Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Well, it seems that Kodak isn't taking my campaign very seriously. The campaign to bring back air chrome by chugging a flaming hot mountain daddy every day until it's re-released. So whatever. Let's find an alternative way.  There may be a way, but it's probably not what you think. Kodak air chrome, otherwise known as Kodak air chrome, is a near infrared false color positive film stock that was discontinued by Kodak in 2009, which may just be one of the greatest losses humanity's ever felt, and Kodak literally doesn't give a s*** about it. I'm not going to lie to you. We have quite a bit of ground to cover. It is a bit of a technical process to rebuild something that somewhat resembles it. An interesting cross-section between photography and compositing. Two things that I pretend like I know a lot about. This process is quite involved. If you're more on the hobbyist side of photography, then this might not really be for you. So here's the lowdown. Here's how I've been concocting these fake air chrome images over the past year and a half. The ugly truth is, I use an infrared sensitive digital camera with certain filters on the lens. And then I take those files, run an algorithm over it, and finally transfer that image to film. Sounds like a lot, right? And I bet you have some questions. Don't you worry, we'll get into it. But whoa, whoa, whoa. Jason, did you say digital camera?  You swore off digital in all of its if and statements. Yeah, but at this point, what other choice do I have? It's about the application. All film solutions to make air chrome do exist, but they're mostly related to trichrome. I've documented a custom-built beam splitter rig that does it, as well as a Rito 3D camera build. So you do have options. However, of all of them, this one is probably the easiest. So let's start at the beginning. The only way to effectively capture infrared nowadays is black and white film or a digital camera. Digital cameras do have UV and infrared light sensitivity by default, but digital camera manufacturers place filters over the sensor to block that kind of extraneous light.  Some businesses offer a technical service called a full-spectrum conversion of your camera, which basically removes or adjusts those over-the-sensor filters, which is what we need to do to get started here. I picked up an old Sony A7R2 and shipped it off to a company that converted it to full-spectrum, which means they removed both the UV light blocker and infrared light blocker over the sensor for me.  Be aware, though. Once you do this process, it likely cannot be undone. So maybe you just find an old digital camera you have lying around, or maybe one that you just hate a lot to use as tribute. Something 24 megapixels or higher will do great if you're going to transfer to a 35mm film like I mentioned earlier, but let's not jump ahead just yet. Okay, so you have your full-spectrum camera. Next, you'll need a lens and some filters. Choosing a lens is very important. Some lenses have this issue called infrared hotspotting. To my understanding, it's still kind of unclear exactly what causes this, but you'll need to do some research ahead of time about whatever lens you go with. I have found that vintage lenses with the infrared focus scale printed on them actually perform pretty well and do not have the infrared hotspotting. You can take a look at the infrared hotspot database online to see if your lens qualifies. I hate to say it, but this is actually an area where Leica and Zeiss lenses tend to excel. I use my own 35mm Sumacron and it works like a charm. But there wasn't any information online saying that it would work, so I just had to test out all my lenses and see what worked the best. Now, filters. That thing your family doesn't have when you get together for family dinner. Filters are the most important part.  To understand why we use certain filters, which I'll get into shortly, we need to understand how this process works a little bit beforehand. Basically, OG Formula Kodak Aircrumb swaps around the color channels of traditional film to remap the colors of the spectrum for human eyes. The speedrun version is the red channel captures and displays infrared light. The green channel captures and displays visible red light. And the blue channel captures and displays visible green light. Luckily for us, digital sensors work kind of in a similar fashion. They also have red, green and blue arrays, which means we have three channels to f**k around and do some dumb s**t with. So what if we could cut visible light out of one of those channels and then use that channel to composite out information from the other two channels? Pretty abstract stuff, right? I did not think it would work either, but alas, here I am making this s**t video when I should be home with my family for the holidays. Full disclosure here, this is not my idea at all. My brain doesn't function on this level. I get headaches looking at spaghetti and trying to figure out how the whole damn thing got knotted up like that. This concept has actually been around for a minute. So long, it was actually posted on a dead platform, or at least dead to me. I definitely want to give credit to the original user who goes by J.W. Wong, who conceptualized this whole idea and then posted their findings online for me to crank my hog to 13 years later. Basically, the idea is to cut off all visible blue light entering the camera so that the blue channel of any image taken on a full spectrum camera becomes effectively just infrared light. We then take that information and deduct it from the other two channels and then swap some things around and boom, you have a semi-true digital emulation of Kodak Aerochrome. Great. So what filters do we need to get this done? It's easy and you probably already have them. A yellow filter will block all visible blue light for you. I use the Tiffin Yellow 15. A yellow 12 is also suitable. And if you're like me and you're using a full spectrum camera, you'll need a UV filter to block out UV light, which may contaminate the process. So now you got your setup going, infrared sensitive camera, lenses and filters. Now time to go shoot.  Here are a couple of tips from a guy who's been doing this for years at this point. For starters, shoot in bright midday light like real Aerochrome. You'll get the best results. Use your camera's base ISO. The base ISO will produce a clean image with little to no noise break up. And since we're pop lock and dropping the channels around afterwards in the edit, we will want something smooth. And yeah, you should also definitely shoot in raw. Say your white balance on your camera to about as low as it'll go.  So no reason your camera shouldn't be there either. I think on my Sony, that is the tungsten white balance profile, which is like 2700 Kelvin or something like that. This just helps you visualize your image better. And finally, underexpose your shots. I typically leave the exposure compensation dial on the A7R2 to minus one. Just do your best to watch out for blown highlights.  There's no coming back from it. Okay, so we took a photo and it looks all yellow, like the floor of a men's bathroom anytime, anywhere. But there's also some purple plant life that helps us more or less visualize our shot. Good. Now what?  This is something that I actually enjoy about this process. Kind of like film, when you take a photo, your work isn't done there. There is still some back end work that needs to be done for it to be completed. You still need to kind of digitally develop your photo for it to be fully realized. But instead of dunking your memory card in E6 chemicals, maybe just open up Lightroom instead. But Lightroom, today we ball in Photoshop, which is literally the worst program on the planet. But nobody uses After Effects or Nuke for photo compositing like me.  If you have any programming experience, I would highly recommend finding a way to automate what we're about to do for you.  Here is JW Wong's original algorithm. If you're smart and understand this kind of shit, otherwise worry not. We're going to walk through essentially the same steps that the algorithm does just here in Photoshop. To save time, you can probably even make a Photoshop action out of it. Hell, you can maybe even make a Fuji film simulation from it. But I'll only allow it if you call the recipe Flaming Hot Aerochrom. Cool. So in Photoshop, let's start in by duplicating the image three times and then splitting out the channels to red, green, and blue via channel mixer adjustment layers. Then control click and create a group for each respective channel and name them accordingly. OK, let's refer again to the charts. Basically what this diagram is saying is that we need to deduct the infrared pixels from the red and green channels and then recombine. So to do that, let's pop open the blue group, control click both those layers and copy, right click and merge those copies and then label it infrared and drag it to the top of the red group. Change the blend mode to subtract and change the opacity to maybe around 50% for starters. It's not really a fine line between infrared light and visible light. So a 50% deduction seems to work well to begin with. This is adjustable afterwards. In fact, it is highly likely it will not remain 50% once you start playing around with the settings. Let's now grab a new adjustment layer curves and take the center gamma and drag it down a little bit. Cool. Now we can do somewhat the same for green. Duplicate the infrared layer from red and drag it to the top of the green group. And just like the former Soviet Union, we can collapse the reds. I usually set the subtract infrared layer to about 80% to start out. Now let's add a curves. This time I usually place it before the subtract and then boost the center gamma just a little bit. Cool. That's that for green. And the blue group, which is again just infrared light, we want to decrease the signal a little bit. So let's add a curves and grab the center and heave. Now let's assign each group to an RGB channel. Starting with red. If you recall, the red channel in Air Chrome is remapped to the green channel. So let's pop in a new channel mixer adjustment layer on top. Set the red value to zero and the blue value also to zero. Okay, now onto the green channel, which should be remapped to blue. New channel mixer, red to zero and green to zero. And finally our blue channel, our sole infrared channel gets assigned to red. So new channel mixer and green to zero, blue to zero. Great. Now here's the fun part. Turn on all your groups, not in a sexual way unless that's what gets you going. Grab your top group and set the blend mode to screen. And then grab your middle group and also set the blend mode to screen. Chances are it'll look a little dark. Let's boost the overall gamma by adding a curves adjustment layer and bringing it up quite a bit. For better or worse, that's basically the workflow. You can now start playing with the settings a little bit to get it to look a little bit more like Air Chrome by adjusting how much the subtract chokes out the red and green channels with the opacity. And you can adjust the signals for each layer by playing with the curves until you get a balanced image. If you're new at this, it will probably take you some time to figure out how all the settings intermingle. But if you do play around with it for a while, it will start to make some sort of sense. This is the moment where you can decide if you want to go with the bright poppy air chrome look or the violent tortured red air chrome look. I recommend building some profiles out of the different recipes that you put together, like flat, contrasty, more pink, red, etc. Not every situation seems to work with this default balance. It's just kind of a trial and error thing, mostly error to be honest. So while I think the results look really cool at this point, it was also not quite a hundred percent for me. I felt like I could take it just a tiny bit further and really land the overall style a bit more. So let's copy the image to celluloid. Now, you may be absolutely disgusted at the concept of shooting digital and copying the film. I don't blame you. I was at first too. But if it's good enough for Greg Frazier, then you know what? It's good enough for me. And it should be good enough for you too. Unless, for some reason, you think you're better than the guy who shot Dune transferred digital to film and then won an Oscar for it. Typically for the image transfer, I use Kodak ectochrome, a very close cousin of Kodak Aerochrome, often boxed as Kodak ectochrome infrared back in the day. The transfer process is pretty simple and unoriginal and f**k it. Probably not the best way to do it. I just use an iPad and point my camera at it in a dark room with a macro lens. Yeah, that's it. 35 millimeter film doesn't really resolve that high, so I've never had any issues seeing, you know, screen pixels in any of my images. I typically rate the ectochrome in my camera at about 200 ISO or even 320 ISO to purposefully underexpose it. I don't know if you've ever shot Aerochrome, but when I have it typically looks pretty underexposed, maybe because it's an expired film or maybe because light meters don't read infrared light or maybe because I'm just a loser and no one will ever truly love me. But regardless, I think that underexposed look has become kind of part of the aesthetic of the film. So I lean into it a little when shooting at the iPad. I use an 81B filter to negate some of that blue light from the screen and warm up the ectochrome a little bit. It's a stock that just loves blue and purple and also being super expensive, like really what the f**k Kodak. But anyway, let's help ourselves out and reduce some of those cooler tones a bit. And finally, I use a macro lens from the Pentax 6x7 system to transfer the images because at least on 35 millimeter film, you're only using a small center part of the larger lens circle. So it's a nice way to avoid any additional corner vignetting or artifacts when transferring. Powerful. Just like my son's legs, say something nice about them in the comments so he doesn't feel bad.  All right, we have our ectochrome with infrared transferred onto it. We've scanned our images in the Lightroom and it hasn't crashed in a while. Life is good. We can put some final touches on the scan if we want or you can just leave it alone. After all, you're the artist. And if you want to look like s**t, that's your thing. I typically will add some orange, the shadows, and some yellow to the highlights. Bump the color temperature maybe a little bit and then maybe darken the blues to match the look a little bit better. I like pulling up some reference images to real ectochrome so that I can color match a bit more effectively. Now you're done, I guess. You can go ahead and post it on Instagram and get the usual two likes from your mom and dad because photography on Instagram is dead. Just remember to use the hashtag.  All this is fun and cool and exciting, but what about the philosophic implications of this process? There are none. Does this whole process replicate ectochrome to a T, star coated lens? Not at all, but it's pretty damn close and it's a whole hell of a lot cheaper and less expired than the real deal. And in the end, as Steve Yedlin would probably say, if you can't tell the difference, it doesn't matter which approach you use. Just make it look f**king sick. Kodak isn't bringing back ectochrome, at least probably not. It was never their most popular stock. So personally, I'm just going to keep cooking with this formula for the time being. It's quite fun and it's a nice tool to have in your photographic arsenal for when the mood strikes. But now that the technical has been solved, how do we go further with this look? It's one thing to lean on ectochrome for the wild rendering it has, but that's surface level s**t. Taking foliage and turning it red doesn't make it a good photo. Otherwise, every photo from Lomo Purple would be a certified chart-topper and not piping hot s**t from an a**. Ectochrome is the same and needs to find the right application in the right projects. Richard Moss famously shot it in the Congo during a conflict that was largely unseen by the Western world. In his mind, he saw the application of using a film stock that can detect an invisible wavelength to shed light onto what was happening in the country. And it's become a highly celebrated and referenced collection of work. For me, and the question that you should also be posing to yourself if you're considering doing this, is simply how do I take this look and apply it to my own work, my own style? How does Jason, who now refers to himself in third person, I guess, merge his Edwardian hopper-esque style with psychedelic red bloom? Or does it fit in with the rest of my work? That might just be a bigger question this video has time to answer. But speaking of the constant unwavering march of time, and before we run out of it, I'd like to first thank the sponsor of today's video, Squarespace. Well, now you have loads of surreal and otherworldly looking photos and you want the general masses to see them, but how? Well, most people have access to websites nowadays, so how about building one with Squarespace? You can start with one of hundreds of professionally designed templates you can pick from and furnish your new site with Squarespace's intuitive user interface that allows you to build portfolios, blogs, and even member areas. With an incredibly simplified building module at your fingertips, it's never been easier to build the website you need faster than ever before. Squarespace is the only website hosting platform I've trusted for years at this point to deliver exceptional quality and ease of use for those times I need to add new work to my online portfolio. And best of all, if you run into any snags during the process, you can check out Squarespace's award-winning 24-7 customer support to get you back on track in no time. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. If you use the code grainydays to check out, you can get 10% off your first purchase. So that's that. I hope you can glean something from this video. If not, well, hopefully the next one will get you. After all, I don't know what you want, but now that Aerochrome has somewhat been solved, at least for me, through several different processes, including the one covered in today's video, does that mean I can stop chugging these flaming hot abominations of basically diarrhea activator, to be honest with you? I never thought this day would come the day I could put down the dew bottle. It's been a long road. Body aches, tremors, meat sweats for some reason, and diabetes probably now. Maybe I'll just have one more sip for old time's sake. No chug, just one final taste for my system to ease itself out of the state of shock it's been in ever since the campaign started. Hmm, you know what? These actually aren't too bad.


When we think of UK dairy farming it conjures up images of happy cows grazing on lush green pastures being lovingly milked by a local farmer. I'm Joey Carbstrong. I decided to visit a few local dairy operations to see if that image of dairy farming matches reality. This is just mass exploitation here. We might have to make a quick getaway. A bunch of young calves behind me. Who's that? Babies torturing them in these cages. Kept in a kennel, barely got three meters to walk. There's a bucket in the cage to drink from and no mother. How sad is that? And they're taken from their mothers so that people can take their milk essentially and drink it. Innocent prisoners of the dairy industry in the UK, born into solitary confinement. You can see them desperately walking around pacing up and down, hitting the side of the cage. So here we are, these are where the mothers are kept and they could hear their babies, 100% hear their babies calling out for them. And they're in here. This is the sadness of the dairy industry, separating mothers from babies. They'll never see each other again. So how the hell is this imprisonment and exploitation camp justified? You know what I mean? How are we still doing this? Human beings doing this to these little infants, innocent infants. We've pushed it far enough, I think. So immediately, I was confronted with a sad reality of calf and mother separation that is a fundamental part of the dairy industry. Studies show that both mother and calf experience emotional pain or noticeable stress after separation. Of course, cows had to give birth in order to produce milk and it doesn't make financial sense for farmers to leave calves to drink the milk that is meant for sale. But how exactly does this process begin? I think the next facility I visited holds the answer to that question. Okay, so it's the middle of the night, it's buckling down with rain here. There's a big field here filled with bulls and this facility here is a hidden aspect of dairy that isn't much talked about. I'm going to take you into this facility and show you what it is. Let's go. Okay, so a bit of an unexpected turn here. The entire facility has its lights off, usually they're on. So we're kind of walking into the unknown. There's some tools here on the table. It's hard to make them know. Okay, so we found this. They probably hit the cows with this so that they behave or comply. All right, so we're inside the storage shed here. I can see I've been here and it's just filled with different injections for cows and leptovoid and unisolv and the amount of syringes and medicines they give to the cattle. This is crazy. This is an ear tagger. Vaseline. Okay, so this is a carfty horn I have on here. This here is all charcoal from what they do is they cauterize the calf's horn. They do this so that the horns don't grow big and they don't cause accidents with workers and they don't bruise the carcasses of the other cattle. This is done because they're kept in captivity. This is a horrible torture device and it's for calves, for baby animals.  Colbert, iodine, selenium. So Colbert, to give them B12 and so how you get B12 in the flesh and in the dairy is they give it to them as a supplement here. Just imagine how much medication is reserved for the dairy industry. Vaccines. And then I found an important piece of the puzzle. These are the pipettes used for insemination. That's the injection device and they pull this back and inject the semen with this. This is liquid nitrogen. Maybe this is keeping something cool. This could be semen in here. Here are these gloves. The farmer or vet will put this on.   They put their entire arm nearly in the cow's anus, which is incredibly uncomfortable for the cow and just it's quite perversarily. They're a reserve breed champion. They might have some prized breeding balls here or they've also got the almond paperwork here. Pneumonia, eye infection, prolapse, prolapse, prolapse, prolapse, foot infection, nastitis, pneumonia, foot infection, prolapse, prolapse. A lot of prolapses here. The foot infections walk around in their infecies and just probably getting injuries like this. Infection following castration. Lame, lame cows. Lame-ness is a big problem with dairy cows. So this device here is called a balling gun and it's mainly used to force medication down cattle's throat. Sometimes can be used to force a magnet into their stomach in case the cattle will eat any metallic objects. The metallic objects will stick to the magnet. This looks like a cattle crush. I think the cattle coming through this way but they come down the chute here. Stop here. The gates lock on their head and then they can inseminate them, give them medication, dehorn them, things like this. They do this because the animals struggle. Insemination is obviously uncomfortable for the animals which is why they need a machine like this for multiple reasons. So they can only go through one way. Once they're in here they can't go back. This is what this is. There's a system of doors that only let a certain amount of animals through at one time what it looks like.  So we're seeing a lot of equipment that's usually used in dairy farms but this place wasn't a dairy farm. So what was it? So this place here they're inseminating the females to get more males to use for their semen. So they don't bring the cows here? No. They send out the semen to those subcontractors that can bring mate cows. The reason they're inseminating cows here is only to breed more bulls that will make up a sperm herd. Wait. Hold up. So you're probably a little confused. Let me explain. This place is a breeding facility where they breed stud bulls who will produce semen, most likely for beef. But what has that got to do with the dairy industry? Semen is usually taken from dairy breed stud bulls by either an artificial vagina or an electro ejaculator which sends an electric current into the anus of the bull forcing him to ejaculate. This semen is then distributed to dairies all over the UK where they will impregnate cows with it. Conventional semen only gives farmers a 50% chance of birthing a female. Female calves would make up the dairy herd. If born male they'd usually be culled on the farm or sent off for veal or beef. Male dairy breed calves obviously don't produce milk or a high yield of beef, and killing them on the farm can sometimes be more cost effective for the farmer. But since routine culling of male dairy calves has been outlawed in 2021, farmers have until the end of 2022 to end this practice. So how will dairy farmers get around this issue and still maximize profits? The answer is sext semen. Sext semen gives a 90% chance of producing females and reduces unwanted male dairy calves. Dairy cows have around three to four carvings before being slaughtered for their flesh. But what happens when farmers are not in need of more female calves? This is where semen from beef cattle comes into it. Farmers can opt to impregnate their dairy cows with semen from beef sires, which will produce crossbred calves that are genetically ideal for beef. This way the cows are still being impregnated to keep the milk flowing, but on top of this dairy farmers will also be able to maximize their profits from the specific calves their dairy herd produces. I'll let this farmer explain. For over the past two years we've been using exclusively just sext semen and beef semen. The reasons for that is that we want to maximize our genetic gain, so we're only serving our best cows to sext semen. Everything else gets served to beef, and the shot of that is that we're producing a better quality calf, beef calf, which we sell for more money, which improves our bottom line. Well there you go, they want to maximize their bottom line. Everything farmers do is to maximize their bottom line. In my opinion, I don't think they stopped killing bull calves on farms for welfare reasons at all. I think they did it for economic reasons. So directly behind me is a big facility here at this sperm farm. It's surrounded by massive gates, huge fence, 10 foot fence covered in bushes. It looks like a big prison. I'm just going to go try to show you guys because there is cameras all around this thing. What is that dude? Look at the size of this fence here. Huge razor wire fence. That's of stories higher. The only thing I can think of is because they have a sperm from these balls here. They must store it in there because the sperm must be worth so much money. So how much is the sale of semen really worth? I did a little digging into some of UK's leading semen distributors. I found prices ranging from as low as £6 per straw for semen collected from a limousine breed, £36 per straw from a Holstein breed, and some breeds were fetching up to £100 per straw. So let's do the math. On average, a Holstein bull can produce 80,000 to 110,000 straws of semen annually. So in theory, a stud bull could make a semen producer between £660,000 all the way up to £11 million per year. Garth, a one-ton bovine stud from a farm in Kent, once called Britain's biggest cash cow, produced £800,000 of semen every month. As stated in this article from Canada, where they export more than $100 million worth of semen from superstuds every year, the bull semen is like white gold. A bull with a star pedigree can produce money shots worth $50,000 each. That's $600,000 a month. There's even been reports of thieves targeting semen, as stated in this mirror article. Semen is not only extremely valuable for direct sale, but is an integral part of the dairy and beef industries. Without it, the whole industry would collapse. No wonder this place was like Fort Knox. You've got to think the amount of selective breeding these animals have a valuable genetic line. They're keeping it all in this high security that's eye-opening. Okay, so we've had to, okay, we'll just wait it back because there's a light on and we're on high alert because we might have to make a quick getaway. Let's see if we can film some of these cows in here. So this is the barn where they're kept. It's hard to see anything in here. It's completely pitch black. Can you see all their eyes? The others are all back there kicking back. But this one here is brave. They're very cautious, aren't they? Hey, buddy. So these are really big bulls. These are used for their semen. I'll take the semen from these bulls, probably distributor. Use it to seminary females here too. Like they're breeding more bulls to continue that genetic line. They look big and scary, but they're really super gentle, timid, shy. Vulnerable animals. Very easily dominated by humans. It's a massive dairy farm. Distance there where the lights are. It's a big intensive dairy farm. So this is where things get interesting. As we're walking to go approach the dairy farm, we see a worker with a flashlight walking around looking for us. I had to turn off my camera and we all hid in a ditch. I didn't really expect to be spending my Saturday night hiding in a ditch, but that's just the way it turned out. After about 30 minutes, the coast was clear and we had to abort the mission. Although the first attempt left me startled, I really wanted to film in a large intensive UK dairy farm. So even with the higher risk of getting caught, I decided to attempt it again a few nights later. This is the second try. The last time we attempted this, a couple of nights back, someone walked straight past us. We think we alerted them somehow, but we had to take cover and then abort the mission. So we're going to try again tonight, see how we go, see if we can show you what happens in these big mega dairies in the UK. They're dressed babies. See, they're trying to suckle. Still really young. Look at this baby. They're mother's are all over here and he's behind us. We can't reach them. How sickening. How sad. Look at this little baby here. There's a dead body around here. At any one time, approximately 25% of all dairy cows are lame and over a one-year period, there'll be around 55 cases of lameness per 100 cows. The fate of UK male dairy calves is either to be reared for beef, live exported to Europe for veal, or until the end of 2022, they can still be shot on the farm. As these boys were kept separate with an injured cow, who is most likely going to be culled, and since the ban of shooting calves on farms had not come into force yet, I did not have a good feeling about the imminent fate of these babies. This is where all the mothers are, pregnant mothers about to give birth, spend years for carving. One of the cruelest inhumane parts of the dairy industry is the separation of the calf from their mother. Like humans, cows have a nine-month pregnancy, and like other mammals, they have a very strong maternal bond with their baby. Yet across the board in the dairy industry, calves are taken immediately after birth. This facility was so large, it was mind-blowing. According to the AHDB, mastitis, which is a painful infection of the udder, has an incidence rate of around 30 cases per 100 cows a year. They exploit these animals until there's nothing left of them.  You see them all skinny and skin and bone and limping around, lame, and then they go straight to the slaughterhouse. No mercy, just shot in the head and cut up into pieces. And the flesh of dairy cows, spent dairy cows, will go to burgers or second-grade minced up burgers in McDonald's or something like this. It's what they do to these animals. They take everything from them and then when there's nothing left to take from them, they take their life from them. As I left the milking parlour, I could see rows and rows of calf hutches. I decided to walk over and investigate. These are all the female calves, the real little babies. They're kept in solitary confinement here, I think for around six weeks, but sometimes they've been left in there for months and months on end. Sometimes you see really big calves in here, but their mothers are over there and not too far away from them.  So small, this is like a tiny prison cell for them. As soon as these females are able to bear young, they'll be impregnated too and they'll have their calves taken. It's a horrible cycle of trauma. Look at this. All of this for milk, cheese, chocolate. Imprisoned for nothing. Imprisoned for being born a cow. As I walked through the vast maze, rows after rows of hundreds of crying babies, the sheer scale of the suffering dawned on me. This was just one farm in one part of England. Yet, as of 2020, there are nearly 12,000 registered dairy producers in this country alone and around 100 million dairy farms all across the world. How did we allow this to happen? All of this misery and cruelty taking place right under our noses. Look at how humans are separating families. And for what? A slice of cheese? A dash of milk? Or a piece of chocolate? I was feeling completely overwhelmed. But I had one more section of the farm I needed to visit before I left. Into this big shed. This big shed has all the mothers. So I could probably throw a stone from where all the babies are in those individual hutches, calling out to the mothers. That's how close they are. They can hear each other all day. That's incredibly cool.  Just as the smell of this stench is really bad. The size of her udder. Distended udder. So there's what looks like thousands of animals on this farm. This is a mega dairy. It's huge. Hundreds of suffering mothers, as far as the eye could see, slaves to the dairy industry, milk machines that'll be exploited and slaughtered. Numbered property. As you can see by her udder, you can tell how large inflamed it is with just producing more milk than they just naturally would. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that would be on their hips and their bones and their joints? Just carrying all this milk around. You can actually see how much they're struggling walking around on this cold wet concrete. You can understand why they get injuries and lameness. This cow is sick, something wrong with her stomach. Because that was the most, that was just wet diarrhea. So I tried to walk as slow as I could so as not to start all the cows. They seemed very uneasy. They seemed incredibly spooked for cows who were so used to being handled by people. You know, it wouldn't be unusual for people to be walking through here. It's a dairy farm. But it seems spooked like they're afraid of getting hit or something. Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to be her carrying all that weight around in her udder? Lost how many children now? Like how many cycles has this cow been through? Losing her calf. Going to that rotating milk parlor every day. Laying on this hard concrete. Listening to her calf bellow out to her. Hello darling. Following us. Look at her back here. This is like incredibly skinny, hey? I know these breeds are going to be lean in the back anyway, but look at this. This is too skinny.  If you look on the floor here, it's just layers of urine and feces and yellow. It's all yellow. And they walk around here. So they're walking around wet feet. If they get the slightest scratch on their ankle, it's going to become infected. You can just see that when they're walking that they're not stable. Their bodies are so heavy and their bones become so weak because they're just having the nutrients just sucked out of them constantly. Their bodies begin to give up and then they can go down and then they'll be removed with a forklift and go to the slaughterhouse. What human beings have done to their bodies? It's just inhumane. It's absolutely shocking to walk through one of these in the UK, hey? They pride themselves on these free roaming cows and ultra humane dairy farms and then you walk through one of these and oh my god.  I don't even realise. All dairy farms are horrible just because of the suffering they cause to their mother in the calf and it will be slaughtered in the exploitation, but this one in particular, something about it, it's just, it's just worth. Just getting towards about the time farmers start to wake up and tend to the dairy cows, but I still felt like there was unfinished business here, so I continued to look around. I had a feeling they were killing animals on site, but there was no time to investigate. Dozens of workers lived on site at this dairy farm and they'd be awake any moment. So unfortunately, we had to leave. As I walked out and left all those suffering animals behind, I thought to myself, how much longer will humanity continue to exploit these gentle, vulnerable beings for needless products we have alternatives for? When will the public evolve past the subjugation of animals? When will the good-hearted people of the world live vegan?


It's called Anachronism of Puffinies and Aliens. In 1998, El Nino was kicking up a fuss in the Pacific, and California is being inundated. The city approves an 80-foot Coca-Cola bottle at the Gise New Ball Park. And state officials are investigating whether or not Kaiser Permanente's refusal to cover the cost of Niagara violates his state law. The human genome project is full gear, and the kids are all walking around with cell phones. No one is ever out of touch. To the English teacher at Lowell, science fiction and fantasy, as I teach it, is a non-academic class. But it's a great takeoff platform for connecting disciplines. These time machines allow us to travel back and forth in time to explore how the past influenced the present. We explore ecology and human values through stories about robots, androids, cloning, and other forms of human engineering. We deal with value systems as we examine possible, probable, and preferable worlds. We discuss and debate economic systems, and above all, the necessity to change as futuristic technology creates an ever-changing world, both in fiction and fact. The UFOs, Space Aliens, and the various characters around Cisco make it real. It is made when a book about by Robert Heinlein, a stranger than a strange man, robbed Anthony to kick off a story. Anthony is a slender Latino surfer. Space aliens, I see one of them all the time. This dude wrapped in aluminum foil was always hanging out on the beach where we surf. Anthony pauses and hums the tune of Twilight Zone. Tanya, a blood Russian immigrant who makes her own clothes and looks like a model of vogue chimes in a chimes in. I see him near the end of California Street. He wears an aluminum suit and a weird aluminum pounding helmet with antennae. Air anecdotes made me curious. I asked, is there any relation between him and the house out there with aluminum foil on the windows? I passed by a house on my way out here. Fong, a self-convessed video game, not perched right up. I've never seen the house, but I've seen that dingy dude. He's tall and thin with a white beard and thin face. He's got those light blue eyes. Kind of looks like those husky dogs. He looks like Gandalf de Grey, a wizard in an aluminum suit. Anthony says, he's scared of stuff out of you if he didn't have that smile. Tanya laughs and adds, he's really got a great smile and walks quickly for an old man. You think he lives in that house? I'm really curious now, I say. I really don't know about the guy you're talking about filming in some more. Anthony responds immediately. We call him aluminum man. He hangs down the beach. One time he even came in to surf with us, but he never took off that aluminum helmet. He's hella good on the board. Did he tell you why he wears the helmet, I ask? Tanya laughs, he's an alien. The helmet shields him from space rays and the messages that tell him what to do, like that funny guy on third rock in the sun. Fawn picks up on the description. Aluminum man tells people he was born here, the son of a space alien father and Earth mother. He says his father went back to the planet on some distant galaxy. I forgot the name he gives it and left him out here to soak up the culture. He says his father's trying to reach him and beam him up to his planet, but he doesn't want to go. The helmet protects him from the beam rays. The discussion goes on and on. Is there intelligent life on other plant worlds? What would they like? Are there people with ESP? Would creatures on alien worlds look human? Do they make babies like humans? A cell phone, and Tanya is apologetic. I'm sorry, you guys, I forgot to turn it off. Her face is red as she fumbles through the phone and the buzzer. Hamid, an East Indian born in Guatemala, this way. Maybe he's related to the same alien's element that invented the cell phone and planted it on Earth. They can monitor our conversations and learn about us. Hamid stops and wiggles his little finger. He'd be redundant as an anachronism. Who would need a human spy if you had technology? He'd probably be afraid they'll terminate him. Sylvia, who is from Mexico, loses no opportunity. These are friend Tanya. I hope they don't monitor Tanya when she calls me. They think we all think about closing guys. Everybody laughs, including Tanya, at the period buzzer to be continued tomorrow. For me, this story doesn't end at the bell. It's about four o'clock after school as I drive along the Great Highway at Ocean Beach. The day is beautiful, the wind is blowing, the sun makes reflecting beacons as it comes off the waves. I think about how my wife wouldn't be home until seven as my car climbs up Geary Boulevard. Suddenly I get there ish to pull into a parking lot just below Suja Park. If somebody asks me why, one of those impulses is as if I'm supposed to do it. I park and climb out of my old dented Subaru and hike across the boulevard between the Cliff House and Louise Restaurant. There's a rutty asphalt path leading down the steep hill between some manzanita trees and baby pines to where the pseudopaths used to be. I'm thinking about the day's discussion. Space aliens, UFOs, aluminum foil, when suddenly a friendly voice slips into my reverie. Nice day, isn't it? I must be dreaming. Guy walking beside me has pale blue eyes and is covered from head to foot in shiny foil. His tall slender tear with a white beard about my age wearing an aluminum foil jacket pants and helmet. The helmet has two antennas coming on his eyebrows. A kid described him and his rap to a team. I flash him a friendly smile and he falls into stride with me as if we are old buddies. We talk about the weather, the water, 49ers, and the history of the pseudopaths. It tells me how the aluminum keeps up the tractors of rays from the space alien father who planted them in an Earth's mother's womb. In minutes we're sitting on the wall staring out at the Pacific and he's confiding me. He's going to stay right here on Earth. He can do more good here than on his father planted because here he just feels more comfortable. It's about five now. The sun is hanging low in the horizon. I see a freighter riding along the water as it approaches the entrance to the bay and wonder where it's been and what stuff it's bringing in. Besides, he smiles, I love to surf. And then the waves of my father's plan. Then as if aren't you, the wind picks up and whips the tops of the waves and the white-capped riders that spin themselves up against the shore and explode into light spraying on the jagged rocks over the both of us. There's a sudden sound of laughter behind us. He and I spin around to see three kids chasing after a rubber ball across the broken cement where in the fifties people still warmed themselves in the mats. 30 or 40 yards behind them, a man and woman came into view. They are two walking as one, loving in grace. They stare tenderly into one another's eyes and glide toward the wall where we are sitting. The woman is slender and tall, wearing jeans and a red square shirt. The man is a few inch tall than she is, is hidden, neatly combed and lacquered into place. Approximately, the man reaches in his jacket pocket and pulls out his cell phone. He flips it over and begins talking to an unseen somber. The girl tenses in his arms. Her jaws tighten as she reaches up and yanks the phone from his hand, runs purposely through the wall, like a quarterback in the last seconds of a close game, spirals the phone up and over the rocks. The phone hits the water, surfs to the break of a small wave and sinks. Time stops. The man looks back at her in surprise and anger. I'm thinking, you better do the right thing, buddy. You're all romantic riding on this one. He breaks into a laugh. He shots against the wind. I'm sorry, babe. He really looks contrite as he opens his arms and warps toward her. I think they've been through this one before. She meets him halfway. They hug and kiss. The scene is sweet and schmaltzy. I turn to my left and aluminum man is gone. I look around the whole area, but he's nowhere to be seen. As I hiked back up the hill toward the street, I keep looking back. Wow, that was strange. I think that was strange. I think as I drive home past the house with aluminum foil on windows, the next day at school, I tell the kids about my adventure. They don't seem too surprised. Anthony tells me, that's where he usually hangs out. He and his laughs and goes theatrical. I told you, it was a cell phone. He had an epiphany when he saw it in the air. He ripped off the suit thingy. They don't need them anymore.  The class breaks into laughter. We've created a great deal of smilishness story as we discuss epiphanies and acronyms, aliens of the space kind. Now what happens is we do a thing about betting whether someone's gonna see him again and somebody's gonna put a quarter of each into a pile and so we made a little money. They caught a viewer of this alien. So to me, science fiction and also I taught a class in myth and epic. And those classes were really good in terms of getting the kids into folklore and mythology and again, the thumbnail sketch problems. And I really think that a lot is lacking from schools and one of the things is lacking is that kids in class don't get to know one another. And so one of the things I gave them was a test at the end of the day.  Now, I could go on if people wanna get some more or I can stop. Okay, let me have a seat back here.


Hi, everyone. Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing 2021. Puneet Contenders, Draftpicks, Football, Two Box Break, Random Pack, number four. So we're going to open up two boxes, number of the packs, one through 12, randomize the list of customers and list of packs, paste them next to each other, and whatever pack your name end up next to is the packs that we're going to open up for you. So there we go. Here is the list of customers from Michael Brinson, down to LastBotMojo, Jonathan Moore times five, and our pack numbers from one through 12. So we're going to do a randomizer for both of those and paste that here. But first, let's open up these boxes and figure out which boxes we're doing first. So these are the last six boxes we have from that case. One two for the top two boxes, three four for the middle two, and five six for the bottom two on the dice, so three. So that's going to be the middle two boxes. Random pack number five is in the store now. So we can do this again tonight. Next 12 spots are in there. OK, so like I said, every pack has an auto in it. So pack one, two, three, four, and number six. We'll do six for the line under it. So when we do nine, we know. So that's one through six, seven through 12 for you. Eight, that one's upside down. Special pack, pack nine was upside down in the box. See if anything that correlates to anything. Pack 10, pack 11, there you go. So there are our 12 packs. We're going to pop back over here to the randomizer. Turn on the Nick cam just so you can see the packs are still there. And dice roll to randomize both lists and pair them up. Three into two, five times. So here is the customers, fifth and final time from Jonathan Moore down to Jonathan Moore and the numbers, five times on that as well. Fifth and final time, 12, down to five. Unlikely that there's going to be any trades. Typically people don't trade for packs, but if there's a lucky number that you happen to want and you didn't get it, here's your chance to trade. But Jonathan Moore with pack 12, Michael Brinson with four, Colton Carver with 10, Nick Nguyen with 11, Cody Kennedy with six, Joe Jordan with seven. Jonathan Moore with two, nine and three, Leo CORE with one and eight and Jonathan Moore with five. So let's go like this. We'll sort it by pack number. Tell them to print it out. We're going to open them up in the order of least amount of packs to most amount of packs. So Cody, you're going to go first. Cody, Colton, Joe, actually wait. So we'll go Cody, Colton, Joe, Michael, Nick, Leo and then Jonathan. So Leo with one pack number one is going to go, I'm sorry, Cody with pack number six is going to be our first one. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. 10, 11, 12. So those are the pack six. So Cody with pack six, this one's for you. And we're all card shipped. There's your random pack breaks. Patrick Mahon, Joe Burrow, Mac Jones, Najee Harris. And your auto is Simi Ferroco, rookie auto out of Stanford. You got a Julio Jones Chrome campus ticket. And there you go. Cool, so that was for Cody. Thank you very much, Cody, with pack number six. So that's pack six. Colton has pack number 10, which is right on top here. It's about Colton. Another Tom Brady. Trevor Lawrence. And you got Marvin Wilson as your auto. College ticket auto Marvin Wilson out of Florida State, Detackle. And you got Chris Carson as your campus ticket, Chrome. Cool, so there you go, Colton. Thank you very much. That was pack number 10 for you. Next up is Joe Jordan with pack seven. Seven right there for you. Cadarius Tony for the Giants. Zach Wilson, Jets new quarterback and Jalen Waddle for the Dolphins. Travis Etienne for the Jags. And your auto is Marlon Tui Poulotu. Detackle from USC. Josh Allen campus ticket. And there you go. That was pack number seven for you, Joe. Thank you very much, man. Okay, next up is Michael Brinson with pack number four. Smeared, but there was the four. Good luck, Michael. Devonte Smith for the Eagles. Justin Fields for the Bears. And we've got Ardarius Washington. Safety out of TCU. You guys are stud. Forget where he got drafted, but that guy's really good. And Christian McCaffrey campus ticket, Chrome. There you go, Michael. That's pack number four for you. Okay, next up is Nick Nguyen with pack number 11. Pack 11. Smeared with pack 11. Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow started off again. Jordan Love, Devonte Smith. And you got a one-of-one rookie auto of Pat Firemove on plate auto. Pittsburgh Steelers. Second round pick, I believe. Nice. Rookie one-of-one auto of Pat Firemove. And Drew Brees campus ticket, Chrome. Like I said, tight end out of Penn State. Second round pick for the Steelers, I believe. Yeah, not too bad, right there. And it's on plate auto too. Okay, next up is Leo. Leo's got packs one and eight. So Leo packs one and eight for you. There's one. And there's eight. And then the other five are gonna be packs two, three, five, nine and 12. Two, three, five, nine and 12. Those are all gonna be for Jonathan. You'll be up right after this with your five packs. Good luck. Packs one and eight for Leo. Cadarius Tony for the Giants. Zach Wilson for the Jets. Jaylin Waddle for the Dolphins. You got Austin Watkins from University of Alabama Birmingham. The Dragons, I think. Wide receiver. And a CD Land campus ticket, Chrome. So that was pack one. Now we got pack number eight for you. And pack eight. You got Trey Lance, new quarterback for the 49ers and Jamar Chase. Wide receiver for the Bengals. Mack Jones for the Patriots. And Shane Simpson is your rookie auto. Running back out of Virginia for the Cavaliers and a Jamar Chase cracked ice, cool colors. Very nice, that is five out of 23. Very cool. And there you go, Leo. Those are your two packs. Very nice cracked ice there. Not two shabs. Cool, so that's packs one and eight. And the other five here are all for Jonathan. So we'll start off with pack two for you. Travis Etienne for the Jags. Tom Brady. And Trevor Lawrence. And your first auto is a ticket stub. One out of five, Tim Jones. Numbered out of his, to his Jersey number. Die cut, college ticket, ticket stub, rookie auto. One out of five for a wide receiver from... Who is that? Is that Southern? What school is that? Southern Miss. That's the same school as Breffs Farve. And Travis Kelsey, conference ticket to 199. You can see the die cut on top and on the corners. Make it look like a ticket stub. Pack number three. And you got Steven Sims Jr. And it's a campus ticket, rookie auto, 22 out of 25. Another short print for you. Deshaun Watson, or lower numbered auto. Jalen Hertz there. So two autos, one out of five, one out of 25 so far. Let's keep that going. Let's just get the names better. All right. Pack number five for you. And you got pack nine, which was that upside down pack. I'm intrigued to see what's in that one. Justin Fields for the Bears. Trey Lance for the 49ers. Jamar Chase for the Bengals. And you got Sean Davis, college ticket auto. Safety out of Florida. And Bobby Wagner campus ticket Chrome. Tua. My mind's running wild as far as what we're gonna have in that upside down pack number nine coming up next. Trevor Lawrence or bust. We're gonna do it. Pack number nine. Najee Harris, Steelers. And it's Tyson Campbell, rookie auto. Cornerback out of Georgia. We got a Kenan Allen campus ticket Chrome. Tua again. So it doesn't look like the upside down had anything specific to do with it. So let's hope that pack 12 is holding out the gold for us then Jonathan got excited there for a second though. I was like, Panini had to have turned it upside down for a reason, right? And last pack, pack 12. Last but definitely not least, right? Let's see it. Justin Fields do Bears quarterback. Another Justin Fields. Let's make it three. Let's get the auto. Nope, it's KJ Costello. Mississippi State quarterback went to Santa Margarita High School here in Southern California. Now on the chargers for the OTAs and training camp. And TJ Watt campus ticket Chrome. Jalen Hertz. We do not nick. I'm just putting them in the bag just so we can identify the packs since this is a random pack break for shipping but we do not ship the empty wrappers. And there you go guys, that is the break. Next two boxes is in the store now under random pack number five. That was, why did it close? It was 2020 Panini Contenders Draft Picks Football two box break number four random pack edition. I'm Sean, jaspyscasebreaks.com. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time.


My name is Angela and I'm a senior studying mechanical engineering and psychological sciences with a minor in global engineering. I'm a part of the engineers with outborders part of EPICS and it's been an absolutely amazing experience throughout my time here at Purdue. I've had a bunch of roles within the team including being on the human-centered design team and then eventually getting to lead that for an entire year and now I'm on the technical team. EPICS has absolutely changed my entire outlook on engineering and I can honestly say I wouldn't still be in engineering today if it wasn't for EPICS. It really gives you that sort of feeling and passion towards working to a real-life project and it makes you very motivated to go and gain those experiences elsewhere like through internships. I would definitely say my favorite memory was getting to go to Bolivia. It was an absolutely phenomenal experience. Basically we went up high into the Andes Mountains and we were at 14,000 feet elevation. Getting to sort of design a water distribution system in a terrain like that was really interesting especially because in classes you basically have everything based on assumptions and you don't get to use those same assumptions when designing in a place like that and so being able to go in country and actually talk to the people we were helping and being a part of that interview process with them was really heartwarming and what was really cool about that was I actually got class credit for that and it counted as a study abroad so it counted towards my global engineering minor as well. It's never too late to start on a project like this because you're getting that real-world experience and no matter what it's gonna be helpful towards your professional life later on. No matter which point you start at you're learning the design process it really makes you stand out compared to your peers when it comes to the experience you have on your resume. I can definitely say like even now as a senior as I'm looking for full-time jobs all I do is talk about engineers without borders when I'm interviewing with companies. Companies love to see not only your cross-functional experience but being able to work on real-world projects and the ambiguity that comes with all of that as well. It's very obvious to employers when you work on a project that you really care about and are passionate for something that I've noticed within my own interviews is they'll say stuff like I can tell you actually worked on the project but being in EPICS gives you something to actually put on your resume that you can be proud of really passionate about and be excited to talk about and it really shows through to employers. To be honest I came back every semester mostly because I was so attached to the project like I couldn't leave it and just like go on the rest of my college life without like being a part of the implementation process so all of those reasons had me coming back every single semester even as a senior. To me, engineering projects and community service just means being able to use the knowledge you gain and put that towards a real world solution and I like to think of it as a partnership between you and your community members because it's not only about you helping them it's them helping you also become a better engineer and gaining your experiences through other avenues in order to work in other community service projects or in your professional life as well. Overall it's really helped me decide what I want to do in the future because being design lead of the human-centered design team I realized I really like engineering management and so now I'm looking into full-time jobs that definitely have that as a career path for me.


Iridium isn't as dominant in terms of the currency it was in previous Borderlands games, but it's still a use for currency in purchasing some great loot. Iridium is pretty scarce though, and to come by it's pretty hard, but today guys I've been doing a decent farm to stack that shiz up. How's it going guys, my name's DPjen, I'd like to thank you for stopping by and checking out my video.  Okay so Iridium, used to purchase cosmetics from crazy ill and gear from the veteran goods vending machines. But Iridium isn't as easy to come by unless you have the Iridium gauntlet which is used to break the Iridium crystals found throughout the worlds, but even then it isn't quite the farm this is, and this can be done at any level and you get a decent amount too, between 10 and 20 per run, and each run takes a few minutes, so it isn't a bad turnaround considering. Okay so the location of the farm is on Pandora within the drought area, and the spot is located right here, so fast travel to this location and make your way over as I do on screen now. So once you are here, a lavender curly will spawn, this is the enemy you need to take out, so once you have its health down to zero it will bury itself, here do not shoot it, it will then spawn two smaller versions, both wearing top hats, these are the ones you need to concentrate on and kill. There will be others in the area too, all in your face being a pain in the ass, so just take them out, but they ain't what you want, remember you want the ones with the top hats, so both of these crawlies again you need to take down but once you get them again at a zero health, they will bury themselves, here do not shoot them when they do this, allowing both to each spawn a further two smaller crawlies, so four in total with top hat should spawn, these you can kill, take them out, do what's needed, these are those beauties, each of these will drop a radium upon death, so once you kill them, simply quit the game and reload back in, once you've loaded back in travel back to the spot and rinse and repeat. Now each run varies on a radium that drops, I mean I've had as little as 10 drop per run but I've had as much as 20 drop per run so it is just random, but definitely at the moment this is the best farm I have found so far and if I do find anything else I will have you covered right here on my channel, but yeah get that radium people, buy that loot and look epic, but on that note we have come to the end of the video, if you guys enjoyed it leave a like really helps out, if you're new around here and enjoy daily borderlands videos be sure to subscribe and leave a never-wanna-missing video I upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button, but guys thanks as always for stopping by, hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one.


