this channel, and seek to improve the coming videos in every aspect. If you have any constructive feedback, please offer it. In case I've managed to pick your curiosity, you know where the subscribe button is. As to what long form videos you can expect in the coming weeks and months, I've got Dishonored, Dead of the Outsider, Wolfenstein 2, The Banner Saga 2, Divinity Originals 2, XCOM 2, All the Two's, Loads and Loads of Sequels, expansions and heartbreak await, and I'll be honored if you join me. Furthermore, Loads besides that as well. There's just so much more to come. For now, thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye!