Quinn I think we're ready to get it kicked off whenever you are I feel like you know We've we missed a handful of meetings, and I think the participants of this plan are those that are focused on Being a part of the the white paper So I think until we make more noise about Working on it like I think this group is probably what we can expect to show up at the meeting right now Okay, that makes sense Alex do you want to kind of give us an overview of where the document stands at the moment and where you'd like to take it from here? Sure So so first off As you can see there hasn't been The rate of reverse that I've hoped that would have been I was just explaining to Clint I've had a really busy couple of months and Not had enough opportunity to put the focus on it with me But what I've done so far is a Restructured look based on What we had agreed previously so I've created Placeholders and the the sections that I think we need to to write up and I do have I do have notes that cover Sort of rough rough notes that I need to sort of type up that cover sort of pages six to 16 and I put in a section around orchestration and the management interface is starting at page 70 Which which acting as Has offered to help with as well And then we need to sort of fill out some examples in in the block stores in the file systems, etc sections But hopefully those will become much quicker once we have the The other terminology sort of named out and documented So what I what I'd like to what I'd like to What I'd like to propose is if anyone has any sort of Strong Feelings about any of the particular sections or wants to take ownership of any of those sections now would be a good time to step up Otherwise, I guess Xenia and I will continue to work on this now that there's a bit of structure in there And we'll see where we take this over the next couple of weeks But I think we probably need to iterate a little faster So I would suggest if we have two or three volunteers that will work together. Maybe we could have a call For half an hour every couple of days and just keep the progress guy Is a just a question for the group. I Mean, it's my first time coming back to it in a little bit and seeing how you guys have updated the structure Do we feel like? I Mean we're asking for volunteers. I mean, maybe we could get people to I mean What maybe we could have someone going and actually a highlight sessions that say like here We're looking for a volunteer and have like a comment and get people to sign up that way Or do you want people to sign up and just you know, take sessions of it and say I want to work on this? Sorry kind of another one follow-up is are we Do they were ready to actually like pare it down at all like is it is it clear that maybe some of what's in here Is it nice to have and not important for for the document to be in its first draft? I Since the objective of the document is to is to cover the terminology and to cover the layers and to cover the you know Get people familiar with what's possible in the landscape? I think Broad coverage is probably more important than Lots of depth on every point. So so I'd rather have I'd rather have a broad coverage of all terminology and And even if some of the terms are only defined by a few sentences or a short paragraph Then we can kind of flesh it out and add more detail in phase two or phase three or whatever But I think broad is probably better than depth at the stage One of the things I was going to propose is In the in the examples of file system and block device, etc I was going to take a first-class it Putting down some of those some some of the examples whether it's File systems or block devices or objects or sort of whatever else And even some of the databases And then maybe reaching out to a broader group to kind of say hey, you know Fittest is a project. It's a listed database. Do you want to supply two paragraphs to explain what Fittest is? And how it compares and you know, and how it equates to the rest of the terminology that we've talked about her hands, you know, data protection and consistency and availability and all those sort of things and and kind of just crowd sourcing the examples by asking the maintainers of those examples to actually add that data in Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me your general approach. I would be supportive of that And then on the the first question in terms of assignment Would you rather go in and and grab sections of the table contents and say hey like I'm looking for someone to do this part or do you want people to go in and just grab individual smaller chunks and As I said, so so the the the first the first bit so the attributes of the storage system the main access interface on the storage second layers I do have a bunch of rough notes with which will mean I can probably get this done in a few days or maybe a week or so and then I don't know. Are you still comfortable picking up the orchestration and the management interfaces section? Yes, definitely. I can help with that Availability Jing You have enough time available I'm just wanting to make sure I know you have a lot of other things going on in your life You are you comfortable that you'll have the required time to put a dent in that in the next week or two. Yeah Okay, great So I'm in the table contents right now Alex, and I'm just trying to make sure I'm doing this accurately So I highlighted the sections between attributes and ending before the orchestration and I Is that accurate? Yeah Does somebody want to just present that document so we're all looking at the same thing I'll share Can you see that? Yep. Okay, so we have the first the first section covered to me in the second section of my orchestration management defense to Xing now With the With the blockstores and file systems. I'm thinking that we We just need to come up with a list. I can I can come up with the list and then we can form out We can ask, you know individual contributors to to other paragraphs to cover this so I could reach out to Aaron or Steve at Red Hat to give us something about Gluster and Seth and I could reach out to the sound give us something about Rook and Yeah, I'm here Sorry, take it This is Louise so I can add some stuff if you need. Oh, excellent. Yes, so we can cover portraits of those things too You guys want me to own this session the blockstores and file systems and then I'll Reach out to folks to get them involved Yeah, that would be great. Okay. I think and this is a question to the group My thinking was that it would be very useful to have Generic statements about Fundamental properties of local blockstores, you know remote blockstores, etc And not just have a sort of laundry list of products I think it's great to add add the products there as Examples of whatever category of store we're talking about but I think it's as important or more important perhaps to have the fundamental generic Statements about these classes of store Jose. Yeah, actually Actually, I completely I was thinking the same thing just a few minutes ago And I'm glad you mentioned that because sometimes what am I my concern is is as we continue forward and this document becomes a live document for every new company that comes in and adds a little section to it so it becomes like The sections with the companies become larger than the generic session that which is showing The reader what you know trying to teach them what what storage is so that's my concern. So maybe we can You know, I understand that we sometimes need examples I'm not don't know the answer to this. I don't know the solution, but I do feel that the generic and the Methods of how we provide disinformation to the reader is very important Come completely completely agree and and I think, you know, this is why I opted to have to document the store stack in the layers and the access interfaces upfront And say this is what a block. This is what the attributes of a block access interface I this is what the attributes of the files as to my access interface are and the share files system, etc but then also the different layers in that and part of that is about you know having local and remote and The different apologies and whether chargers or low-balance or all those things So that's so that's when we when we then come to the block section and we say this is local block We can we can quickly make a reference back and say local black look local block has these attributes around Availability scalability performance consistency durability, etc. And remote block has these things and distributed block has these things And then we can give some examples, but we don't have to we don't have to We don't have to sort of re-explain ourselves each time because a lot of the a lot of the layers are The terminology remains consistent across all the examples then Yeah, sounds great. So I guess the question is How do we flesh out these remaining sections as quickly and I really really like the The stuff that's in the doc already. I think it's it's the right approach to Presenting all of this information I'm just as I mentioned in the email to a couple of you. I'm concerned that That we're not gonna get it done in the next Let's call it four weeks five weeks and so Yeah, I guess the question is how do we fill in the missing bits to particularly towards the end of the document which are arguably I think the groundwork that's been laid on terminology and The approach to analyzing and presenting these things is very valuable, but ultimately It's the end of the doc that that that benefits from all of that and So, you know, one approach is to take to find volunteers who have specific Expertise in these particular areas, you know, Basam is perhaps a good example for block stores I think Rook was originally designed for Seth And and now is supporting other things but but find people who who can talk to the generic sections Before they perhaps go into any particular products or projects. It obviously has the Risk that the people who have a specific block store product or project Will perhaps be a little biased in how they present the generic information, you know, not Not intentionally, you know distorting the truth, but but just they have a particular perspective which is perhaps walked by one particular product, but I think If we get the right people with the right skill sets, hopefully that will not become a material problem Figuring out how to delegate and get other folks involved to help fill this out is gonna be important the other point I want to bring up is The things that have been assigned to Alex me and Shang Those are relating to, you know, the lower level like unstructured block and you know file Systems below that that we don't have assigned is the more structured so object stores and key value stores and databases And you know if we're gonna try to pair this down to actually get it done unless we have someone stepping up on the call like right now to To tackle those last three then maybe we should be deferring those for a party of the dock What do you need me to do? Uh, well, we need to get someone signing up for other things.  So What are your sorry, I'm not I don't know you well, what is your sort of core background? Well, which areas are you most interested knowledgeable about? Oh, I've worked DMC for 13 years at net up or three ever had storage for three and now work out what works I've worked on object stored key value stores block stores file systems. So you could put me on wherever you like So either we stand and like tackle more of that structured area get Lewis Lewis in there Or we ask him to help on one of the other three sections. So we have close We we have an immediate needs for object store and key value store So if if you want to take a stab at time to lose that would be really helpful Great and and I would personally be comfortable if we defer databases I mean, it's a big enough area and specialized and most people know what a database is and roughly what it looks like So I don't think that area will be as valuable as some of the other the other two you mentioned For completeness we want to do it eventually, but I think it's arguably less Which people are much more vague about understanding what these things are What's your email is so I can get you signed here Luis at port works Come but actually I'll just take objects doors. I'll leave key values to somebody else If we can Maybe find somebody from the xcd team I was just thinking exactly the same thing and I happen to have contact with the original author of xcd Fairly close contact so I could reach out to him and ask him if he could have a stab at that section Yeah, it CD is not strictly a key value store But but I think he has enough solid knowledge of that area To be able to have a good first pass at it Okay, that makes sense Yes, I can take that one is it to do Alex would you like to have a kind of an intro session with him just to Sort of frame the whole effort and make sure that you guys have a common understanding of what the intention of that section was Definitely Yeah, one thing I want to avoid one particular failure mode. I've seen in the past is is like documents written by committees Where there isn't a sort of a lead thinker who's structuring the whole thing because they can as somebody mentioned earlier They can end up as a more like a dictionary of products and Yeah, I definitely want to take away I definitely don't want this to be a dictionary of products because This document kind of fell apart this time last year Soon as we started trying to work on who's seen and who's out and all of that sort of the base So so I you know listen learns. We don't want to do that again And you know, I'm happy if say between Clients You me and sing or and Louise, you know, we keep like editorial control over the document It's Keep it saying I think we can do it a good job. Yeah, I think once once the guts of it is there you know, we should definitely open it up for comments and and I'm hoping that we'll get some valuable input and many of those will result in changes to the document. I'm sure but it needs to keep the general flow and structure saying otherwise it can be a bit of a Throwing stuff against the wall. Cool. Excellent. I'm very comfortable with the way things are moving if we can just be very conscious of time constraints and Maybe calls a week or something just to keep keep the momentum going would be Yeah, I was just thinking on could we could we maybe have a call and say Thursday or Next week Monday to Wednesday is bad because there's the already velocity on Probably going to sign up the package if if we can do maybe Thursday any time works for me Thursday in the week As in tomorrow week. Yeah. Yeah, I'll leave the logistics up to you guys All right, you want to keep track of that in the top of the dock for now the meeting Okay There's two more sections in here that I don't think we have people sign up for There was a storage orchestration management and the appendix. Oh Actually, that's storage orchestration management that needs to go because that's moved up to the top That's the that's the one that actually got assigned to me, I think It's just there's a there was a head there there, which just needs to grab it. Okay. How about the appendix? Appendix was was something I threw in there and it was really just generic Algorithms technologies, etc. That that apply across many of the areas So it was really a grab bag for stuff that didn't fit cleanly into any other section It may be that it's already covered elsewhere or again, perhaps we can defer some of that stuff So basically something on something and it does end up fitting into the section there in the middle Yeah I think so, I mean I think It's like consensus algorithms could well Yeah, maybe we can I did add a bit about Catering and consistency so that's probably covered but I Can take it and it's I know I know a fair amount about all of those And I can do a very I mean, I'm not gonna go, you know into great detail. I might put a reference to the pexus paper and the rough paper and Basically just have a you know three line item for each one of those to explain the essence of them and how they differ That's that's good idea. I think we can also we can probably move that and further up the dock into the storage layers I'll move that further up because Consensus is something that's common across, you know objects stores and key value stores on databases as well Yeah, I'll just wherever the sections lie at the moment I'll just fill the guts in and then we can easily move things around later relatively easily I mean is that is that guidance from everybody here on the call like as we're filling in these sessions that You know, we don't need to rewrite what's already written in detail I think a few sentences something meaningful and a link to an established and you know credible source that describes a tech is better than trying to Rewrite it from scratch Completely, yeah You know like I'm not gonna I'm looking to Rewrite, you know the definition of rain there was something like that. There's enough Me no official articles in that already. Okay. I think that the one part that is pretty important is Being able to sensibly compare some of these things against the properties that we've mentioned and You know, there may be links to some subsets of those comparisons But I think at the end of the day having a consistent those tables that we Provisionally put in there. I don't know what is Alex. Does it make sense to continue to plan to fill fill those in? Yes, what Yeah, I was Yeah, I was I was kind of good to think about this maybe slightly differently I had another table which I haven't copied in yet to to say To make a table based on the layers rather than the attributes because the layers actually define The attributes in most cases so so as As I'm writing down the layers you you'll see I've kind of said for example Sorry for all the screaming around but like If like if access interface it defines how we access the storage system But it also influences availability of performance or scalability in different ways And therefore by saying a local file system or a most fine system implements the data access layer this way It gives you a better way of showing how Define those those specific attributes rather than listing at those attributes every single time because otherwise they become to be for For the various examples so so for example, if we just say a local file system does this We don't stick into consideration some of the other properties which affect those attributes Because many of these systems are layered. So for example, you know, you look at an RPT device from Seth, which is a block device And it's and you can argue to distribute a box device but it's actually based on the Seth object store mechanism and The Availability and the data recovery the data protection is all down to the layers of Seth as opposed to the block device itself, for example, the block device is a data access interface Does affect availability in terms of how you move that block device between nodes and the management Interface that block device. So I was thinking of finding in those terms is supposed to just done just a raw table of the attributes So kind of saying with the local file system. These are the layers And this is how it affects the attributes because each one of those layers changes the attributes Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair The one thing which I thought when I knocked this thing together and to be clear those tables I bashed out in five minutes. So I didn't give any deep thought to them but what I thought was valuable is I Think it's more about distributed versus sharded versus local That that has pretty fundamental Effects on those properties Whichever layer you're talking about and you're absolutely right. There are different ways of building a distributed block store Whether it's on top of an object Store or something else But you know once it's distributed it is fundamentally has a set of properties Yeah So maybe yeah, and maybe we're saying the same thing Very keen to so I think the The properties of a distributed block store verse. Well, yeah, there's maybe two different interesting aspects. The one is Big by virtue of the interface A block So the point I was trying to come up with was It's less about where there's a distributed object store or a distributed block store or distributed files system It's the fact that if it's distributed with With a razor-coating for example, then there are implications on The number of notes are implications of latency their applications on Peter recovery and all those sort of things what which which apply equally whether it's a file system or a book device or an object store and Then on top of that you have for example the actual interface Which also defines? How you can Availability in terms of failover or something like that. So for example, if it's a if it's a if it's a shared files system interface on top of a distributed store Then just have to move them out points if it's a if it's an object store on top of a distributed store Then it's about maybe load balancers or having multiple service access points in terms of for the availability But not redefining what a distributed store is for each of those Different Perfect sense. Cool. I Added at the top so I wanted to chat about just make sure we're clear on the timeline if you guys are ready to move on to Organizational part of the document Let's you want to tackle more of the content in the top for everybody is Meetings weekly while using the SWG on the bi-weekly If that's what we want to do there it is we can change it for whatever one wants to do And then the other thing to chat about is the you know, what's the status update? Like which to see are we targeting to to let them know What status that we have this document? So I think there's three things we got to decide one, you know, what's cadence of meeting moving forward to What's the the timeline? So what are our delivery dates and you know, what status should this document be as we get through our timeline? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me the one thing that stands out there is I would really like to Distribute this document to this group for comment before we present it to the TOC I wouldn't If we have time I mean, we should we should probably aim to have a draft to the working group for the for the Wednesday 26th over Session rights that makes sense to me give them A week a bit tight I would like to give people longer, but but a week or so to give some comments and you know throw the hands up in disgust if they don't want us to present anything Which I hope won't happen and then present the current status to the TOC at that proposed date Which is about from memory of about a week and a half week before Kubecon Shanghai Sounds like between the 1026 meeting and the TOC update it would be two weeks Almost two weeks or two weeks and do we want to move from draft one to draft two within that time? Or do we want to say that we just submit a draft one for comments? Or you know, what do we want to be? I? Think the latter would be okay given the time constraints we have okay So when so for Kubecon China then do we want to have a Draft or a final Where should it be by then I? Think we should we should have a Final draft as close as right by then yeah, I'm a little hesitant to Fall foul of Not giving people enough time to review and comment And presenting it as final before everyone's had that opportunity So I would be slightly more comfortable saying this is our draft. It's currently under review Please, you know Give it some thought and look at it and maybe present the final one in Seattle a month later Yeah Because I said draft two at China and final for Kubecon US Yeah, I mean my thoughts are that that sounds reasonable Alex Yeah, that sounds fine You give it a chance for the TOC to get involved if they want to as well get their feedback and include it and They get the final one out there after China, so I agree with that I don't know if this helps I know you're preparing a presentation for for the Kubecon China I actually sort of presented the rough outline of this document to meet up a couple of weeks back and Put for the presentation with a handful of slides together So I can I can show that to this group and you know, we can maybe use that as a starting document for the presentation to So you keep on China if you think that helps That sounds fantastic Cool Shin, are you comfortable being the sort of primary presenter in China? Yeah, sure, you'll be there too, right? So it's a yeah, we can we can co-present I just think you're a better presenter than I do and you certainly have a lot more knowledge in this place I'll be there as the pointy-haired to see member and you'll be there as the storage expert One other Comment I had about the document in general is that I think the level of detail in the dock is very Good at the moment. I don't think it gets to be detailed, but there's quite a lot of kind of meta discussion around Options we considered Etc, which is valuable, but I think we're gonna have to condense this thing into something much more consumable Because the vast majority of the audience Consuming this I think is not gonna have the attention span to be able to read a you know What looks like it might become a 50 or 60 page document so I'm Thinking that we need either a slide deck Which the majority of people can consume and I'm thinking 20 slides or something like that that distills the essence of this stuff And then says if you want more detail go to the document Because I think the document in the shape that it's currently panning out is Too big for the vast majority of people to consume It's more like a reference guide, right? They'll just skip to the chapter they're looking for Yeah, yeah, so we will probably need an executive summary at the beginning of the document Or something like that and and perhaps a slide deck It says if you don't want to read a 50 page document read this 20 or 20 slide deck Yeah, that makes sense We like try to Make the the cube con china presentation the beginning of that That effort to condense this information into the slide deck Yeah, and possibly even the TOC presentation before that Okay, so that's about eight days before that. Yeah Cool sounds like we've made some good decisions Good stuff Good anybody else on the call want to want to step up and take any any more of this document If we've got Matt Brad blaine you guys out there. No all good Okay, can I ask you Clint to perhaps just send a summary of what we just decided To the mailing list. Yep. So that those who are not here Know that there's progress being made and and who's doing what and what the timeline is and then maybe if they have the Bandwidth could volunteer as well so you can solicit volunteers It seems like we have enough people right now. Yeah, so we're not desperately looking for a hundred people, but you know, I think it's Good form to at least let people know what's going on and invite them to participate if they want to I think one of the things that also challenged us in the last round of the document just to think about last year was People jumping in kind of last minute when things were baked and and the Alex said we want to have more of a Dictorial control of of this document. So as I write that email and I say hey like get involved Is that fair to say like now is the time to to step up and What's the what's the friendly language to basically say like? Well, I think they're different ways of going about I'm quite in favor of having a very limited number of people with edit control over the document And it sounds like that number is is like four or so at the moment and then Commentary we can allow people to comment and then you know Their comments may or may not make it into the document and that's at the discretion of the primary editor But have that, you know Transparent and out there so people can make comments and the primary editor can say thank you But we've deferred that to the next phase or we're not in on products or whatever the case may be All right, so like I guess I get break it up in phases to say Hey, we're looking for contributors right now for the document and then the timeline dictates that you know We're open for commentary from anyone at this time and etc. Yeah Yeah, and and the you know, there's the scope of the documents kind of Outlines what we're doing now. We're doing later as well. Okay, I would I'm not sure what you're thinking is Alex, but I think the document is too premature for commentary at this point I think there's just too much missing. So I would I would say we close it's not open for comments But if you if you want to volunteer to write One of the sections, please contact Alex something like that. Yeah, that works Cool, and I'll follow up with with the intro for the key values, though Okay, okay Excellent. Thanks everyone. Yep. Thank you Alex for all the great work here. Yeah, thank you guys. We'll catch up on Thursday Thanks guys. Bye


Weeks after the demolition of buildings and properties in the airport road axis of Benin City by the state government, organized civil societies and owners of properties that were destroyed have taken to the street to protest the actions of the state government. Protesting with different inscriptions on their placards along major roads in Benin City, they demanded justice over the action of the state government. I have a house at Okoroma community where I was staying with my family. One morning the state government just came with bulldozers and dogs and started pulling down houses and right now as I speak I'm homeless nowhere to stay. The state government have rendered me homeless and made me a refugee in my own state, in my country. We are surprised that last month they declared curfew. We stay in Okoroma, we went to Edulant Sassouvi, they told us that our land is not government land, we built. When government declared curfew that everybody should stay away from the community, we took our family and went to town, come down here to stay with some of our persons. Only for us to watch and be sure that the curfew about security exercise became an avenue for them to demolish our houses. We are here today to correct to the old world that the approach our governor used in saying they acquired the land in Obagi and again Mokba, that he didn't follow the due process in acquiring those properties. Those communities have been existing for centuries. And Gopi cannot claim ownership of the community for 500 years in 2017. The governor of all people and his government has decided to take our ancestral land from us on the note that he acquired it, from who did he acquire the land for in the first place. And then secondly, without messy, the governor and his government were meant to protect life of citizens. And the governor and the government is a better… Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Today, I want to talk about a topic that's been on my mind for a little while that I wanted to bring up. It's something that bothers me about the way we in the Linux community talk about our various Linux distributions.  You know, XYZ Linux distribution is a easy Linux distribution or it's a hard Linux distribution. You hear that all the time and when I say that, I mean, I could throw out some names of distributions right now and immediately you know what the general consensus of the community is as far as whether that is a easy distro or a hard distro, right? When I say Ubuntu, right, immediately you think, oh, easy distribution. Everybody says it's a easy distribution. Linux meant the same way. When I throw out Arch Linux, what's the first thing that comes to your mind as far as what people in the community say about it? It's a hard Linux distribution. And to be honest, I sometimes use these terms. Sometimes I will use the terms easy or moderate or hard when I'm talking about, you know, different layers, different kind of tier levels, I guess, with these Linux distributions, but I try not to use those terms. I've actually made a conscious effort to use different terminology. So in my videos, you often hear me talk about certain Linux distributions being for beginners or for the intermediate user or for the advanced user, right? I don't use easy, moderate, hard. I use beginner, intermediate, advanced. I think those words actually properly describe what we're talking about with these Linux distributions. For example, calling a Linux distribution easy, right? What does that imply? Well, it implies it's easy.  That's the only reason you're running it easy distribution.  That's why that easy distribution will work for you or you're just the type of person to just settle on something. You won't look for something better. You'll just go with the easy option. And I do know people get offended because a lot of people love these easy distributions and they really hate people calling it a easy distribution. And I understand that. And that's why, again, I've tried to steer away from that term. It also really confuses people or sometimes offends people when you call their distribution at easy distribution, but they've broken it, right? Because I don't care how easy the distribution is. Take Ubuntu, for example. You go to the Ubuntu forms. There's plenty of people that have broken their Ubuntu installation and they're on the forms asking for help. Yeah, but everybody told me it's an easy distribution, right? I was lied to, right? I was lied to by the Linux community. Well, no, they just really, again, they didn't label things properly. They used the wrong term, the wrong moniker. They should have said Ubuntu is a good distribution for the beginner. They should not have said it is an easy distribution. And the flip side to that coin is, you know, the hard distribution. So the same thing. That term really is a bad label. I often hear people, you know, they say that no new user should use a distribution like Arch Linux, right? Or Gintu or Linux from scratch or Slack, where, you know, GNU Geeks, obviously, things like that. No new user should use a distribution like Arch. We'll take Arch as an example because it's hard, right? And that is not universally the case. There are plenty of people that install things like Arch Linux as their first Linux distribution or Gintu as their first Linux distribution because they wanted to explore those particular distributions or they needed to explore those particular distributions from maybe school or work or, you know, whatever it is they're into and telling these people that, hey, you can't go that route. That's not for you. It's too hard. You can't do it. I think that's offensive, right?  They're not quite elite enough to install a particular distribution. I think, again, we should be encouraging people. We shouldn't be trying to discourage people. That's the wrong approach. And when we call a distribution hard, I mean, that term implies that there's some kind of difficulties that we have to overcome to get the thing installed or to even run it as our daily driver, that there's going to be, you know, these obstacles that are going to be actively trying to prevent us from running that distribution. Of course, that's not the case, right? Anybody that's ever run something like Arch Linux knows that it's, you know, it's different than installing something like Ubuntu. It's different than running something like Ubuntu. But there's not some force that's working against you trying to stop you from running that distribution.  That's, again, that term hard. We should say it's for the advanced user. I like that. If somebody wants to say Arch is for the advanced user, I'm fine. If somebody wants to say Linux Mint is for the beginner, I'm fine using those labels. When we start labeling things as easy and hard, that's when it's really a problem of semantics. And I would say the distributions that people often label as hard, things like Arch Linux and Gen2, maybe things like NIC, certainly Canoe Geeks, I would put in this category, Slack where I'd put in this category. They're not necessarily hard. They are for people that maybe want more of a challenge. I could see that if you wanted to label them as people looking for something to actually challenge them a little bit, to push them a little bit. That is a good description for those particular distributions. But the truth is, if you've been using Linux for a while, and especially if you've distro hopped a lot, because all these distributions that I've talked about, I've actually installed them before. I've used almost all of them on physical hardware on my main production machines, a timer too, right? And these Linux distributions, the ones that are easy, the ones that are hard, they're all the same. And I'm not even kidding. At the end of the day, it gets to the point once you've seen all of these distributions, they're all the same. I think a lot of this comes from, you know, if you've never explored these different distributions, the fact that you don't know that distribution kind of leads you to have some preconceived notions, some misconceptions about things. If you've never used Arch Linux, for example, and you've just listened to what the community has told you about it, you've probably got some pretty bad ideas about what Arch Linux might be. The same thing, if you've never run a boon to, and you've listened to what people say about a boon to on the internet, you've probably got some pretty bad ideas of what a boon to is. But again, once you start using all of these Linux distributions, you realize they all have positives, they all have negatives, and all kinds of equals out at the end, right? It's kind of a zero sum game, you know? One is not better than the other. And really at the end of the day, I would say, one is not easier than the other either. It's, a lot of it is subjective, a lot of it depends on use case, a lot of it depends on the user. Now I think what many tech journalists, what many YouTube content creators talk about when they talk about an easy distro or a hard distro, let's take the easy distro. When they talk about an easy distro, they're really talking about the installation and how set up it is, how far along in the setup process. Because if I wanted to, I could go grab the source code for the Linux kernel and all the GNU utilities and Xorg and I could grab an init system, picking a init system. I could build my own Linux distribution from the ground up. You can think of it as Linux from scratch, right? That's basically what Linux from scratch is.  And that's hard, right? That's what they label as hard. That's going to the absolute max as far as you build everything yourself. Now how far along that process you get, that's when things start getting easy. For example, something like Ubuntu has a graphical installer that's very easy. You click okay like three times and a graphical installer and it's installed in under 10 minutes typically, right? So that's easy and you didn't have to build anything yourself. You didn't have to compile, you know, the kernel and all the core utilities and all of this stuff.  So it's further along that process. And I guess that's why they call it easy, but it's more of a time thing. It's not a degree of difficulty, you know, because is it really that difficult, for example, to compilage into? No, does it take a few hours to compilage into? Yes, right?   Again, I think they give people the wrong impression. I think in many cases, they really do offend a lot of Linux users. Another thing to consider when you're using terms like easy or hard is the fact that they're completely subjective in a lot of cases. I mean, what is a easy distro? Everybody agrees that Ubuntu and Linux Mint are easy in the community. Pretty much everybody says that, right? Well, what about all the hundreds of Linux distributions that are based off of Ubuntu? Or in some cases, Linux Mint. There's plenty out there. Are all of those also easy? Well, a lot of them, you don't hear people describe that way, right? Same thing with Arch Linux. Arch Linux universally, everybody calls it a hard distro. Well, what about the hundreds of Linux distributions based off of Arch Linux? Many of them people describe as easy or at least moderate. For example, Manjaro certainly makes the best case of turning Arch Linux into an easy distro, but people will debate this because still being rolling release and based on Arch, a lot of people say, no, no, no, it's not easy. It's really hard just like Arch. But really, I think using my terminology, is it for the beginner user? Is it for the intermediate user? Or is it for the advanced user? Makes a lot of sense because then we know exactly what these things are. Ubuntu and Linux Mint, they're definitely good for the beginner. They can be used by the intermediate and advanced user, but they're definitely appropriate for the beginner user. I think something like Manjaro is definitely, I would put it in the moderate category, but if somebody wanted to argue it's a beginner distribution, I'm fine with that as well. And I would say Arch Linux is for the advanced user, mainline Arch, although I could also make an argument these days, especially as Arch comes along with their installer program, the Arch install more automated kind of installation script that they're doing these days. I would argue Arch is almost a moderate level distribution these days. And what about some of the big older distributions that people don't run on the desktop a lot, but they've got some users out there. How would you label OpenSusa? How would you label Fedora? How would you label Debian? Now that's a good one. OpenSusa for me, I could say it's for the beginner. I could say it would be appropriate for the beginner user, Fedora. I would actually label it more as for the moderate user. I know a lot of people want to pretend like Fedora is for the beginner, but it's really not. There's some weird stuff with Fedora. Debian, and I know a lot of Debian users love Debian and promote it. I love Debian, a long-time Debian user. I use Debian on my workstations in the past. I've used Debian on the server a lot in the past. And I love Debian as a distribution. It's definitely not for the beginner, right? It's much more for a moderate user. Probably I would even go to the advanced user. And the reason for this is because I think a lot of people when they think about easy and hard, those terms are really talking about more of the philosophy behind the projects. And I think any Linux distribution that is really hardcore in the free software philosophy, which Debian is definitely that kind of distribution, naturally it's more for the advanced user because you're gonna have to jump through some hoops to install a lot of your non-free software that is pretty much going to be required on 99% of the computers out there because they can't run strictly on free software. So a distribution like Debian is for the advanced user, in my opinion. Something like Arch Linux. Arch Linux doesn't care about the free software movement. Arch Linux is fine with proprietary software. They have proprietary software sitting in their standard core repositories that they don't care. And because of that, you're gonna be able to install all the software you need. All the non-free software and firmware and drivers and everything you need for Arch Linux rather easily. And that's why I could argue Arch Linux really is a moderate distribution where Debian is really more for the advanced user. So that's just some of my thoughts on this. I know I rambled on a little bit, but I often get questions from you guys about, hey, is this particular Linux distribution? Is it easy? Is it hard? I know those terms are thrown around a lot in the community and I've tried to make a conscious decision not to use those terms anymore. I know you guys, if you've been following my videos, no, I almost never use the term easy distro. Right, I always talk about this distro is a beginner friendly distribution. I think that's a much more kind of appropriate label to put on these things. I don't, more people start using those kinds of labels because again, I think using the wrong term confuses people and again, in many cases, it probably offends some people. Peace guys.


Can you even get good brisket around here? Why are you talking about brisket? Obviously, I'm talking about pulled pork. Ooh, look at the sauce! Sauce? Absolutely not there. There has to be sauce! Alright, alright. Let's get started. Good evening and welcome to For Your Reference. Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood librarians from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I'm Robin Beatenbow, and I'm from South Carolina. And seem to have lost Paris and Sarah. Hey, I'm Paris Leland, and I am from Texas. And I'm Sarah Johnson, and I'm from Tennessee. And we had some opinions about barbecue. Very strong ones, actually. Some are more right than others, shade intended. I just really want some sauce, okay? You definitely get sauce in the Carolina style, which is what I grew up with. And that encompasses both North and South Carolina. You do get three distinct sauces. South Carolina brings the mustard based in vinegar based in Eastern North Carolina. And it's like a ketchup based, tomato based thing in Western North Carolina, which is just way too sweet. If you get invited to a barbecue in either state though, what you can expect is to rock up to a whole slow roasted pig and be invited to pick directly from its carcass. I am with the slow roasted pig. That sounds so good.  I can really get behind. When it comes to barbecue, definitely a couple of slices of moist brisket. Get out of here with that lean-ish. We're not with it. I don't want to have that lovely outer bark on it. And you pair it with a nice sweet tea. It is too dye poor. And all that other stuff is great as well.  It's a whole experience. And let's be honest, if y'all put sauce on your meat, it's because you messed it up. And I said what I said. Oh, man, you went there. Oh. So in Tennessee, Memphis has definitely got the most distinguished place in the barbecue realm. But I've definitely heard of some oh-so-good barbecue here in Knoxville. That pig's burger from Brother Jack's back in the day, which is where Brother Jack would cut off the meat from the spare ribs, grind it, and then grill it like a hamburger. Yes, please, give me some of that. But Memphis, you've got both. You've got the dry ribs and you've got the wet ribs. And you've got the wet ones are like my jam, because they put the sauce in the process while it's smoking. And then they give you more sauce to put on top. I mean, who doesn't want that? Someone from South Carolina, maybe. Someone from Texas. But isn't there a style of barbecue we're missing? No. There are places outside the South where you can get invited to a barbecue and all they're doing is just cooking a bunch of stuff on the grill. That's where I definitely wrong. I think we're agreed. So we can all agree that you should never invite someone to a party in the South and call it a barbecue if your main course is veggie burgers. And while it is interesting how many of us construct parts of our identity around meat and how it ought to be prepared, we have got some very special guests tonight to take a much deeper look into identity and research around it. This is reviewer two. I would like to send a warm welcome to our first guest tonight, Dr. Justin Rudnick, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University in Mankato. Hello, hello. Some hot takes on barbecue today. Indeed. So tell us a little bit about you and your work and your feelings on barbecue if you have a second. Sure. I am definitely of the Midwest strain of barbecue. We call a barbecue when I'm just cooking stuff on the grill and it can include chicken. So I'm sorry, I will gladly be in the wrong about it. I am Midwest born and raised. I was a Wisconsin native. Did a little detour in Minnesota and Ohio and I'm back in Minnesota. I've been here at Minnesota State Mankato since 2016. This is almost the end of my sixth year. And I've just been doing the gig. All right, sounds good. Well, we have another very special guest playing the role of reviewer two tonight, Dr. Stevie Munn, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Utah Valley University. Welcome. Hi, thank you so much. Justin and I go way back to the dark times of PhD. I don't look semi-okay. So talk about trauma bonding. Lost and jolly ranchers co-read Mountain Dew and jalapenos. There you go. That's how you get through. So Stevie, tell us a little bit about your work. Okay. So like I said, Justin and I went to PhD together and graduated in 2016. While he went back to the Midwest, I took a venture out to Utah, which is a giant rock, but it's a really beautiful rock. So if you haven't been out here, you should definitely come visit. I teach primarily ethnography, oral history, qualitative research methods. I'm also our basic course director in public speaking. So I dabble in that as well. And it's a lot of fun. I'm really interested in identity. And so everything for me comes back to that question of how identity is political and social and cultural. And then how is that communicated? And that's really how Justin and I have stayed tightly bonded. All right. Well, without further ado, let's get into our topic for tonight. The question you two will be talking about this evening is, what does it mean to research alongside marginalized communities? So before you, before I go, a reminder to our audience on Facebook and YouTube, if you have questions for our guests, drop them in the comment section and we'll bring them up during the Q&A. For now, I will leave you to it. I'll be back in a bit. Okay. All right. So Justin, what do you think? What does it mean?  And then in thinking about it, I was like, that's such a big question. And I think for me, it's always come down to being prepared as much as you can for people's stories and to be taken on a journey with those stories that you maybe didn't anticipate. I don't know if you remember talking about this in that conference room at the Schoonover Center for Communication. They'll bring me back.  How do LGBTQ folks kind of project their sexual identities in kind of more nonverbal or performative ways instead of just disclosing that information. And when I was using like you do, Stevie, ethnographic methods, interviews, observations, I got taken on a lot of journeys by my research participants. And I ended up with the whole chapter in my dissertation that I titled Wayward Stories. Because there were things that my participants wanted to talk about that were not necessarily things I was asking about, but were so crucial to those experiences. And that has kind of just been my experience researching identity and particularly among marginalized populations ever since then. It's like as soon as you open the door to give folks an opportunity to share about the kinds of experiences that oppress them, you kind of got to be ready to go on a journey. And it's not always the time that you think you're on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that does definitely take me back to that conference room. And yeah, I think you're, I think you're totally right. I like agree with you so much. I mean, we've also worked a lot together on research and have also, I think, grown together intellectually and worked through a lot of ideas that we've tuned on or have been interested in. But I think this idea is really underestimated. Like there is a certain complexity with and a responsibility if you're going to go on this journey. And I think that a lot of times it's sort of treated a little bit slightly and there's harm that could be done because you're already working in a community that's been potentially violently marginalized, violently oppressed. And now you could be redoing those things. And so it is something I, like, I know you and I have had a lot of conversations about and thought a lot about. But there's like also a beauty to it. You don't know where that door is going to open to and what story they're going to take you down. And then it's, for me, like as an oral historian, what becomes interesting is sort of trying to trace that, connection historically and politically and culturally and trying to kind of figure out what is the context that they're coming to, the little fragments that they're interested in. But it is definitely not a linear path. It is not a linear path. So, yeah, the question we posed was like, I think, a very large sort of theoretical question. But I think it's one that has been hanging over us since we started on this like intellectual journey, probably in the conference room. Well, and I also think that you talk a lot about violence targeted towards marginalized communities. And that just immediately takes me back to conversations you and I have had about like the violence that theory can inflict. Oh, yeah. The stories that we're trying to tell. Ever since you first posed that idea to me, I've been wrestling with this in my head. And I think you and I have kind of danced this dance with the reviewers and the work that we've tried to publish together. Yeah. I was digging back over some of my, some of my reviewer two comments from submissions over the last few years. And it was interesting, I'll leave the journal nameless, but I had tried, I remember a couple of years ago, I tried publishing a piece somewhere. And essentially what I was told is that the, the research findings as I presented them were not interesting or insightful from a theoretical perspective. Classic. Right. Right. And I just remember, I don't know that you've run into this also, but it's been so, I'll use the Minnesota interesting to experience these kinds of comments because on the one hand, like when I talk about my research findings with other LGBTQ folks, they're always fascinated by it because I think your data back to the communities, they're like, Oh, you captured our experiences pretty well. Like I hadn't thought about it like that, but it makes so much sense. But when you try to position those themes absent of any kind of like overly complex theoretical framework, academics just don't want anything to do with it. No, I, and you and I have talked a lot about this because we've run into this a lot with the infamous reviewer too. And related