n of Deen and Akhlaq etc. But that alone does not help the human relationship on its own unless you nurture the emotional dimension of it. How? By using reason of how you can nurture that relationship. So the three are meant to work together for a meaningful love. And then the expression, the way you express that love, that's mercy. That you're patient with the other person. You express it with gentleness. You're not negative with them. All the aspects. And we look at the two terms tomorrow in some more depth. That's sort of the relationship. So love, the mawadah, is a deep commitment to care for the other person. Its expressions are merciful. One of the sessions tomorrow we're going to look at 11 most common sources of problems in marriage. And I may be wrong, but sort of trying to look at it legally. Fouqaha tries to look for common causes. That's sort of how Fouqh works. You try to look for the underlying causes. And one of the apparent underlying causes for a lot of marital issues is people lose a sense of purpose in their marriage. Then why are we married together? And very often when marriage starts, the marriage itself starts going negative, people can't answer that question anymore. Why did I marry him? Or they have some weird idea that if you think about it rationally, it makes no sense. I married her because she had this amazing smile. That's nice. That was an emotional impulse. But that emotion is not very... The day-to-day of marriage. Are we going to have breakfast together before we head out to work? Who's picking up the kids? This is the battleground of marriage. Or the opportunity of marriage. The day-to-day, what are we going to do about food? What are we going to do about this? All the decisions and challenges in marriage? The fact that he used to give such inspiring announcements after Jama'a. Alhamdulillah. But that has nothing to do with the health of the marriage. So sometimes it becomes a symptom of starting off questionably. My sister is a pretty opinionated person. One day she was really upset. She said some younger sisters were talking to her about marriage and one sister wanted to marry a particular brother. My sister asked why. She said because he has two eyebrows. She's from a culture where being uni-browed is apparently quite common in their men. But by the time you're 30, that's why you end up marrying the guy. You're going to have a sense of crisis or just you forgot. You already had some very idealized notion of what marriage would be. And now you don't know what's going to happen. Either collectively or individually, people lose a sense of what are you trying to do. For a while you're very excited and going from lecture to lecture and like yay Islam. But then things seem to, you're drying out. So you don't have a sense of purpose, right? So that's, you know, one is a collective purpose but also the individual purpose. Someone doesn't really know that all said and done, what am I trying to do in life? Or they may have a partial sense, like some sister is very career oriented, let's say. But it's a very partial, it's a very narrow way of looking at your life. Because you are also married. Like actually I'm dealing with this issue. I got a missed call doing this. Two people I know well and they're about to get married and the sister decided to accept this job where she'll be traveling six days a week. I said, you either accept it or you don't. My friend saying, like, if you're traveling six days a week, the seventh day you're basically going to be like crashing because six days of travel is a big deal. She's like, what's the point of marrying? And she said, this is my dream job. I want to keep it for at least a few years. And sad thing is the sister, I know, I've known her for years, she's not going to be happy in that relationship if she proceeds in this approach. So very often people lose sight of what their bigger purpose is. So that's one of the aspects. Very often sisters go through, and it's not in their 40s, in their early 30s or after having children, they go through a huge crisis because they had certain life expectations, whether worldly, like in terms of career, or religious, which now they have children, everything seems to have less fallen out of whack. So what do I do? Or now they've raised their children a couple of years, and again, to pick on my sister. After her third child was a few years old, my sister was starting to get rather edgy. Why? Because she went to university, and academically, she was very gifted, very intellectual, very thoughtful kind of person. She's like, I'm just managing kids all day, like I'm going crazy. So actually my brother-in-law said, for the sake of your sister's sanity, do you think it's a good idea for her to start working? I was like, please, I was actually going to talk to my brother-in-law about it. So she teaches French at a really good Islamic school. It's actually the top-rated school of all schools, like private, public, for the region. So she's working, and she has a much more sense of purpose. So sometimes it's an issue of everyone has their life expectations, their religious expectations, etc. When someone loses a sense of what their goal was, and that goal in the context of the marriage, it starts creating a lot of tension. And it's terrible to be just drifting in marriage. Because Allah SWT gives us a very practical paradigm. He says, عاشرهن بالمعروف أو فارقهن بالمعروف Live with them with معروف, with that which is good, or part in a way that is good. But one of the things the ulema say that's implicit in that, is live, like have a purposeful marriage. If the marriage, if the purpose of the marriage isn't clear, restore that purpose, restore the good in the marriage. If the two of you realize that that good can't be restored, then parting would be an option. But sort of saying, well, let's see how things work out. That's not in the long-term a good way of dealing with the issues in the marriage. Because they just get things that worse and worse very often. So that's part of it. You know, one has to restore a personal sense of purpose, but also a sense of purpose. What are we trying to do as a couple in the marriage? Any other questions? It's not really, there's a distinction made in the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ between being firm and being harsh. There's times to be firm, right? But there's no time to be harsh. There's no dispensation in the Sunnah or the Prophet ﷺ for harshness. And there's a clear distinction between being firm, right? Which is that there's a limit and it is to be observed. And there's principles of how you uphold that, right? Part of, you know, merciful firmness is that that limit needs to be clear to the child. Like if you're going to set a limit, you make the limit clear. You remind the child of that limit. You give them a sense of understanding of why the limit is there, right? Because ultimately you want to instill in the child, you know, what's your role as a parent? Your role as a parent is not to be the family police officer. That your role in the parent is to instill adab, right? The process of raising a child is called Tehdeeb, the instilling of adab. And what is adab? It is the capacity and concern to act and respond in the right way. So when you are correcting the child, when you are disciplining the child, you are not punishing the child. That's not the Sunnah understanding of disciplining the child. Discipline is not punishment, right? It is not simply correcting the child. So sometimes people, some parents behave like police officers. They are giving fines. Others behave like judges. Wrong. This is my judgment, right? Others behave like their lawyers, right? They get into disputes with the children, right? Others are like, you know, and some of them are like corrupt lawyers, right? They'll take bribes from the children, right? But that's not your role, right? You're supposed to be a shepherd, right? As the Prophet said, what are you trying to do? You're trying to instill in whatever way, and there's many ways, the Sahaba raise their children in different ways, right? Because people are different.  Well, what is adab? Adab is not just do this and don't do this. You're trying to give them the capacity and give them the concern for them themselves to be able to respond to that situation or similar situations in the future in the right way, right? It's a precise definition of adab. Adab is the deeb, you know, the disciplining. Islam, you know, which is the instilling of adab, is you're trying to instill in the child the capacity and concern to have the right... to have the right attitude and conduct and action and response, right? So when they're going to do something, like how do they view situations? How do they act? And also how do they react in the situations they're put in? So that if you weren't there and the same thing happened again, they would have the right response, right? That's the purpose. So whatever strategy of discipline that you take and there's many possible, there means. But this is what you're striving to do as a result of it. And that's how you judge. Is my strategy of disciplining my child successful? Is that are you instilling that concern in the child? Because it's not a question of if you say, if you don't pray, I'm going to do this. What's going to happen if you're not there? They're visiting their grandparents. No one's going to remind them to pray asad or will they do it? That's instilling adab. Whether you do it by being very, very gentle or by being firm, however you do it. But this is what has to get conveyed. And different people have different personalities, right? But in that, harshness has no place whatsoever. Harshness has no place. The Prophet s.a.w. never, ever hit a child, ever. He never hit a spouse. He never hit any of his wives. He never hit a servant. He never hit a child. The Prophet s.a.w. has never, ever even hit an animal. Even when he rode an animal, he wouldn't strike the animal. Rather, he would nudge the animal, s.a.w. And Imam Abu Hanifa took a legal ruling from that. That even if you're riding, let's say in those days, like if you're riding a donkey or a mule or a horse, even if you hit it within the limits of the way you normally hit an animal to ride it, if I'm riding Sidi Masood's donkey, and I hit the animal at a normal, in a normal way, and it dies, I have to compensate him for the donkey. Even though that's not going beyond normal use, but the basis is that you don't have a right to hit the animal. So even when it's excused within certain limits, people have to ride the animal, s.a.w. But that's Khilaf al-Asal. That's going against the basis of how you deal with an animal, let alone a human being, a spouse, let alone a child so vulnerable, s.a.w. So that's one of the areas where there's a lot of misunderstanding of the Sunnah of the Prophet s.a.w. Any other questions? Firstly, there's two separate things. There's hitting and then there's abuse. And even the law makes a different distinction between that. Not every case of physical altercation between a couple is criminally... Not every situation has criminal consequences. So that's just to make a distinction. So the Qur'an does not... There's nothing in the Qur'an in any way justifying abuse that's going against everything we know of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, both in text and spirit and purpose. That's very clear. There's absolutely no place for any kind of abuse. That's very, very clear. Now, then we also have to distinguish then between two types of rulings. Certain rulings lay out... They're simply demarcating limits. And there's other rulings that lay out what is right conduct. What's right conduct? What are you supposed to do? And the other is that if you did this, if it's less than this, you're not criminally culpable. It may be excused, but that does not mean that it's right conduct. That's just laying down a limit that you cannot possibly go past this limit. And the other which is what are you supposed to do? We have to distinguish between the two. So one aspect is there's no place in Islam for any kind of abuse, any kind of violence, anything like that. Then what about just the act of hitting? Many of the leading scholars amongst them, for