Excellent first night. Our one problem roommate calling the cops not once, not twice, I think it was three times. But my outfit is just like really good today and I need it to be appreciated. So, hey everyone, good morning. My name is Katie if you're new to my channel and I just talk about college and gap years and all sorts of stuff. This morning I just wanted to do a get ready with me and I post new videos every Thursday unless something happens to me. That sounds really, that sounds scary. That's not like in a bad way. Just like I couldn't get to it. And I thought that I would just like tell funny roommate stories because I want to do like a series on my channel this summer of like getting ready for college. I want to do videos like what to pack for your dorm. One of them that was requested by subscriber Sylvie. Thank you so much was to do like internship advice and I thought that I would just like start with some stories because if you like that sometimes you can glean the most out of like someone else's just like straight up experience. So that's what we're gonna do. So I know a lot of you guys are from like other countries but in America we love to torture college freshmen and put them in a shared room together when they're 18 and nobody has a clue what they're doing and it's just, it's such a fun, such a cute like lovely time. So I, the first year, my first year at CFC was 2018 and in the summer of or fall of 2018 there was a housing shortage. So I showed up for my freshman year of college and our room was so small. It was hilarious. We showed up and literally they put us in what would be considered like a single room. You can like sometimes sophomores and juniors have the option to like live among freshmen or like if they need to put an RA. So they had like a single room and every suite. So because there was a housing shortage they just decided to like put us two gals in a room together, which was fun. You know, we're living and we're having a good time. Can I tell the story online? Something did happen with that roommate and she ended up moving out. Yeah, I'm just not going to do that to her. But it was bad and she ended up moving out. I was going to move out and then she ended up moving out and that was like my first three weeks of college and it was so tough. And I'm not going to like give all the details about it but it was like a conflict with her and there was an issue that was brought up to me in like a group meeting, but then like she went to bed and I was sort of like accosted that like I had to address this issue. And then when I addressed the issue in like a one-on-one setting, it went so bad. I tried my very best. Like I ruminated about this like confrontation for so long. I called like all of my friends and when it finally happened, let's just say things did not go super well and I don't know, I'm not explaining as well at all but then she started like going to other people and like confronting them, but then it was just like no one had the courage to just like say, I don't, it was just, it was so bad. Anyway, safe to say that happened. Okay, next roommate story. So my freshman year, I was in like a sweet style living situation. My freshman year, I lived in what is like a sweet style dorm. That's basically when you have like a living room and a kitchen, but there are four bedrooms and there are two people to each bedroom.  So I like wrote them and I was like, Hey, can you not give me another roommate? And they didn't, which was, which was very nice because honestly, the thing that you will find your freshman year is that so many people get moved around. Like if you're having roommate issues like really bad, like I had really, really bad ones like my first like couple of weeks and month, just know like people do move around and if it does happen to you, like it's tough, but it will get better and it'll be a funny story in years to go. So yeah, I lived in a suite and on like my side of the hall, so it was like this very long hallway that we lived in. We had four roommates on the other end and now there were only three of us on the end, me and then the room next to us had two girls and they were so lovely. One of them I was going to be roommates with my second year Bristol friends, such a gem. And the other was just like really fun, really nice too. So we just, we had a good side of the hallway. We all shared a bathroom and then the other four girls shared a bathroom. It's just funny. This was like three years ago now, but like I'm still like, I can't, I can't. It's like, it's traumatic. So we had like an interesting start to college is what I will say. I've definitely told the story on my channel before, but my first night of college, I showed up and I'm like unpacking. I have just left like my sobbing mother and my, like I'm sobbing because that's just the type of family we are. I'm moving like eight hours away from home. I had just had this like moment and now I'm going upstairs unpacking and it's like 10 30 at night. I don't know. And I'm like unpacking my roommates not there. She's like down the hall because they're all going to go out to like go look for parties, which it was my first night in the dorm. So I was just like trying to chill and I start hearing like this noise down the hallway and it's these girls going like, oh my God, like what is that? Oh my God, it's there's water everywhere, but just like that, like it wasn't actual panic. Like they were just sort of like observing like that there was water gushing from something. And so I of course panicked and I went like right on the hall and I was like, what is the flooding? Like, what do you mean? And so the toilet in our other roommates bathroom had started to overflow. I had been in this situation before. Okay. This is not my first overflowing toilet. There's another video in my channel where I tell this happened before to me in a New York City hotel room. So I knew what to do. I didn't know what to do in the first scenario. Anyway, this girl runs downstairs and like she runs to go get an RA and I was like, no, like give me give me some shower shoes. So I went in there and there's like an inch of water in the bathroom. Like it has flooded that much already. So the RA comes like like breathlessly up the stairs. He was like, like, you know, turn the nozzle. I had already done it.  Excellent first night.  And he was like, okay, you're going to have to deal with this in a second because we're having a fire drill. So we go out to the parking lot. We're in the parking lot for like an hour if you've ever been a part of a college like dorm evacuation fire drill.  They're awful. They happen so random and of course just happened at the best time.  And now I have to go stand outside. It, you know, in the August Charleston heat just not not the best time. So we're doing that and you know, it's a fine time. It's we get back inside and that first night I ended up just like cleaning up because they all into a party. I don't know if we wanted to clean it or like they just left and we were like, well, we can't leave it here. I think that's more what happened but we didn't bring it up because like I had just moved eight hours away. Like I was not trying to start beef with my roommates like the first night. So I was just like, I was willing to help. So we just laundry until like midnight that night with not even our towels. Actually, I think it was, I think it was my friends towels that who helped me with the laundry, which kind of sucks too. So we already had like a rough start with our roommates. You know, but I just kind of like let it go and then I had my own like roommate drama which I sort of explained earlier. But so then, you know, we're all getting settled in. Now it's just the seven of us and I didn't really know two of my roommates. Like they just kind of kept themselves and yeah, they just kind of kept themselves. I didn't know them that well, but then I knew one of the girls down the hall pretty well. Like she was so nice. We went to a literary festival together and ate biscuits in line and we, anyway, sorry. That's like, that's not the point of the topic, but anyway, I loved her. She was very, very nice. But so like in October, we come home one day and like there's beef and we don't know where this beef is coming from. We had one roommate. The problem, let's just say there was, there was one. There's always one. And she's basically, there was, there was some beef. I think it was something to do with like some friendship nonsense because they were all like really like tight-knit friends. Like I didn't really hang out with them. I hung out with the one girl. Um, um, she was really sweet. I just didn't really have a lot in common with the other girls. Um, but we had like a very cordial like roommate. Like it was completely fine. Like I, I didn't have any beef. I didn't keep saying word beef, but it's just when I, I didn't have any beef. Okay. But so the, this is going to be such a long video, but I really don't care. But so one day they come home and there's like slamming doors and there's yelling. Uh, and basically then I find out like a weekend later when I'm at this literary festival with my other roommate and she was like, yeah. So basically we were, I think it was like something to do with like one of them was going to the ATM and like didn't invite the other. Like it was, I don't, I don't understand. There was some sort of drama about the ATM and not being invited. Um, which I don't, I don't claim to understand, but that's what the beef was. And so eventually I feel like a week of slamming doors and like I'm pretty sure there was like some, some cursing out in the hallway. We had to get the RA involved. I was not involved in this, but um, and I didn't know this was happening, but our RA basically had to come and like mediate a conversation between these two girls. And during it, the one problem roommate got up and threatened to choke my other roommate, which was not cute. And then I think for a while they got over it. Like I think that I don't remember the timeline of this because it was so long ago, but that was like October and like everyone seemed like fine over Christmas. And so I think some, I think some of the beef was squashed. Okay. I think it was, I think a little bit of it was squashed, which is excellent cause we don't, you don't need no beef. So enter a second semester. We lost two roommates. So my good friend roommates on the our end of the hall she moved out just because she wanted to be in an apartment with her friend. Like she dorm life just wasn't for her. So she ended up moving out and then one of one of our other roommates down the hall who I didn't really know very well, she transferred to a different school. So it was just, how many were down to five? It was just five of us. So it was two of us on one hallway. So the deal is with, with the bathrooms at college is like, it's just sort of courteous that like you, you, if you're in a suite, you use your bathroom because you have to do things like pick up toilet paper for it and clean it, right? And you have to use it at like specific times.  So all of a sudden, like our problem roommates started using our bathroom like right when we had to go to class. So my friend had a really late restaurant job and she would stay up until like two in the morning to do all of her homework every night because she was working. So she would sleep in. So she would get up around like, I don't know, like nine, nine 30, 10 o'clock and how it had to take a shower and there would be like just a girl in there. Like, and it wasn't me. So it was this other girl basically using our bathroom. So we eventually had to bring up the topic. Oh, I should tell you stories about this roommate. So what, why she was a problem. Obviously the choking part. Okay. But we had had some altercation. So we had a group chat. This is what it was. This is what it was. I'm forgetting all the details. So we had a group chat. Um, but what I remember about the group chat is like, when there was beef, she would leave the group chat, but then like she would get added back in. This is the, this is what living with eight people is like. Like it's just, it's kind of a disaster. So one night in like December, we were having cookie night. We were making cookies in the kitchen, which I like literally never use the kitchen. Our one, this one problem roommate would, she had a problem with food. So we had really, she had interesting food habits. I'm not here to judge anybody, except like this was just not okay. So yeah, I'm allowed to have an opinion about this. Okay. It's about raw meat. So what you would do is she would like defrost meat, but it would be sitting on the counter for like days. And then someone would be like, Hey, can we throw this out? And she'd be like, no, I'm going to use it.  And she was like, no, no, no, it's fine. So then she would literally cook and eat the meat after it had been like sitting on the counter for days and days, which is so unhealthy for you. Like you're not supposed to do that.  And I, I stayed out of the kitchen because it was just like such a disaster and mess. Like I just, I had a mini fridge in my room. So I would like keep some stuff in there from the grocery store, but then I would also just like go to the dining hall because I had a meal plan, which if you live on campus, most of the times you have to have a meal plan, which was completely, which was completely fine. Like it, it worked out. Um, definitely not the best food, but I didn't have to use that God forsaken kitchen. And the fridge was a black hole. Like there was stuff when we started cleaning out at the end that had been there since we moved in. It was so scary. So one night we looked in the fridge because we had to put something in the fridge and that like wouldn't fit in my little fridge. And we noticed that there was like moldy food. So we had to like address it because there was like, there was moldy food in our refrigerator, which is like super unhealthy. So anyway, that caused, that caused some, some ruffled feathers. And I think that was maybe another time that she left the group chat. I don't actually know, but I mean everything seemed to be, to be okay until she started using our bathroom second semester. And it was really bothering my one roommate who like, she would always go in the bathroom when my roommate like needed it because she works so late and all that stuff. That was addressed. And I think there were some other things that were addressed like in the spring semester and it was like right at the end of March, there was a lot of stuff going on at the end of March because this one problem roommate was very mad at the people who lived above us because we could hear them kind of walking around a lot. So she went upstairs and I think the one roommate that I like like went to go talk to them first and they were like nice to her, but then I guess it kept happening. So then the problem roommate went upstairs and like knocked on the door and I want to say she cursed them out. Like she, she was not, she was not polite, let's just say. And it started like a feud between the girls above us and then us. And I was not a part of it because it wasn't happening like on our side. So like, I mean, we definitely heard stuff from above but that's just sort of like what living in an apartment or a dorm is like. Like you just got to bring your plugs and like a fan. We also lived like right, our dorm was right next to like a bar. So I could hear like bar noise all night which was, which like was fine because I had like a fan and anyway, eventually this like feud escalated to our one problem roommate, calling the cops not once, not twice, but I think it was three times. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure that it was three times. And by the third time, the cops came all the way up to our dorm because the first two times they were like, we can't help you with this. Like what are you, what do you even mean? And I don't think it was like the actual police, but it was like the campus police, which like you're still not supposed to call them if like your roommates are walking, like if your upstairs neighbors are like walking around like that just doesn't make sense. So it escalated to the point where the campus police came into our dorm at like midnight. I was up writing.  So it wasn't like the actual finals week. Yeah. He came up the stairs and at this point like we did not have a good relationship with the people, with this one roommate down the hall. And there was a lot of, there was a lot of animosity. Let's just say, and there was a lot of slamming doors. I had to go in one day and like have a confrontation with her because there was one day where there was just like a lot of door slamming because we asked her not to use our bathroom anymore in like a very polite, very, very nice way. Like we were like, hey, like maybe, you know, I understand if someone's in your bathroom at this time, but you know, this is our bathroom. We tried to do it very nicely, but also like you're not, you know, contributing to like cleaning or like getting toilet paper. Like you're, and a lot of the times the dorm they run out of toilet papers. Like we would have to go buy our own. Yeah, which is just like not the coolest thing to do. So we had a conversation about that. There's a lot of animosity.  It was very not fun, but I tried to clear some of the air because I was like, I can't live with door slamming for another month. But yeah, the cops, I'm sorry, I'm getting so distracted, but the cops came and they were saying like, you cannot call us anymore. And eventually we had to go meet with the, I want to say it's like the RHA because there are RAs, right? Which are the people, the like students who are like above you in college and they live among you and kind of help you out. But this was like the head RHA. So she was in charge of all of the dorms on campus. So we had to meet with her individually and talk about this situation. I had no idea what was going on, but I had to take time out of my day. I had to talk to her for like a half an hour. She interviewed like probably 16 people. No, that's not right. I don't know, maybe like, we had five plus five plus eight. Like 13 people, okay? And things just got like so bad after that. Like our one roommate, like she started the one problem roommate. After that, like the meeting, something else happened. I don't remember what, I think it was the day with the door slamming and the bathroom thing that escalated so much. And then there was like still beef with the other roommate who was like my friend also. She started moving all of her stuff out and like leaving her mess everywhere. So our whole entire hallway and like living space and kitchen was filled with like old food and just like all of her stuff from her dorm but she brought so much stuff and it was like all piled into our hallway because she was mad. And it was just like so passive aggressive.  And we held out with her for a long time. Like that was probably the last like three weeks of school and it was unbearable. Like when you are living in a situation like that it is so toxic. And it just doesn't have to be like that. And it was like, there was so much animosity and like it wasn't even really directed towards me but even living among it was just like, like it was so stressful. So are you excited for college? But I think that everyone's cool now. I actually saw that girl, my sophomore year like in the library and she just looks like ploughy cool. So sometimes just living with people is interesting. So the thing that I am most happy for is that I never had an experience where like my roommate was having a friend over. Let's just say that while I was in the room didn't have to deal with that but I knew a lot of people who did which is just bad. Don't do that. But yeah, that's my video for today. I hope that it made sense. And if you're wondering like, oh, how do I solve these situations? To be quite honest guys, like I'm gonna be real with you. When it comes to other people and their meat habits and them calling the police on people like I just don't think that that is something that you can necessarily control. I think it's just something you have to live through. Yeah, that's where we are at. And I'm really hoping that I will have a better roommate situation when I go back to college because it is just, it's a troubling experience for anyone. But yeah, give this video a like if you liked it. This is definitely more of like a chill type of video and it's gonna be like a longer form. So let me know if you liked it because I'm always like, I'm always just trying to figure out like what's best for this channel and you guys like always give me good advice. So thank you so much for watching. Give this video a like and have a nice day.


My first experiences with this brand was with the MiniDSP SHD Studio, a digital preamp and streamer that also does direct room correction. The SHD power on review here is about the same but with a powerful amp added, costing only 1499 USD X sales tax. Let's start with showing where it fits into your stereo. Since the power amplifier is integrated you can connect the speakers directly to it. As a source you can connect your computer directly over USB, Toslink or Spidiff, USB usually being the best option. A muted player on your computer lets you select music while an infrared remote control lets you control the SHD power. More handy might be to have the computer elsewhere in the house, like in the study and connect it to the SHD power over the network.  The built-in streamer of the SHD power lets you play music from a hard disk you shared on a computer. Music is chosen using a smartphone or tablet. You can connect your flat screen by using a Toslink optical cable to enjoy better sound quality over your stereo. If you have a DVD player or Blu-ray player you can connect its digital output to the SHD power or connect the digital output of a CD player or, for instance, a game console. And if you own one or two active subwoofers they can be connected to the dedicated outputs too. The black sturdy metal housing measures 215 x 225 x 70 mm. On the front we see a large rotary encoder that normally functions as a volume control, but after pressing becomes a selector for the four direct presets and after pressing twice for the inputs. Inputs that are not in use can be switched off in the input selector.  The basic functions can also be controlled from the infrared remote control. And it can learn infrared remote codes from other remote controls if you like. The large display shows the volume settings whereby 0 dB is full open. Also the active input is shown as is the direct live preset selected, whether mute is engaged and if the direct live room correction is active. On the rear we find the IEC mains connector with views holder and on-off switch. The loudspeaker binding post that accepts forks, bare wires and banana plugs. The network socket. The USB type A socket for storage media. A recessed reset button. The USB type B socket for connecting to a computer for audio and control. The spitive and tostling digital input. The AES-EBU digital input. Two analog subwoofer outputs and two AES-EBU digital outputs. These output the preamp signal for the four direct live channels. Internal routing defines what signal is on what output. Inside the SHD power we find two physical levels. At the lower level we find the IEC mains inlet, the switch mode power supply and on a separate circuit board the class DMs. This board also holds a Burr Brown PCM1795 DAC chip so the amp board receives a digital signal from the preamp and processing board. This board is on the left that I folded open. The four generation analog device's shark 32 bit floating point processor runs at 450 MHz and takes care of all the processing. The streaming is handled by the quad core ARM processor that runs at 1.2 GHz. I also discovered a serious CS43130 DAC chip that is used to feed the two stop-roover outputs. An AKM-AK4101AVO digital output transmitter drives the AES-EBU output. Why are they here? Well MiniDSP also uses the same board for the SHD studio, essentially the same device without power amps. Right out of the box the SHD power works as a network player and amplifier. But you can do so much more with it. To do so you need to create an account to download the so called SHD plugin from the MiniDSP site. Versions for both Windows and macOS are available but my experiences with the macOS versions were not positive so I used the Windows version. When started up it looks like this. In the right pane you see that the first direct channel feeds output 1 and the second output 2. Output 1 is the left channel and output 2 the right channel. Per output a number of settings can be done, for instance a parametric equalizer with 10 bands. Let's set a frequency of 50 Hz and attenuate while keeping the Q-factor at 0.7. When we then activate it we see the result in the graph. This way you can set 10 different bands. You could use this for room correction but the also included direct system is far more advanced. More interesting for those that own active subwoofers is the crossover function. To use this you have to link the two channels to output 3 or if you use two subwoofers to output 3 and 4. I show you the one subwoofer way. First we set the crossover for the left and right channels like you see here. I use an imaginary setting at 60 Hz and a bezel curve.  The next step is to bend limit the sub out to 60 Hz so we select output 3 and set the low parts filter to 60 Hz and let's take 24 dB per octave roll off. Again these settings are no real world settings, just examples. If you like you can make four different groups of settings. For the really adventurous the crossover function can also be used to actively crossover a two way loudspeaker system. You do need an extra power amp then. To set up the direct live room correction you have to download direct live from live.direct.com and install it. Then you start it from within the SHD plugin. You then see the Mini DSP SHD is found. Just click on it and then follow the instructions. You can buy the SHD power with or without the Mini DSP You Make One Measurement microphone. I advise you to include it for the extra 50 dollars. You then download the calibration file that is unique to your microphone from the Mini DSP side and link the direct live software to it. I'm not going through the entire measurement procedure since it's rather straightforward. Just follow the on-screen instructions. Instead I load the measurement file from measurements I did earlier. For the real trick is to use a good target curve. You don't want to use a fully flat curve. Direct live has a commonly agreed on target curve as standard. I use this target curve that uses less correction points. I set one at the lower end of the spectrum, 35 Hz in this case and one on the high end of the spectrum, around 12 kHz and give the curve a very gradual slope. Then I add control points at 300 Hz and 1000 Hz. The idea is to keep the band between 300 Hz and 1000 Hz on altered while I might boost 70 Hz or lower 12 kHz to taste. I use four curves, one like this, one with 70 Hz boosted a few dBs, one like the first one with 12 kHz lower the few dBs and one that has the low end boost and the high end lowering together. I normally use the first curve but if music sounds somewhat thin I use setting 2. Some 50's recordings sound better with settings 3 or 4, although I use them sparingly. I would suggest you use the standard curve for a while before experimenting with other settings, since using direct will greatly remove the boominess of the room which might sound a bit thin at first. But you will notice you hear so much more detail. If after a while you still find the sound thin, just lift the lows a bit. In my case 70 Hz works, depending on your stereo it might be 50 or even 80 Hz. You can easily create other curves without new measurements and you can store these on your hard disk so plenty of room to experiment with. Despite the versatility in settings to the back door, the day-to-day user sees a very simple user interface. Just select an input, set the volume and play the source. You can easily select one of the four direct live settings if you want but as said, most of the time the standard curve settings will do nicely. Swimming music from your computer is done using Volumio, running on the SHD power. Just allow it to access your hard disk on your computer or NAS or even simpler and quicker, copy all your music to a USB drive and connect it directly to the SHD power. Volumio can also function as a rune endpoint, play from Tidal, Cobus and Spotify, does airplay, can act as squeezebox, does internet radio through web radio, radio paradise, personal radio and 80s 80s radio and can even function as DnLA or LMA server. It doesn't have analog inputs though. I started listening with direct live switched off. I had some poor experiences with class D amps in the past but over the years they improved quite a lot. The SHD power is one of the better ones in this price range. Of course the low end is impressively in control, even on the large audiophysics Scorpios on my setup 1. But also the mid range sounds clean and open, while the high end being the weakest part. Not that it's bad, it's just not as good as the rest. The stereo imaging is wide and deep and with, for this price range, good precision. But then you switch on direct live. The stereo image opens up wider, more in focus, the lows and mids gain openness and the highs are more peaceful. Dirac has a fantastic quality of greatly reducing room problems while maintaining the audio quality already present. It's no magic, no wonder. It's extremely clever technology using a mix of absolute phase and minimum phase filters. The current Dirac live version 3 seems to have further improved the filter algorithms for with the mini DSP SHD studio I use in my setup 1, I hear sort of but clear refinement in sound quality. Although that might be partly due to the simplified target curve I now use. Anyway, even a better amp than the SHD power will most likely sound less as a result of your room problems. Although as an amp I like the Marans KII Lite in my setup 2 better than the SHD power, with Dirac Live switched on, the SHD power wins by more than a nose length. At 1500 USD excluding sales stakes you buy a compact, very well sounding digital pre-amplifier, network player, room corrector system and 2x 120 W power amplifier. I agreed, if you want the max from it, you do need to go through the Dirac Live measurements using the included microphone. That will take you probably an hour the first time. A second time can be done in half the time but there is no need for a second time normally. After that you can fiddle around with target curves to fine tune the system. Still, the family can use it since its normal use is so simple. Perhaps this sums up it quite well. It's not the best amp in the world and acoustic treatment of the room remains the best solution. But if it fits your budget while the acoustic treatment is blocked by the aesthetics commission, this is an extremely good choice. It compensates for acoustic problems quite well and preserves your marriage. Which brings me to the end of this video. I love to see you back next Friday at 5pm central european time in a new video. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed on new videos around. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you would like to support my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music and be safe people.