to this concern that you've gone for me reviewer too. I know that I have also like feverishly keyboard smash to you about a particular reviewer too that for one of the pieces that I did eventually get published, but went through a really wild ride with it about farmer's wives. The critique was that there was nothing interesting about the stories because the stories were every day. And that is such a like impossible that it's an impossible task for scholars like you and I to address when the perception of what should be published is something like high levels theoretical or something that's almost like unachievable. So this every day experience, whether it's in the queer community or indigenous women, it is not, it's not important. And it just gets washed out of this of the research. Well, and I think that that also speaks to the methods that we use and the kinds of stories that we try to focus on. So I know you and I over the years have developed this really intense interest in experiences of the everyday kinds of mundane moments that as you experience it, don't seem to be very profound, but actually have a lingering effect on us when we labor through those moments. And it's interesting to me to just reflect a little bit on how much research we see get published, particularly when it's research about vulnerable or marginalized communities where the stories that get featured end up being so traumatic or so emotional. And it's almost like we're seeking out those really intense moments of exploitation almost or like deliberate harm. And that's what we base our research findings on. And one of the things that I think you and I have both kind of struggled with and trying to publish our work is convincing people that it's the small moments that stick with people. And especially when you're thinking about like marginalized or vulnerable communities, a lot of times it's of course those big moments of discrimination like you're going to affect you and we can recall those pretty easily. But what ends up coloring so many of our experiences as we move through the world is the accumulation of those small moments, the little cuts and stings that just kind of pile up over time that really affect how we interact with each other. Yeah. Yeah. It's a real challenge because the perception I think also in the methodological space that we tend to occupy sometimes privileges the moments that are more violent, that are more harrowing or traumatic. And I do worry about sort of the re-violencing that happens when that occurs and that and then the story is about an everyday discrimination or an everyday prejudice moment or an everyday moment of othering or brushing up against someone just gets treated as not important. And this is something that is a big struggle. I think in our reviewer 2 pool, I think with the reviewer 2 is because they're looking for something that we're not going to give them. That is the endeavor that we're pursuing. But we're almost up against like this battle because they're still seeking this deep theoretical contribution. And the idea of what the theoretical contribution is also at the onset really problematic because the contribution has to then couch itself at some point back into another experience that's already been written about. So then that leaves us with no space to even put forward the mundane everyday ordinary event of discrimination or of something that's just interesting, right? Just a tweak in social experience. There's just no space for that. So then those things just get treated as not worthy of being published, right? And that's the end of the story. And I can't help but think too if that's just one other mechanism in what prevents vulnerable communities from seeing themselves in the research. So here's where my brain went with this. It's one thing for an academic, for a reviewer to read our work and say, this doesn't seem interesting. You wouldn't need a research article to make these kinds of claims. But then the flip side of that coin is that there are no research articles that make those kinds of claims. So what kinds of knowledge is being generated about these communities in the first place? Who is generating it? And what are these gatekeeping systems look like? Because maybe to those of us with, as my diplomas are hanging in the background, most of us with all these advanced degrees could read a paper and say, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is so close to lived experience. You don't need a research paper to say this. But if there are no research papers saying this, then what kinds of knowledge claims are we making? And where are they, right? Yeah, yeah. Be every day is unimportant is the kind of key takeaway. It becomes just something that we're not concerned about. And then I think, I mean, I've watched too, just in reviewing that I've done through the years. I think that sometimes there are areas of study that the stories are getting more violent almost. It seems like the bar is needing to go further in order for it to be quote interesting. And that I think is concerning also because I worry about the ethics of representation there because just like you're saying the flip side of what you're saying really is we also have these areas of research in our area, right, that depict particular populations in one way. And then that's the only way that people know them as. And that's also really problematic and really troubling. And there's a powerful system behind that too. And a powerful kind of gatekeeping that's happening too. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit disheartening when you start thinking about it because you're kind of. The every day is what we all experience. It is. It's the small brushes of moments from morning to night. But those moments while in my experience, the reviewers actually are like this is so interesting and also so relatable. So they'll say this relates to my life in this way or I heard similar stories or oh yes, I can absolutely sort of quote validate this. But then it's not worthy because it's not interesting enough. And yeah, I don't know what to say about that. That's just such an issue with our our couching of what's interesting then and what's worthy of being published because then it has to be this theoretical thing driven by an outside theoretical perspective. The story itself can't be theory. The story itself isn't worthy of standing on its own. It requires this extra thing and reviewer two says no. Right. Well, and I think that's a really interesting. So you and I are yet again trying to publish. Yeah. We've been working on for it's got to be almost a decade now at this point. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And the comments. I mean, I'll say that like we can leave the journal nameless. The comments that were pretty kind this time compared to how they were in the past. Yeah. Yeah. This ongoing discussion of like what's the right theory to use to explain experiences keep coming up. And I can't help but wonder like at what point will academic research be comfortable with entertaining the idea that these you know these thematic representations of people's experiences can stand on their own without a theory to prop them up. Yeah. I think we should delve into this essay situation a little bit because this was a really interesting moment of reflection. I think for us as a friendship too because we collected the data. We had something interesting right. It was supported by our graduate advisor and by the advisor for the seminar and then we sent it off and the reviewer and editor for a journal wrote back and sort of I want to say verbatim but not verbatim said that folks in the LGBTQ population are no longer minorities. And so we don't have to quote worry about these extreme experiences that are happening in your paper. And this was like you know for you a personal identity moment and for me as an ally and as a friend was also this moment of like what is going on right. We had this like total it was like eruption. How do you support that idea. Yeah. How do you support that idea. I think it was verbatim what we both were like what is going on here. But I think that that statement was couched in also a theoretical moment too because it came our submission for that essay came when gay marriage was legalized. And I think that the reviewer and I think that the editor was kind of like oh this policy quote theory was passed everything is okay. Yeah it's good now. It's good now. And it was a washing of those every day harms that happen to vulnerable people. And that was like a I think a big turning point for you and I and thinking about the complexity of what we were about to do that not everybody was going to see these everyday things as important. They were going to treat them like they were solved because there was a law or there was a regulation or there was a policy that people weren't allowed to do that. And it's tricky because I think if I'm remembering correctly where that comment came from is so the research we're trying to publish is about these discussion panels that are like staffed by LGBTQ students. Instructors bring them into the classroom and they're going to share and tell to increase empathy and understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ persons. And I think the comments were like well okay if these students are invited in then are they truly marginalized if basically if they've been given a foot in the door. And it's like the fact that you've got to be given that space and it's kind of like a show and tell except maybe like a share and tell to you've got to be given that space in the first place should be illustration enough. Never mind the conversations that I think we tried to engage in in the paper about the issues you run with this kind of like tokenism like when you select people on a stage and subject them to scrutiny by the dominant group. That's not a politically neutral ever. No and not in the context of our study too. I think it's worthy of saying that the professor was facilitating and negotiating various interactions that were happening with students who were saying inappropriate