example, the great Tunisian Imam, Imam Tahrir ibn Ashur in his Tafsir of the fourth surah, verse 34, he mentions that there are certain things that are permitted within an exception and if certain conditions are fulfilled. But then if those conditions aren't fulfilled, what would be the contingent ruling? So in the case of hitting, in the general case, let's say Zubayah and Zubayah got into a fight. So Zubayah was waving the thing, so Zubayah grabbed her and he hit her. Is that going to solve the problem between them? Are there, like in the general case, does hitting solve marital problems? No. Does it restore the good in the relationship? No. Is it if you had a hundred cases, in how many cases does that take place? A striking in which there is no harm and the harm there is both physical harm and other types of harm. That does not leave harmful effects. Is that like, and if you're in that field, if there's a hundred cases, is it a common phenomenon that that would happen, that would not be of detriment? Of course, in the overwhelming case, it would be harmful. And we know that if something, they say, anything whose harm predominates over its good what's its ruling? It's not permissible. They say that's, you know, the intellect would discern that even before revelation. There's something that's overwhelmingly harmful. You're not supposed to do it. Simple as that, right? So the fact that, you know, the Quran gives a limit that in the case of dispute, and there's not just any kind of dispute, right? This is a, you know, it's a separate issue of nushus. It's not that you had a disagreement of nushus, of open violation of, you know, for on the part of the wife. Then all that you have a recourse to is, you know, in principle is a hitting that leaves no harm physical or other. That's all. So it's like saying that if you were even thinking about it, this is all that you could potentially have if it would be restorative. It would, because the context of the verse is of restoring the good in the relationship. But that's not generally the case. That's not, so what would the fatwa be? The fatwa without any doubt whatsoever, right? Is that even a non-harmful hitting would be impermissible. Because the general case on which fatwa is based is that that's not how things work out. So it's not just, so we've distinguished between abuse on the one side, violence, abuse, and hitting, but even the mere act of hitting within those limits would not be permitted because most people do not observe those limits. And even if those limits were observed, it would be in most cases, certainly in our social context, even within those limits, you know, someone went and said to her, don't do that. And she's like, and it's a case of nushus. They say, oh, okay, I won't. That's not how things are. So there's many, many, so that's the thing. So there's absolutely no permission even of that because in some social, some cultural context, something like that would restore the relationship. Someone would say, okay, now I'm going to stop. But that's not the general case. That's not the general case. And it's something that is abused. And that's a principle that has many other applications, right? That there's a ruling in itself, right? But when applying the ruling, one has to look at the context in which it's applied. And to give an example that's also related to marriage, what is the Quranic ruling regarding a man marrying more than one woman? Okay, but is it permissible or impermissible? It's permissible, right? Now, what is, and I say this without hesitation, right? If you want to have a legal discussion on it, inshallah maybe during the Q&A tomorrow or something, without hesitation, right? The general ruling of marrying more than one wife, what is it? Not just in the West, but in most Muslim countries, what's the general ruling of marrying more than one wife? It is absolutely haram. Yeah, absolutely haram. It is in, because there's two separate things. The ruling in itself, you'd be denying the Quran by saying that a second marriage is impermissible, right? So the ruling is, what's the ruling of marriage, of multiple marriage? We say it's permissible and impermissible. It's permissible in itself, but in the general case, it would be impermissible. And not just in the West, this is the case, the leading scholar of the Indian subcontinent said this in the early 20th century, why? If people who know about whether the Arab world, and I've lived almost half my life in the Arab world, 17 years or something like that, in most societies, someone marries a second wife, right? So Zubey and Zubey, things aren't work out, Zubey says, you know what? My cousin Lubna always wanted to marry me. Let me marry her instead. What's the general case? Is that second marriage going to likely succeed? Is the first marriage going to succeed? If there's children involved, is it going to be good? No, it's going to cause one. And then families, there's secondary repercussions. In some cases, communities disown people. It becomes like, you know, to use the Indian term, Hangama, like one big chaos, right? And again, the same thing. There are exceptional cases. There are exceptional cases. And there's a community I went to in California where everyone seemed to have married, everyone else in the community. It was really confusing, like a small community. I can't give too many more details because some of you may know the community. It's not in the Bay Area. But it was really confusing because people say, you know, I had one child from so-and-so and her that really is like very stressful weekend because I had to like reshape a lot of my paradigms, right? Because I was teaching about marriage. And of course, a lot of it, they only married multiple times because their experiments in religiosocial engineering were failing quite miserably. But so that's, again, the ruling in itself is that it's permissible. But when you apply the ruling, you have to look at the context, right? And the context may make something impermissible, right? And that's the case unhesitatingly with second law. There's so many harms in it, along with the fact that it's illegal according to law and we're duty bound to obey the laws of the land as long as they don't call us to something un-Islamic. But even without that, right, if you just look at the principle of benefit and harm, right? And a third example related to family is about a man marrying without his parents' permission. Does a man need his parents' permission for marriage in Islam? Legally, no. Legally, there is no basis to say that a man needs any kind of approval from his father for the marriage to be valid. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know Islamic law. So the Fouqaha will tell you in the fiqh books that a man does not require any permission of a guardian or parent for the marriage to be valid. They'll even say it is permissible for a man to marry without his parents' permission. What is the ruling of a man? So that's the ruling in itself. What's the ruling now of a man actually going out and marrying without his parents' permission? In the general case, there may be exceptions. I just dealt with the case yesterday. The father has Alzheimer's or something, so he can't give permission. And the mother, in the real case, is in a state of clinical depression, and she's been refusing for years to let this person marry anyone. So what does he do? He tries to get approval of the rest of the family, whoever is close. But in the general case, what would be the ruling of Zubayr going and marrying Zubayda without his father's permission? They applied the ruling. No, no, religiously. It would be haram. It would be a major sin. Why? Because by marrying without... And we're not talking about sisters marrying without parents' permission. And we're talking about the general case. In some cases where parents will not agree to any human being for their son or daughter.  And sometimes it gets really freaky. And those are exceptional cases, and those are dealt with exceptionally. But in the general case, it would be a major sin. Why? Because when you apply a ruling, you take into account secondary considerations. What's the immediate consideration if you marry without your children, without your parents' permission? For a man. And same would apply for a woman. What's the greatest detriment of doing so? Displeasing your parents. What's the ruling of displeasing your parents? It's the gravest of sins. The Prophet Salaam was asked about the Mubiqat. The worst of enormities. He says, associating partners with Allah and being bad to your parents. And for those of you who have children, can you imagine anything more hurtful your child could do than to not try to get any permission from you and go off and marry? Who has children here?  I mean, I think about it. It's pretty devastating. My two sons talked to each other. They came up, Abuji was never going to do that. I was like, thank you. Not that I thought they would. I said it would break my heart. They came up and said, Abuji, we talked about it. We were not going to do that. I was like, thank you. But this is very important. This is why sometimes the people who make the worst decisions in life and deen are people who learn a little Islam. The Arabs say, A little knowledge is far worse than much ignorance. Because most people in our community, whatever background they're from, even in the broader society, most people wouldn't marry without telling their parents. If they have a healthy marriage with many non-Muslim friends, they would all have one of my friends from high school, and we've still been in touch. He's half Spanish, half Polish, half English. Because it's complicated. Because one parent is half English, half Spanish. The other parent is half Spanish, half Polish. So he's like three halves. He wanted to marry. I think he lives in the Greater Bay Area. He wanted to marry an Ecuadorian woman. Now, Spaniards are quite not racist, but they have a sort of looking down attitude towards Latin Americans. Because they say we speak proper Spanish. They speak like these funny Latino accents. They don't know proper Spanish. It's sort of like how Urdu speakers have attitude towards Punjabis. That they're only half cultured. It's like my mother, who's temperamentally Punjabi, one day she was talking on and on. Although ethnically, she's from UP as well, like my dad. She goes, Punjabi culture, Punjabi culture. Finally my dad got to say, what is this Punjabi culture? Punjabi culture. The only culture they have in Punjabi is agriculture. And my dad was just joking. But there's that kind of attitude. But most people who have a basic sense of filial piety, what do they do? My friend took the means. He didn't just go off and marry her. He took his would-be fiance to meet his parents, and they met, etc. And it allayed most of their concerns, etc. And that's an even broader side. That's what good people would do. But sometimes people get religious, and they start going off and doing wacky things. They'll go get married secretly because you can do it. And they find some imam who conduct the wedding, and they're secretly living together as well. And what happens? And those kind of things you don't. But the point that these three cases that we mentioned about hitting, similarly about second marriage, the same thing about marrying without parents permission, all of them, there's a big difference between what a ruling is in itself in our deen, in our deen, and how it is to be applied. Because the ruling in itself, it just looks at the ruling in the abstract. That in itself this is the ruling. But when you're going to apply a ruling, you have to know how does it now interact with the relevant and related considerations. So something could be permissible and haram at the same time. Which is more common. Sometimes something could be haram, yet in a particular context it could be permitted for you. Sometimes it's haram. Sometimes it's haram to leave the haram. So for example someone is supporting his family. And the job that they have is not a permissible job. But if they leave it immediately, this will have many ripple effects. His wife is given a final warning. If you lose your job again, you're going to lose me. Because she's fed