No, I thought Julian Assange was more anti-government. Is he also anti-capital abuse? That's cool Julian Assange is two things Julian Assange stands for, okay? This is this is the whole premise why I support WikiLeaks and Julian Assange And why I think anybody that doesn't is a moron, right? Because they've been propagandized, too Maybe they've read and the Atlantic. Oh my god, the Atlantic article where it said Julian Assange abuses his cat, right?  But here is the the main thing I get from what Julian Assange represents and What WikiLeaks has been doing, right? Julian Assange, the mantra, the the foundation of Julian Assange's work is two-fold One is transparency of capitalist power Second is accountability of capitalist power, right? And what that entails, what that means is this If you have more power in society, then there must be more transparency as to your activities And if you are found to have committed crimes against humanity, then you should be held accountable for your crimes, right? So if you and me have zero power in our societies So for example, if you want to do an example, right now I have more power Than you watching, right? Majority of you watching because I'm doing the live stream So I have more power than you, right? I can ban you. I can I can not read your comments, right? That means I have to be more transparent as to who I am and what my agenda is. You do not, right? Because you don't hold as much power as I do. And if I've been found to be lying, cheating Taking kickbacks, promoting things and saying that it's my My ideas, then I should be held accountable for what I have done, right?  That is the mantra of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Okay, right now we have the exact opposite of that in our societies In the new world to come and it is coming The other shoe is about to drop. Be careful, right? Those in power we want, they want less accountability, less transparency And they want to know everything there is to know about you and me That means we are slaves


Welcome to the Water Quay. My name is Emily. And for this morning basket is sharks. Here are the activities while mom reads. We have three in one. You can make it a shark, a squid, or an anglerfish. Next we have shark activity book. Next we have sharks of the world, a coloring book. Next we have build the shark and meet the ocean's top predators. This is my zoo box. Inside my zoo box we have a shark. Next mini blocks shark. Next we also have some balloons and a funnel. Looks like for an experiment. Next we have a shark's book. And we also have a shark anatomy poster. For mad lips we have shark attack mad lips. To read we have I survive the shark attacks of 1916. Next we have she dared Bethany Hamilton. Next we have sharks chapter book Animal Planet. Next we have us born sharks. We have get to know your universe science comic nature's perfect hunters swimming with sharks. Shark Lady the true story of how Eugenie Clark Eugenie Clark became the ocean's most fearless scientist. Ultimate book of sharks. Ultimate guide sharks. Sharks learn about the amazing great white shark inside and out. We also have writings from the wild. It talks about hammerheads. Games we have which is the scariest sharks. Next we have jump. Next we have sharks are wild. I forgot to mention we'll also be doing passport to more adventures. Unit 25 shadowed the shark. There's more. You can win this unit study too or you need to do subscribe like and comment. Thank you. Like Emily said we are going to be doing a giveaway for passport to more adventures. We're actually going to give away three full copies of passport to more adventures. All you have to do to be eligible to win is be a subscriber. Like this video and leave a comment down below. This way you can join us on our adventures for shadow of the shark and many other units using the Merlin mission books by Mary Pope Osborne.


So in case anyone's wondering they're setting up some Lithuanian wedding traditions. We get to watch today Don't worry I'm not gonna Texas somebody just tell the camera For those watching my sister Elizabeth has to ask to Brian is I Used to have a daycare business when Rebecca is little who's not getting married today When Rebecca was about six months old Maybe no, I take that back Becca was about a year old My first daycare baby who was six months old at this time was Jenny Who is the matron of honor today and Brian is your husband? They're all grown up now. I feel very old Yeah, if you're out there watching Brian is Trying to turn off your video So you only hear and see what is being broadcasted here at the wedding We open the room earlier If it looks kind of grey and dark outside That's because we are in Portland, Oregon in the United States. Oh, and a bunch of water many bridges and no directives anywhere So it's cloudy And for those that don't know I'm the mother of the bride There's something Yeah, we're reiterated every couple of minutes Ryan's going to turn it off Um So that we're only seeing and hearing what's going on here at the wedding and we're not being distracted by video and audio from All of you who are watching but we are recording it At least not in park and complete all of it, but if I can sneak a little part into the vlog next week FYI Don't tell the kids.  Because it's easier for us to keep track of what's going on Lee. I already explained myself I'm not going to do it again. Just be happy that you can watch anything or I'll turn you off Audio Once again, please comment like and subscribe and support And support via patreon we thank you for the patreon donations By the way, you can't say something in the chat just don't have any audio and you don't have any video Just be happy with that we Megan Tiffany and sleeping baby Is there an ashley jack stratton there is an ashley stratton I'm sorry, I'm gonna block your view real quick you guys can focus on a shiny head instead Officially and slash bartender slash the toddler slash This is official now Pretty much. Yeah, it's nice So she didn't hear before to Polyas's grandmother, I'm the mother of the bride Hello Glad you could join us No, I'm gonna have it be a surprise. Okay. She's got a soft camera. You can't see or she doesn't So even if my jokes aren't funny, can you guys please pretend a lot So this was this was just a test live stream This is just to make sure everyone connected to so You guys have any questions by all means We are still celebrating today, not sure what we're celebrating yet Feel a little bit like Ron Swanson when he was on that like Interview with the like the anchor fall And then he's just like so put it one has any questions Yeah I Couple links are amazing. I know nowadays a lot a lot of dress shirts Personally, I'm going to be phasing out all my dress shirts and getting dress shirts that require complete because It's just a very classy look You guys can see Mike's Photographer in the family Teresa so the What do you see in the background or some list of any in pre wedding traditions or wedding traditions that will be doing you'll get to see That's why there's good in the background. Otherwise. Yes, we remove them. It's a little bit slightly otherwise I would add great depth Longest people are getting a nice lap I Suppose I can give up my seat I was going to say, like I said earlier, I was going to have them sit as well. Making a very relaxed wedding, but I guess I'm just going to mock where they stand here now instead. They've taken my seat, so I'm going to stand instead. But I'm still here for you guys. I am and I always will be. If we all watch very closely when the actual festivities begin and we see Rebecca walking in with Bob, we'll see Bob sucking his gun a little bit. We'll do that earlier. How are we doing? So, live here, Bob, and then Jenny's going to sit here. So, we're going to go see what's going on. We are combined. One last separation. One last time. Before they become one. So, I don't know. I'm just saying random stuff right now. People on the live stream. My family's loving it. I was going to originally do this all with the cigar in my mouth, but I also figured that I might feel a little lonely and we have to each other to watch my live stream. The camera is working. It's slightly tilted. Do I just do it like this? I'm going to get very close to you guys now. Don't be alarmed. Or be very alarmed. It's like, not this way, but like this way. Don't get to it. Everyone, you guys, maybe seat it. Thank you. All the nerves. All right. What nerves? Good afternoon, everyone. Today is a very important day here to celebrate. Paulias' graduation. Hold on. Wrong speech. Sorry. I actually forgot to get this speech in the morning. Let's try this again. Good afternoon, everyone. As you all know, we're gathered here today to celebrate the union of Paulias and Rebecca as they get ready to embark on this next big adventure of their journey together. So cute. So as many of us know, the original wedding was planned for October of this year. However, due to unprecedented circumstances, the wedding has now been postponed to sometime in 2021. However, Paulias and Rebecca decided, pandemic or not, we want to get married this year.   