or disrespectful in the very least harmful things kind of under their breath or to each other while the panelists were speaking. And so then for the reviewer to make this comment and then for the editor to not only back up the reviewer but then to levy their own comment that was similar to the reviewer's comment or reviewer too's comment was rather shocking I think to say the least. Yeah in a really gross way in a very gross way. Yeah it was a real whiplash moment of like wait what is happening but it goes back to this issue of theory. It goes back to our I think tenuous relationship with theory and the moment that I think you say you're a scholar that is a nonrepresentational scholar or you're a scholar that doesn't use quote theory then I think your work is also looked at as less than and then I think the stories that are in your essay are also put in that category reviewer too. Which is just tough then because I think so much of the research that's generated about vulnerable communities wrestles with those kinds of things and so the research when it finally makes its way out there and the articles and the essays that I find that I resonate the most with are never in the mainstream journals. Not in our field. In our discipline if you attempt to be a theoretical good luck. In those like the quote unquote top tier journal and it's just like that just keeps perpetuating the issues where like research about marginalized communities is marginalized in the discipline and it's just this never ending game of being about. Hi I'm back. I hate to cut you off that was a very interesting very interesting conversation and it's fascinating to me. I'm going to start us off with questions here. It's going to sound for a minute like I'm doing the whole I got a question that's really more of a comment but my research tends to focus around scholarly publishing sort of broadly speaking and like how it's just broken from top to bottom. Part of this issue is what you guys were touching on is you know this whole idea of like impact factor and sort of you know how people are judged based your judgment whether you're productive based on how many articles you produced and what's the impact factor of your of the journal where you published and like how do you because as a librarian you know currently working on an open access communication plan and one thing we want to do is start talking to I think you two would be an easy sell but faculty like the reviewer twos of the world who've been doing this for a million years and they're sort of like in this theoretical quagmire and they can't get out because they're like oh this is the only way I learned how to do things and therefore if people aren't doing them this way they must be wrong like how do we begin to do that do you think it's interesting because I think and I think Stevie and I have a very similar response to this and that so from the very beginning our academic trajectories look so similar we were advised by the same person our methodologies are very similar like there's just a lot of overlap in the way that we think about the world and I think part of that included an exposure to quote-unquote non-dominant ways of doing the work so it's like the when if you're somebody who like you just did what your advisor did and you're just like the next iteration of this long line this like academic lineage it's hard to break out of that mold and so you start getting exposed to different ways of thinking different ways of doing different ways of representing that work so I think like we talked about the the issues of how our research is never in these mainstream journals but it's also those it's those marginalized outlets that are doing the cool stuff and are really starting to break the mold of what this can look like I agree I think that at the heart of this conversation is like cross training it's exposure to different ways of doing and thinking and understanding and also exposure to thinking about how folks live in different ways and love in different ways and exist in different places and that goes a really long way I think to fostering that deep curiosity that is missing from reviewer 2 so I think it would take in some ways in our discipline a journal that truly believed in that that had you know if it was a quote flagship journal that had a board and had you know authors that believed in this way of thinking that there's different ways of knowing and representing and that it doesn't just end with this one training that you may have received okay well we are at 731 and Stevie that was beautifully stated enough that I I think I'm just going to cut us off so so thank you both so much for joining us tonight it was a fascinating discussion and now we're going to send everybody over to Paris Playland to check this out welcome back everyone here we are at the final check this out segment for this season and true to form we're going to explore the topic from the reviewer 2 segment so this evening we're going to look at the intersection between identities information literacy and go through a few resources that you can use in your own time to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship that other identities may have with the same information and discover the stories behind their perspectives alright so starting off just a little bit foundational around here I think we can all agree that not everyone's experiences are the same that we don't all have the same view so I'm not particularly harping on whether it's negative or positive but the cultural the environmental and the life experiences that we all have and that form who we are or mold us and make our values making us all individuals that's what I'm focusing on so that brings us to the question where can we go when we're trying to understand another's experience in context and in an authentic manner or where do you go when you have questions like what is the history or evidence that has led up to a moment from a specific perspective I think we've all had these questions and many of us don't know where to start right so fear not moving forward with that in mind I know y'all already now I'm sending y'all right over to UT libraries to get some support alright one thing really quickly though y'all may remember that we explored the history research guy last episode this is absolutely one access point for doing different perspectives and stories on this subject however because we already went over that and I spoke on it I just want to remind you that you can find these guides by sorting through the subjects and clicking on history and then you'll see a list of topics or stories or perspectives however you want to look at that now for this episode I want to direct you right on over to the primary source research guide okay this is a wonderful place to start and you can use the databases provided to search first-hand accounts from people with different viewpoints in a moment in history so think examples like diaries images and other documents that really tell a story about what's going on at a specific time so this is a great way to get insight into an event through those who live through the moment think about COVID and how some of us are recording our experiences this is something similar to that also in this image on the left hand side you can see that there are several topics for you to explore so maybe I'm curious about others identities with doctors and medical history well under the medical and disability tab there are several resources that cover an array of topics related to medical practices medical history and experiences of those involved so this is just one place to begin to understand how others experience that complicated relationship between medicine and community there's also the cultural competence and public health guide that I should mention in relation to this topic it's actually curated by our lovely public health librarians and it's also a wonderful array of information that can be applied to this topic so it's actually giving you all two ways to explore this perspective starting with general subjects like medicine now for those of you who feel a little intimidated by documentation and you don't really understand databases I've got something even easier for you I am a visual person and I like video streaming because I'm often times doing other things so UT Libraries has video streaming collections that contains documentaries, interviews news programs and so much more so you can really take your time and explore that collection by heading over to the video collection research guide and clicking on video streaming collections and then from here you have a list of different video databases with tons of video content just make sure to read the descriptions to find out which one works best for you so for instance I may choose academic video online search medicine and any as you see in this image and my result may yield some interesting videos with primary source details on this topic so if educational video and information be shared in this specific modality piques your interest take a look at what the library subscribes to and explore different perspectives okay you have no excuses so you all have three new sources to use when you're looking to an examine a topic from a different lens that may be different from yours okay you have a primary source guide and a video collections list that UT Libraries subscribe to and you can always contact your friendly UT Library and to get some help okay I hope that you take the time to visit these resources and check out some of the awesome content available to you this wraps up our last check this out segment for this season I'm looking forward to seeing you all in Season 3 some more information literally so let's head over to the stacks with Sarah Johnson Good evening everyone and welcome to stories from the stacks we're going to take a peek into two can I count two identity based collections within the libraries both of which are oral histories so not only do I get to introduce and share the collections but you can also listen to these people's stories yourself right now these are digital