up, because he's irresponsible. And she's going to seek custody of the children. And he's got a halal financing, but it's from a very strict and stingy Islamic financing. So it's going to foreclose on there. He's going to lose his house if he can't pay. And so all these things are going to happen. So now that job is haram. There will be haram for him to leave it immediately. Because of the greater harm by doing so. So the ruling that this line of employment is haram does not necessarily entail that you act upon it by leaving it. Acting upon it needs to look at secondary consideration. What doesn't mean that you say, okay well I can't leave this employment. There's a balanced way. What's the balanced way? That you're obligated to seek other employment. Dilligently. And until you find other employment, you may be able to remain in it. So that's something to appreciate. A lot of times people make these errors in their actions. So we're going to finish with final, final question, if anyone has. Yes. I think 10 years and older to handle the peer pressure. How do you... I mean that's very complicated, right? So how do you enable children to give them the strength to deal with peer pressure? It has to come from within. And that's why the formative years are so important. You have to instill in them number one. You have to instill them intrinsic motivation. And that's particularly important in our context because you don't have the broader environment taking care of them necessarily. So you have to instill that intrinsic motivation. The other thing is we set very low standards for our children. When parents who are achievement oriented, they say okay I want my child to go to an Ivy League school, I want them to achieve this and that. What do you want for them in their deen? What are most people's goals when it comes to the deen of their children? I want them to be just good Muslims. That's a bid'ah. There's no dua whatsoever that Allah grant me, children who are good Muslims. You want righteous children. You ask Allah for righteous children. You ask Allah. And make us imams of the people of Taqwa. To do that we have to have spiritual strength ourselves but our children should be inclined towards worship. Children should be, not just praying the far, when will they learn that? Children, it's easy for children to take on things.  It's easier for children to tell them do it, they'll do it. And it'll become a habit. Usually the fault is what? The parent can't tell the child to do it because they're not doing it themselves. They say, the person bereft of something can't give it. If you're trying to, like in being a lifeguard, to save someone, you have to be secure yourself first. Because if you're sinking, you can't rescue another person who's sinking. So if we're concerned as parents, we need to take care of number one of ourselves, to strengthen ourselves religiously. And then to instill in that, in them, like I know, Alhamdulillah, there's many and many people succeed in that. When I was moving back to North America, I was consulting one of my teachers and he asked, what are your concerns going back? And one of my concerns was children. That's what parents worry about. So this Sheikh, Alhamdulillah, he smiled. And he said, you know, I've dealt with many Westerners. He said, the way I see it, the way I understand it, if your state with Allah SWT is good, and you raise your children in a good way, they're likely to come out good wherever you are in the world. And if your state with Allah is not right, and you don't raise your children in a way that's right, they're going to struggle wherever they are in the world. So that's the onus, but it's very possible. I know children, Alhamdulillah, who are like, since the age of seven, they pray Tahajjud every night, or pretty much every night. I was actually visiting one of my relatives, and a good family, masha'Allah. The son, it's like seven, eight, he was in time-out, on the stairs. So I'm sitting there because it's kind of funny, because I used to get punished all the time as a child. My temperamentally Punjabi mother, if I ever tell her, wasn't I a really good child? She starts using language that you can't mention in the message. So I look at the child, and he starts praying on the steps. So when he finished, I went up and said, what were you doing? I was praying Salat al-Hajjah, the prayer of need. I said, why? He said, because mommy was being unreasonable. And I have no one to turn to but Allah. And he was crying. So he was asking Allah to remove me from this oppression. But I shouldn't say anything about mom, because then he was just crying. And then he was going, ya Allah, ya Allah. And he was sitting there, like, head against the wall, he was saying, ya Allah. But that's beautiful, right? That's beautiful, right? But that's something, it has to come from within. And if it comes from within, they say that if you nurture a fire, if you have a weak fire, and you put it out in the storm, what's going to happen to it? It could extinguish it. But if you take proper care of the fire, and you build a fire, and you make it strong, and then you put it out, let's imagine, it's like movable fire, or you remove the shelter from it. You put it in the wind, the more the wind blows, the more it happens to the fire. The stronger it gets. The most vivid example of that I saw was Imam Zaid Shakir, right? Because a lot of us, when we were studying in Damascus, people would be scared of going back to the West, right? We'd be like, so much fitna, so much this, oh my goodness. You know, like, what's going to happen to me? Because you get into this, like, cocoon of hanging out with ulema and going to majalis of ilm and zikr and stuff. It's this idealized cocoon.   A lot of time wasted. And then one day, once Imam Zaid was going for something, this, like, 97, 98, he was coming to North America for a couple of weeks, and then came back. He came back, and it really felt like it looked like, you know, if you have a fire, that's just going to blaze now. It's like, wow, he looked really like, you know, in this really strong state. He's like, wow, and then I'm just going, wow.  Because that's what it is.  That's whom imana. And that's how we should raise our children, not be defensive, right? That, oh man, I want to just keep my children Muslim and protect them from society, et cetera. You know, we should instill strength in our children, strength of faith, strength of purpose, clarity, confidence, right? So that they should walk, you know, with clarity and confidence, right? Wherever they are, right? And there's many, many beautiful examples of that, right? It's not, you know, Allah swt has not made us responsible for aspiring to these virtues unless we could do it. And there's many, many people who do that, masha'Allah. So we're going to stop there. We ask you that you grant us in our spouses and in our offspring a joy for our eyes and that you make us and them of the foremost of the people of Taqwa, of those who are exemplars of virtue and mindfulness and all that is pleasing to you. Wa sallallahu ala imam al-Muttaqeen Sayyid al-Awwalina wa al-Akhirin Sayyidina wa Nabina Muhammad Dhu al-Khulq al-Azim wa al-Qadr al-Jaseem Wa al-Alihi wa Sahbihi Wa salam atasleeman kathira Wa akhiru da'wan an-alhamdulillahi Rabbi al-Alamin


Look at May 40 here. So I finally figured it out. I was wondering why is it that young women these days they don't articulate? Why do they mumble so much? Because when I was growing up girls, they spoke perfectly clearly. I didn't have to lean in to hear them. It was just perfectly obvious, perfectly intelligible. When I was growing up, people spoke an intelligible way. They articulated. And now here I am, this 19th century Victorian gentleman and all the young people, including the young women, they're just mumbling a lot. And so they're also kind of short. So I have to kind of squat down and then just kind of lean over with my good ear to try to understand what they're saying. But I'm a very respectable man. Now I just comport myself with so much dignity and it just seems like a violation of my stature and my standing in the community to be like squatting down and leaning over to try to hear what these young women say. And my problem is I just have too much dignity. Sometimes I got dignity up the wazoo. I just get too much respectability. I'm too much of a 19th century Victorian gentleman because it's all become clear to me now. I mean, these young women, they're perfectly able to articulate. They're perfectly able to project. They're perfectly able to speak up for themselves. And no one's more respectful of boundaries than me.  And that's why the women in high school respect me so much. And that's why I placed third in the sexy legs contest in high school for the blokes. But I'm realizing now I've got to get past my respectability, my prim proper way of carrying myself. These women are saying 40, you've got to lean in. They want me to follow Cheryl Sandberg's advice.  And by mumbling, they're saying to me, 40, we want you to lean in. We want you to whisper sweet nothings in my ear. Talk to me about democracy 3.040. Talk to me about the culture of critique in 20th century Jewish cultural and political movements. Whisper in my ears about Stephen Turner's latest paper. Whisper me sweet nothings about this power structure. You've got to get down and dirty 40, so to speak. That's what they're saying. And here I am like standing back, being all prim and proper, and it's like, oh no, I can't lean in. Like I'm a man of too much dignity. But I've got to put my dignity aside. I need to have Rachmanus. I need to have compassion for these women. They obviously want me to just lean in. Lean in with the good ear, just like Cheryl Sandberg advised. They want me to just get down there and start whispering to them about Thomas Hobbs Leviathan, what an amazing book published in 1651.  They want me to lean in and discuss the unstable triad that comprises our democracies today, where you've got the people and you've got the politicians and then you've got the experts. They want me to lean in and try to reconcile expertise with democracy. They want me to lean in and explain how we live in this age of neutralizations, where more and more of what should be political is being neutralized and passed over to the experts who have the knowledge and the learning to tell us what's really going on. I just want to stand back and I want to stand on my record. I just want to be all presidential and rabbinical. I don't want to get down with the people and I don't want to be all populist. It's like, oh no, I can't do any blood sports. I'm above that. I've got this code of conduct and whenever I go to a singles gathering and I start meeting a woman, I immediately pull out my YouTube code of conduct and I have her sign it before I'll engage in any substantive conversation. I am so many steps beyond asking permission for each physical embrace in the love-making process. I have the singles just sign off on my YouTube code of conduct because that's not just for YouTube. I carry that into my life. But thinking now that I've been too inflexible, I've been too pompous, too presidential, too rabbinical, too standoffish, and they're mumbling for a reason. They're mumbling because they want to be close to me. That's what's going on. They're saying to me, why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Just like me, they long to be close to you. I mean, they're not saying that explicitly, but that is the subtext to their mumbling. The subtext to their mumbling is why do stars fall down from the sky every time you walk by? Just like me, they long to be close to you. And when they're mumbling and muttering about some women's book on Torah, what they're really saying is, on the day that you were born, the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true. So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue. That's why all the girls in Shul follow you all around just like me. They long to be close to you. That's really what's going on. So I have to put aside my scruples, stop standing on ceremony, stop being so officious and listen to Sheryl Sandberg and just like lean in and whisper to these young ladies about Democracy 3.0.