Make them wait too much longer. Actually, let's make them wait a little bit longer. Let's just go on a circle real quick and have everyone say one thing they love about them as a couple. I'm just kidding. If we do that, then we're probably going to be sitting here all day because the parents are not going to stop at one thing. And we're probably going to have a bunch of comments coming in on the live stream. That's just to show how amazing my two best friends are. And this is the part where you should do it. There you go. I decided to start this journey in 2014. And I was so fortunate to be there from the beginning. And I'm so, so fortunate to have been given this honor to officially for you guys today. So without much further ado, the ring's going. Shall we? Where'd the rings go? I don't see them. I'm just kidding. Hold on. Let me say it the right way. Holis Euravichus. There we go. Thank you. Holis Euravichus. Do you take Rebecca Elizabeth Arons to be your lucky wedded wife? There you go. We didn't have a time. Master's degree. Hey. Rebecca Elizabeth Arons. Do you take Holis Euravichus to be your lucky wedded wife? I do. Not them being the cheesy corny couple that they are.  So I'm going to get you guys started. You guys can repeat after me and then you guys know where to take over from. Smith. Father. Smith. Warrior. Mother. Maiden. Krohn. Stranger. Maiden. Krohn. Stranger. He is mine and I am his from this day until the end of my life. It's clear that you should have read that. You want to do it again? You want to try this again? Yeah. We're going to cut that footage. Let's go on the bloopers. All right. Let's do it one more time. One more time. From the tops. You're going to read all of this. Father. Smith. Mother. Warrior. Mother. Maiden. Krohn. Stranger. Maiden. Krohn. Stranger. I am hers and she is mine from this day until the end of my life. It's almost like I'm getting married with you guys. Which is a problem here. Here you go. Here you go. All right. Well, by the power vested in me by the old gods and the new gods. So the game of thrones reference guys. I now pronounce you husband and wife. Paulius. You may now kiss the bride. May I now present for the very first time. What do you mean not yet? When do you want me to do this? Paulius and Rebecca.  Woo! Damn! Woo! Let's go ahead and get hurt. Take a few seconds. Either one. Either one. It's good. It's good. I don't have to tell you too much. Wait. Don't hurt me. Yeah. You're fine. Everything's okay. Thanks. The people who are on the live stream. Bring it in guys. Bring it in. All right. Happy holidays. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought you guys come a little bit further forward. Thank you for everyone who's joined us. I wish you guys were here in person. But unfortunately due to coronavirus, we can't really get together. So thank you guys for joining online. We do appreciate all the love and support that you have given us up to this point. I'm sure we'll get plenty going forward as well. So thank you for so much for that. We love you a lot. And we hope to see you next year. Yeah. I think you've done that very well. But we love you all and we're going to see you all soon. Thank you. We may have to go a lot further. We'd like to see you in person. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm making one music. That's just me and them. That's actually me. Sure. Paulie, did you provide us with some background information on the traditions that we're doing? Yes, let everybody know. I don't know why I can't find it right away. Well, after that. Yeah, after that. Okay, back to the stage. Yeah, I kind of jumped in a little bit. I just wanted to let everybody know that we have some Lithuanian traditions going on up here. So Paulie is going to have to chop some wood and reflect. We're going to have hair at this point, but swallow. I was going to show what they did. Yes, swallow that. Swallow. Swallow the baby. And then we have some bridge made over out of wood, you know, that Paulie is going to have to carry it back over. And there is something else under the bottle, which is a plate that they're going to have to break it. And how many pieces they have out of that plate. How many broken pieces. That's how many kids that go right through that. So we're going to have to chop that. Okay. Yeah, and then we're going to have some grand screening ceremony and the candle light ceremony later. Thank you so much for joining all of us. We can be more excited. Thank you. Thank you. We have a clear view of Paulie's. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This comes off. Yeah. Okay, give up. Yes. Yes, please do. Wow, looks like Joe's going up here. That's kind of them. Don't see that. Don't see that. That's the idea, right? That's kind of them. You know, right? That's really good. The sun wasn't going to rise. Oh, do it, do it again. That's the whole thing. What am I? What am I? Paulie's. It's not sharpened out. It's not my fault. It's supposed to sharpen it. Haven't you heard of sharpening this off? What were you doing the night before? Not practicing. Not practicing. No, no, no, no, no. You can't do what? No, no, no, no. You can't take care of that. No, no, no, no, no. Pick pictures. Now she's going to show how she can take care of her babies. Okay, now I'm going to swallow Camille's wife, so I hope that's okay. Okay. It was a little easier. Look, it's mom and dad. Don't buy these diapers. You use these diapers. Yeah, you don't have to use this. She's pretending it to be a baby. Yeah, it's supposed to be a baby. Tight, tight, tight. There you go. Guys, now we know how many babies there are. How many babies? I'm not going to break. Does the dog know? One kid. That's all you wanted anyway. Did it change it? No. What do we do? You can stand on it. Here, can we... Do you guys want to scoot a little bit with the side? No worries. Do I have to win? Absolutely. Jonathan, do you want to... Jonathan, do you want to... Can you jump on it? He's like, what? I don't see a problem. How many is it? One, two, go for it. Oh! That's a good one. That's a good one. It's in here. Well, no, it was like... I don't want to not break it again. Okay. Okay, so yeah. All right, mom and dad. Hold on, sorry. Hold on, sorry. Hold on. Okay. Okay, so... Go with mommy. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. Okay, so we wish them the luck and the prosperity to have a bread in the house all the time. Make sure the bread, if you're going to be short on bread, that's why you have a parent support here. The parents are here to support you. Every house has a little bit of salt in it. And it's always like that. So we just want them to have just a little bit of salt in the house.  Have a good, happy life here. And of course, follow everything with the little shot on top of it, on top of that. And you're going to be, you know, you're going to live happy and long life together. Right? Absolutely. Not anywhere from the side. Yeah, maybe from this side. Put the weight in. Put to the soul. And give each other. Not from the side. And we will see what's happening in your house. Yeah. In the house, we will see each other. And we will see each other in the house. And we will see each other. We will see each other. Right? I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry guys. Yeah. That's it, like your life, not easy. Like in the end of the world. Yeah. You'll do well. Yeah. Yeah, which bigger piece? It's fine.  And of course, in your front room. I take shower here. Oh, wow. There you go. Yay! Yes, sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes you have to wait. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Don't pick it up. You're still alive. Yeah, I'm okay. Okay, anything else? Go ahead. Okay. Is that all? No, yes. We'll see. Okay. I'm a little further back now. Yeah.  I knew a good friend. Perfect. We're going to have everyone carry their lives now. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you next year. Yes. There we go. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.