and can be accessed anywhere so let's go take a look the first collection we're going to talk about is the voices out loud oral history project so the voices out loud oral histories collects, preserves and shares East Tennessee's LGBTQ plus history and culture this collection of interviews offers firsthand accounts of LGBTQ plus people who live or have lived in East Tennessee Donna Brocke and Kat Brooks are co-directors of the project and I was able to connect with Kat to get the low down um so disappointed but not surprised by how little information was found in the LGBTQ plus history voices out loud was created the goal of this project is to record stories of queer people living and thriving in the South and ensuring that young queer people in East Tennessee have an accurate depiction of the queer community in the southern United States so with this in mind they were able to get started conducting interviews by contacting people Donna had already you know had previous connections with they you know used word of communication was really important they researched queer history and the newspapers reaching out to people they had read about hosting outreach and preservation events but most importantly they offered their support to the queer community they made it a point to build relationships and trust when trust was hard and is still hard to find among the community so these stories range from people's life experiences personal interests careers um their work advocating for the LGBTQ plus community the impact of living in Knoxville um and reactions to the defunding of the Pride Center at the University of Tennessee in 2016 so this project gives people the opportunity to learn and know about a piece of history that isn't talked about enough um so that's a little little piece into the first collection we're going to talk about so the second one is called Rising from the Ashes and its full name is Rising from the Ashes The Chimney Tops to Wildfires Oral History Project um so we're just going to keep it short and sweet uh but it documents the impact of the Wildfires um and on it was back in 2016 so on November 23rd 2016 an uncontained wildfire on the chimney tops in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park gained so much momentum that it exceeded the National Park boundaries um and descended upon the town of Gatlinburg uh and we later find out that this was the largest natural disaster or one of the largest natural disasters in Tennessee history and um the deadliest wildfire in the eastern United States in the 1940s so in partnership with the city of Gatlinburg and the Annaporte Public Library UT Libraries has collected nearly 140 140 audio and video interviews with individuals who were impacted by the wildfires um these interviews include individuals who lost homes and businesses first responders fire and forestry experts um government officials artists scientists educators uh recovery specialists from charitable and volunteer organizations uh the list like goes on for a really long time um so how is something like this accomplished like this sounds like a huge undertaking um well in short it takes everyone um the partners that I mentioned before they were really helpful in identifying people to interview um and again that word of mouth uh communication was crucial interviewees would mention others to speak to to you know capture a new perspective from the event um the collection team aims to be consistent uh by writing you know script questions basically to ask based on the narrator's role so like those um people that I mentioned before it was you know just specific to that group of people um and UT libraries was also able to hire a graduate student who spoke Spanish to encourage the Latinx community to share their story so and then as we've all experienced um navigating the COVID-19 pandemic also became part of the process um transitioning to online interviews was another step in documenting um people's experiences so the social, cultural, economic, political and natural impacts of this event are you know still being calculated even though it was back in 2016 so um but I was able to speak with Jennifer Fields who is the director of special collections and Laura Romans who is the UT libraries um manuscripts archivist who both played a very critical role um in documenting this project so both collections that I've mentioned voices out loud and rising from the ashes are both preserved in the UT libraries, Betsy B Creek, more special collections in university archives um but I'd like to take a minute as we wrap up and just um you know mention like these collections are really really important um giving a voice to those who haven't been given the opportunity to tell their story or connecting with those who have suffered so you know maybe they don't feel so alone and um each of us has our own story that shapes our identities and it's you know it's important that we share them with each other in the world um so I would just like to credit all of the information about these projects to the respective websites um and you know they were written and composed by the leaders of each project so that is it for stories from the stacks so I will catch you in season three on the flippity flip I did I muted myself sorry anyway streaming exactly so well we've reached the end of our show and the end of the season that's this wrap on season two uh thanks everybody for watching we'll be working over the summer to figure out what new shenanigans we'll be bringing to you in the fall good night and thanks for watching


My name is Adele Young, I am from Trinidad and Tobago and I just completed my MSc in water science and engineering with a specialisation in hydraulic engineering and neurophobesian development. I actually heard of IG some time ago. I really wanted to specialise in my field and I knew they specialised in water studies. So online I would have seen the type of programmes they had but unfortunately I would not have been able to apply because I don't have the resources or the money to come to the institute. I thought maybe I could do a short course. I went back to the website and I looked at the short courses and during that experience I realised that there was the VISTA fellowship I thought okay this is a perfect opportunity to actually go there and do what I wanted to do for such a long time. So within a one month period I actually applied and I submitted my application and I was successful. At the time that I applied to do this course I was working in a consultancy back home and many of my projects were based on land use development, looking at spotter regularisation and in particular we looked at infrastructure design and I saw that there was really a need to go into more detail and develop aspects of that. For example looking at flood risk assessments, looking at drainage design which is one of the reasons why I chose this topic of hydraulic engineering and neurophobesian development especially in the Caribbean where more and more we're seeing that there's like a lack of preparedness and resilience towards our extreme events. I think this field of study really opens up a lot of opportunities and can really bring back much needed skill to the Caribbean. What can I bring to this field but it's not necessarily about killing up at something as I said ground breaking but rather using what is already existing to come up with something that is new. So I think while I've been here I've been exposed to so many different things and you're knowing it's not only from a technical point of view but you have so many other aspects to consider whether it be social, environmental or what not. Really just adapt to your surroundings and I can get an example of that really is I think crowdsourcing of data which has existed for so many years. In terms of like floods or disasters people are always taking pictures of the impacts of floods but now they're realising you can actually use this data towards like validating and calibration models so you can actually just adapt to it. Just adapt what you already have and evolve it into something new and innovative. I mean most of my experiences have been in the Caribbean so I can't speak about other countries or even other cities but I think personally there's a gap between research and industry. So for example you have people doing research, you have people in the industry doing their jobs but there's no interlinkage, there's no transfer of skills in that respect. And being here I've really been exposed to a strong research base and a strong knowledge base and I think that really needs to be developed. So how I would like to implement these skills is really bridging that gap using what technology and what ideas and approaches have been successful in other countries and trying to translate it and really just downscale it to a Caribbean perspective.  But from a professional point of view I think after the COP23 in Bonn last year which was hosted by Fiji I think there's a lot of much needed impact and focus that's been put on sits and with the most recent disasters in the eastern Caribbean. I think there's a lot more focus in the Caribbean islands and with the future I really hope to just be a part of that momentum and contribute in whatever way that I can.


The head of Russia's private military company Wagner, Yevgeny Progozin, announced that the commander of Ukraine's territorial defense forces General Igor Tansura has been killed. Prigazin said that the armored car carrying Tansura was destroyed by an artillery strike near the city of Bakhmat in eastern Ukraine. The incident occurred when Tansura was on his way to inspect the units under his command. It should be noted that Igor Tansura was appointed as the general of Ukraine's territorial defense forces in May last year. His armed forces and the presidential administration have not commented yet on the report of the general's death. It should be noted that the territorial defense forces are a separate type of armed forces of Ukraine and bring together 25 brigades, one in each region. Brigades include 150 battalions, one battalion per district.