Happy New Year to you. Now if you're anything like me, I've spent the last couple of weeks going through what I Accomplished during the year and didn't accomplish. I'm a very ambitious person and sometime around December 1st I start hating myself anybody else do that and then by the time about a week for Christmas I start hating everybody around me and then the new year ends and then I have to get my composure And I always say I've made too many goals, and I'm too ambitious, and I've got to focus more and and then I start making my plans for the year and Hopefully you're thinking about what you want to accomplish for the year now. I want to start out with a very simple question What if you got everything you wanted the day you graduated from high school Just think about that for a minute. Oh come on the pretty girl the handsome boy the hot car The job, you know being the disco guy at your favorite, you know the disc jacket your favorite club all that stuff Would your life be meaningful? Oh, you might be happy for a while. I'll give you that Would you would you actually be growing? Now what's interesting is that our lives are works in progress I like that Bernard Malmood famous novel the natural which of course there's the famous Robert Redford film where Roy Hobbs the great hitter is laying in the hospital bed and iris gains his childhood sweet art comes in and she says you know Roy I think we have two lives the life we learn with and the life we live with well I would add to that. I think we have multiple lives We are versions of ourselves we're version one version two version three version four and part of that Has to do with what pulls us forward now I use the term Creativize as a as a nilagism as a nilagism. It's a made-up term and it means Adding creativity to the ordinary things that we do in life, right adding creativity to the ordinary things That's what we do every year. That's what we do with our New Year's resolutions And and and creative ising is is the activity of actually the process of doing this and Creativizers are people who do this on a regular basis So every year we kind of go through this cycle where we're actually sort of intentional about this But there's there's more to Being an innovator than just having a creative mindset And I think one of the things that people get wrong is what it really what's really required to do this So I'm going to start out by saying I think there are eight underlying rules that all of us have to admit to They're almost existential at the beginning of the year when we make our New Year's resolutions Because if we don't engage these rules our resolutions never come true So these are sort of guidelines and I'd like to start out with one of my favorite quotes from Emerson Man is a piece of the universe made alive now when I grew up I grew up in the in the great state of Michigan that surrounded by 90 percent of all the fresh water in the United States We have more shoreline than the entire East Coast put together So if you live in Michigan everybody lives on water granted it's frozen a third of the year But we all live on water so my grandfather was a Hungarian immigrant and we would go fishing with him all the time And one of the amazing things is when he take us out He would show us how nature was alive the fish were alive and the could the clouds were alive and the trees were alive And everything around us was alive and what he was trying to show us is that we are not the center of the Universe that everything around us that's moving is pursuing power progeny or pleasure The world is growing and the object is can we grow with the world? So the first sort of rule or the first guideline is very simple. We are beings in the world Trying to transcend it the great philosopher Martin Heidegger Coined the term beings in the world and he said you know the problem with philosophy is we we think we're gods looking down On the world, but we're actually encased in all kinds of challenges in the world And we're we are having to respond and draw on this world Now in a in a in a wonderful in a wonderful book by day I'd say our day show down the great the great Jesuit philosopher of the last century His big thing was that we are all in an act of becoming But one of the challenges that that we all have about trying to trying to transcend the world is that even though We we have this great capacity as human beings The only way in which we can actually transcend the world is by the process of Creativity it is the reason that we create now don't say that man is the only animal that create that's simply not true chimpanzees create dolphins create Caldean crows create, but man is the only animal that knows and knows he knows Putting another way ladies and gentlemen. No one gets out of here alive that is the existential condition and that is the reason that we create and what makes us unusual is we're able to share this with Other human beings if in fact a great alabaman of Harvard professor if you know EO Wilson's work talks about what? distinguishes human beings from everyone else in the world is our ability and our capacity to translate Imagination into language and to share that this is how we build cities. This is how we build airplanes. This is how we build civilizations rule number two Everything is both part of a greater system and a whole thing unto itself Emanuel Kant's great great work right the the critique of pure reason now What Kant was saying is that all of us have this fundamental belief that somehow We're we're unique or individual now. I had this happen to me a few years back I was at Torrey Pines in San Diego and there's a very famous statue there called the self-made man That it's a person kind of carving himself out of rocks I think Michelangelo, you know pulling himself as an orthogonal twist out of a piece of marble And what was interesting to me is when I first saw it I fell into the same trap. We all fall into I Said to myself. I'm a self-made man I grew up in a hud house. I have a million brothers and sisters. I came to college as a wrestler Nobody thought I was gonna do anything I work I worked all the time and I became someone and I go to you ever have that moment where you're like I did it and then you start thinking through carefully and what do you start thinking about The the teacher who saw something in you the coach who wrote a letter for you The guy who didn't need to give you a teamster job But gave you a teamster job the person who took you into the doctoral program We didn't need to take into the doctoral program and what do you figure out immediately? No one in here is self-made. I don't care where you came from. You were not made Individually now every year around this time I fall into this trap and I'm guessing you do too I read a self-help book over Christmas. I love self-help books. I'm addicted to them Even though most of them are terrible And I start out this is sanny claws I love say he's my hero sanny claws and I start out by saying you know what I'm doing next year I've worked really hard and I just turned 60 years old and I'm gonna I've made a little money I've done okay I'm gonna quit it all and I'm gonna move up north and I'm gonna write a crappy fantasy book. That's what I'm doing I've had enough of the bureaucracy. How many are with me? I've had enough of the bureaucracy had enough I've had enough. I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking it anymore Yeah, you read the book too, right? I'm reading a book. I'm self authorizing all the things I'm supposed to be except there's a problem and that is my nesting doll fits inside Guess what another nesting doll a bigger sanny claws Who's in this sanny claws? Well, my wife sanny is in this sanny claws What does she think about me taking the year off if she likes it? I probably have a big problem at home right My dean at my school my business partners the people at NPR in charge of my Radio program they probably are not thrilled with me moving up north and writing a crappy fantasy novel Now on top of that is what there's another sanny claws and this sanny claws is called reality There's a financial crisis Yeah, you think about it.  Don't kid yourself, right? There's a pandemic Somebody decides to attack the war is what you guys are all about Yeah, that's sanny claws is bigger than the communal sanny claws. Now. Here's the point Innovation and creativity is not created through freedom It's created through constraints It's the workaround. It's what do we do, right? It's the person's There's a tale of bureaucracy. It's so bad. Nobody can get anything done until you see what somebody get it done Then what do you do cheater cheater pumpkin eater? No It's a person who's figured out how to be creative in a functionally restrictive environment So the second rule you're not self-created. You're not alone We are both creating and created Anything that you've become in life has been a group project and consider yourself lucky Somebody cared about you enough or something happened to you that turned out pretty well Now this is my favorite quote of all time and it's wonderful. We have a Cambridge professor here This was a Cambridge philosopher a famous one in Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves But wiser people so full of doubts. Oh my word How you create is What you create One of my one of my favorite stories is I did something radical when I was a very young man I was 25 years old. I had a PhD. I was a presidential scholar So certainly I was going to go to an Ivy League school or do that. You know what I did I went to work for a man with a 20 million dollar pizza company Five years and five billion dollars later was Domino's Pizza. I Could hear the people at PepsiCo and Pizza Hut think they were dull drab and awful And it was a lot of fun building it You know why it was fun because everything that everybody else did was predictable and what we did was different Let me give you the big thing you couldn't buy a Domino's Pizza franchise on if you know this back in the day When it was the fastest growing corporation in America the 1980s You had to go work for somebody who actually had a Domino's franchise and knew what they were doing You had to be a Prentice you had to learn to be a creative person just like the old guilds of Europe You had to learn to be a goldsmith Right and we gave you your first store and no one knew what hit them And what was even more interesting is people didn't know whether that was a real progressive thing or a real conservative thing to do as If that ever even mattered Another example of this when I was at Domino's I was brought into a group called AIS Plight and Graded Systems Those of you who are youngsters there was a day before the Internet and I happened to be an advisor to Apple when Steve Jobs is being pushed out the first time and Apple had problem Apple couldn't create enough software to compete with Microsoft and IBM So what did we do? We created an internal system called Apple net which became something called connect which became something called iTunes and what it was was a way to connect seekers and solvers It was a way to engage a larger federation a group of people in order to create software in order to compete with other corporations The notion was even though these other businesses were in different businesses. They didn't create the same way The notion is are you willing to change the playbook and in order to do that? You have to change the way you think about things Even if you were to be your best self if you were to try to use the bureaucracy to create radical innovation What you would create is quality and efficiency at scale and you would inadvertently destroy your forward position And I'll talk about this later. So how you do something is what you do and here it is New Year's a great example Oh, I'm gonna lose weight. How are you gonna do it? I'm doing the secret diet. Oh, how's that gonna work? I'm eating I'm eating kale for three days three meals a day. First of all one meal is enough, right? It tastes like an ash tray. It's terrible stuff, right? You know in order to in order to lose weight you got to do what you got to build it into your lifestyle You got to go to the gym.  How you create is what you create Lesson four If you do not change direction, you may end up where you're heading Now it's interesting to me That people think they're going to be creative without ever practicing. You ever notice that now I can tell in this room Everybody if you took out a piece of paper and drew a picture of your spouse I could tell you at what age you stopped learning to draw Speak a foreign language play an instrument. It doesn't matter whether you're eight or 80 you're going to go through the failure cycle you ever wonder why venture capitalists give a lot of a round Money to a lot of different people, right? What I'm doing is I'm giving you all $10,000 for the same disease state. Why am I why am I doing that? It seems wasteful, doesn't it?   Can I move the runners along and where am I getting momentum? So where in your yearly plan? Are you going to fail? Where is that in your plan or is your plan effortless superiority? That's my favorite effortless Effortless superior. It's all going to work The other one that really bothers me and I see this sometimes in the military feigning humility feigning and acting the part being a poser The issue is if you really have humility you don't believe everything works You believe some things go kaboom Hope I didn't hurt anybody right Number five every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world You know one of the things that I find particularly bothersome these days is what's happened with social media There is a term for this called confirmation bias Have you ever noticed that all the people on your social media page?  You ever noticed they're the stupidest people on your page? You know why there's a term for it called the Dunning-Kruger effect means they're not very self-aware And what happened to social media which called micro segmenting so this is a this is a marketing trick You're playing right into it.  Doesn't listen to the same alt band doesn't go to the same church doesn't have the same political views. What do you do? You unfriend them The Spanish inquisition couldn't have thought of that on a dark night on a dark road people disappear I've spent my life Studying what are called creativity clusters groups why why groups have creativity? I live in this little town called Ann Arbor, Michigan 116,000 people has 2.8 billion dollars in venture capital where you have the most venture capital per person any city on the planet right now Why is Ann Arbor any different than any other city up north and it's very simple you walk through the town and what do you see? You see all the you see all the different races You see all the different occupations you hear all the different languages and the same is true for the 30 other places on the planet That produce almost all the intellectual property What is it about diversity? That produces innovation It's simple when people don't come from the same place. They don't think the same way.  I'm not talking about compromise I'm talking about a third way. I'm talking about he gave a lot logic. I'm talking about dowers philosophy I'm talking about when two things that don't agree are meeting in a way. That's respectful You create a third way a better way a new way In my opinion the american way. That's what we're about. That's our unique strength Right, this is the great experiment everyone is from someplace. It's not just a moral issue. It's an economic issue Six My favorite philosopher john dewey. I built the innovatrium the original innovation institute across the street from the original dewey school That's right. You guys from chicago the original dewey schools in an arbor. Thank you very much. Look it up Now the self is not something ready made but something in continuous formation Through choice of action It's it's an act of volition. You don't just wake up one day. You have to decide you're going to create yourself That's what new year is about. That's what building this is about. But here's the thing Everything costs something Whoever tells you different is trying to sell you something or sleep with you one or the other Now you're okay with that. I got all right now I'm coming back from miami the other day and this lady sitting next to me says well, you know, she wants to chat Okay, i'm going to chat. I'm a nice guy She says what do you do and I you know, I write a lot of books and do a lot of things.   Tell me a little bit about Have you got an agent? Oh, no, I haven't got an agent yet. Oh, do you need a recommendation or something? No, no, not yet I said, oh, uh, do you have you have you targeted the publisher? No, no So, well, are is your manuscript ready? She said no, I don't really have a manuscript yet I said, oh, um What have you got? She said I've got an outline I said, oh good. How long you've been working on the book? She's about 15 years Okay, now Just a just a fact check for a minute here. Is this woman ever going to write a book? No You know it and I know it and I asked her what's stopping you from writing the book You know, I um, I do Pilates And I volunteer at the Humane Society. She's a really nice woman I'm a lawyer, you know, sometimes I have to work late And what what am I thinking as a writer? You think what if you want to write a book? How do you write a book?   This is terrible. I'm going to do it again tomorrow It's a socially acceptable pathology But here's the question for you you want innovation What are you willing to give up? If you give up nothing you're still flying the old spacecraft. You're still doing it the old way What's the likelihood you're ever going to write a book? Never When do you have to start doing it? Now do you try and do it all in one fell swoop? That's what people do with the new year. I'm going to go on a diet It's all going to work. I'm gonna do this really stringent thing About 30 days in what do we notice? Y'all fall down doesn't work Why you overplayed your hand? That's the guy you go golfing with who always thinks he's going to make it on the green with one shot Good luck with that Even tiger woods doesn't do it right anymore, right? So the notion is it takes Oh, it's a little it's hard to do. What do you want to give up? The next one the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free That your very existence becomes an act of rebellion All right, are you willing to free yourself? I had a very instant conversation. I've been married for a quarter of a century But my wife made a comment one time sort of in in passing. She's from Indonesia And she said what what really strikes me about america Is that it's the freest country in the world and you know, this is how people see us It's the freest most opportune company in the country in the world And yet most people do the exact same thing You ever notice that your your slaves to the dominant logic of this culture You all do the same thing you fill your head with the same stuff Interestingly enough, I love the old western movies that I think put this in a nice perspective You remember the old john wane movies where gabby haze or walter who used to would ramble into camp the cavalry ain't coming the cavalry ain't coming What does it mean? It means only a few things run forest run Or i'm going to fight the man. That's my favorite millennials.  You by don't know who the man is I thought someday I'd get all my chevrons and I'd be the man and even i'm not the man There's another nesting doll on top of me.  That's what goes on Yeah The cavalry ain't coming You want innovation in the air force? You want to recreate yourself? No one's going to save you I'm sorry They're not No, it's just like some if I oh if I here's the 10 secrets to attracting the no no first no No one's ever going to save you no marriage is going to make your life perfect No job is going to make it all work for you. No That's an existential moment. You have to figure this out yourself. You're free and responsible I'm sorry. I didn't make up the world. I just live here like you I'm a being in the world Henry Bergson the guy who kind of created psychology elon vitale this guy To exist is to change to change is to mature To mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. I got a story. I want to tell you I was in heartsfield in Atlanta the other day And there's a guy screaming at the monitor Right, you're been in heartsfield. It's crazy airport. So I had to go up to the guy. I'm like what I'm thinking something happened You know, we're are we being invaded and he said no my representative He's a flip-flopper I said what what happened my representative where I'm from my my congressperson was on a committee And it was all about controlling this thing and and and he read this report and he changed his mind He's a flip-flopper and I said I'm not understanding. It's what happened He he he was really an advocate for this one position and then he read this report and he changed his mind And I looked at him. I said, isn't that what intelligent people do? I thought he was going to hit me They're going to have a fight in the Atlanta airport. I'm not going to get home tonight The guy's dominant logic Was so strong That he was unwilling To adjust any of his positions Because of what he believed And that's what most of us do most of us start by judging somebody We don't start By by saying we're going to have to grow to the next position. We don't start that way Well, that leaves us kind of with our with our final piece here We aspire to wholeness But we never achieve it. You will never become whole The the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung calls this individuation He says only at death do we ever become whole Right and if you're if you're a believer in a faith This is the whole point of your soul sort of the the transcendence of soul But you know, I want to give you an example of this. One of my favorite heroes is Benjamin Franklin I did anybody else love Ben Franklin? I love Benjamin Franklin Because he's a problem. Can you imagine living next to this guy? He's a runaway when he's an apprentice He then apprentices himself to Of the printing business, but he does it in a way that he lies about who he is He masquerades as as a woman and he sort of he he does this whole thing with letters And he gets this huge sort of syndicated commas filing then he becomes the printer himself Then he goes on and and he creates the first public library He creates a syndication system all throughout the east and east coast at the time He then moves on to create one of the first great universities. He then goes on to become a scientist You know to get the golf streams Electricity then event stuff the franklin stove, you know the the lightning rod Then he becomes a then he becomes sort of the great man. He becomes a diplomat. He becomes a patriot Benjamin Franklin is constantly pulling himself forward because why? Because he feels his life is incomplete It is incompleteness that pulls him forward not completeness. It's not wholeness Wholeness is not the the game the game is getting to wholeness. In fact, Benjamin Franklin was a terrible husband and a worse father But it was his incompleteness that pulls us forward. So remember as you're making your new year's goals Remember to to leave room for the stuff you don't know now Leave room for the stuff that when you when you look back at today you think of it just like when you graduated from high school All the stuff I want now is probably what i'm not going to want in the future. So putting it all together We're beings in the world trying to transcend it We're created and creating How we create is what we create We can't avoid failure. We can only accelerate it We grow through constructive conflict everything costs something the cavalry ain't coming and we aspire to wholeness But we never achieve it. This is the beginning of your mindset to your new year's resolution Putting your resolution into something that's actually Something that you can create something that we come back in a year. You could say I've actually achieved this Now I want to talk about the creative easing mindset How you need to think about this Now many of you Have are familiar with this model. I'm the third researcher on this model The competing values framework or the innovation code or the innovation genome whatever we're calling it the michigan model And the notion is that there are these four different types Now most of you know if because I've been here before that most of my work is on strategy It's on predicting the outcomes that organizations produce particularly in the stock market So most of it has a very quantitative aspect to it But what's very different about this than almost any other model Is it's not really about you It's about the situation in which you find yourself the big nesting doll It's about the community in which you're surrounded with the middle nesting doll And it's about you and how those three things interact with each other And when we are aligned which I think is one of the big things we think about around here What actually works for us and when we're misaligned what actually works against us But I want to point something out. That's very important Most organizations have two functions just like people one is to maintain and one is to grow To maintain is the reduction of variation to grow is the increasing of variation Innovation and creativity are a form of deviance Deviance is created by what kind of people Deviance, thank you deviance. Do you feel like deviance? Yeah, the only way you're going to change anything this year Is if you're willing to deviate So this model is based on the notion of diversity But it's also based on the notion that we're not trying to align We're trying to use conflict constructively. So i'm going to play my cards on the table I just published an article for the duke dialogue duke university And one of the things I publish is I really don't believe in amadextrous leaders. I don't oh, I can do it Oh, I'm a triple threat I've you know, I knew the steve jobs of the world. I've been over half the fortune 500 companies I know these people personally I can count on one hand how many amadextrous people i've ever met their unicorns They're almost mythological creatures Most people who get ahead in the world do it as a village They do it with other people. They do it with the very people that drive you insane How about that for a new year's start where are you going to go out and find the person who makes you insane And make them your partner. Yeah, it's not abstract now. Is it so let me take you through this These are the four positions the artist which we all have an artist archetype in us Sometimes it's stronger or weaker. It's like being right-handed or left-handed Right, so these are things that we have in different degrees the engineer who does things right the artist Who does things new the athlete who has to win does things now Right in the sage who does things that are going to last kumbaya sages kumbaya And how do these things go together so the care and feeding of the artist So as you think about your your new year's resolution I want you to think about the care and feeding of your inner artist the inner artist likes what they like to be new The inner artist thinks perfection is death The artist wants to be new the artist likes to build things. That's me I love to build things once they're built. Do I like to run them? No I don't like to run them. I get bored. Right. I have to tinker too much So the artist is great because they love ambiguity. They love taking risks. They're the artists are crazy You ever notice that that at cern the large hadron collider anybody remember this story five years ago cern switzerland the large hadron collider There are seven Nobel prize winners two of them believe when you fire it up They're getting this is the god particle the bows right the bows hicks the moment of truth the great that great oxford philosopher 1966 Right the the moment of truth To to no bell laureates no bell. They don't get any higher than that Believe what's going to happen.  There's a switch because the greens will have to touch the switch Lie, there's no switch because the greens will always drive the harley into the pool They're greens They're always testing boundaries. They're always finding new ways. They're wiggly What greens want is greens want freedom? Now I have a I have a I have a I have a secret for you The air force is filled with greens There are many in this room and you're hiding in plain sight Look at yeah, I see you. I it's like romper room miss and I see every day. I want you You're here. I know you're here, but you're wiggly You're wiggly and wily and weasley and you figured out how to be in this system without being caught You're sort of living at the edge here. Yeah, I see you Now the opposite the engineer You can hear the engineers when they came in. Did you notice the engineers were here right on time singing hi ho Hi, ho, it's off to work.   These are these are engineers. They love large-scale projects You ever hear engineer talk about big projects? They love say like yeah, you know what? We've got 144 step method here. We're using at the Air Force And and it has 33 different processes. You'll have to be checked out on they love acronyms That's a cpi 43-9 And everybody's got to be checked out on something because if you're not it's like drunk driving Are you checking out on that soldier? No, I'm like, well, you got to get checked out on that They know the rules about everything and that's a complicated system It's like mcdonald's, you know where the illiterate kid presses a cheeseburger button And simultaneously somebody shoots a cow in argentina bang and everything between happens Smithers come here. These are you guys They know all the rules So they're technical expertise. They love engineering. They loved it. Boy, that was our talk this morning Did you notice the half the talk was really fascinating that it turned into the techno geek talk and the other half you were all tuned in Oh, look at the tail feathers on that one. Yeah, I got it They want more responsibility. They're trying to achieve rank Now I hope you can see that the first tension is what there's a tension between your artist and the tension between your engineer Now most of you are going to try and avoid this tension and compartmentalize your life I'm suggesting the exact opposite I'm suggesting your inner artist needs to meet your inner engineer Because if the inner artist goes unchecked, nothing is buildable If the inner engineer goes unchecked, nothing's interesting Everybody follow this put them together. You might have a shot at something Now I told you I'm a I'm an avowed.  I'm jeff I've been an artist and I've been sober for you know, that sort of thing Grace of god write that thing All my right hand people have always been reds Why because I know that's my blind spot.  Do you see the difference here? I don't like to I'd love to tell you I do. I'm not that big of a person. I wish I were But I'm not But I know that I need to do that Some of my life I get to be a green I built these innovation labs and some of my life, you know, I'm a professor at a top school I'm on all these journals I have to figure out if you did the right method and is this sound science and we wear funny hats You know in funny ties.  We have to act appropriate to our situation, but it doesn't mean we have to be aligned There's also our inner athlete. I'm married to an athlete boy. Boy am I married to an athlete? I always tell people I know who wears the bossy pants of my family They challenge everything everything is a scrap If you say the sky is blue boy, it's not blue all the time Is it and they want to argue over everything and arguing is fun What is it shakespeare says is unfortunate quote dogs are made for the gripping Yeah, what shakespeare mean by that? He means dogs are meant to compete. I love dogs So I hope they're not meant for the gripping But here's the point Blues are all about pursuing key goals and overcoming barriers and winning and the air force is filled with blues Think about all you have to do is look at the language.  These are not nice people Is it gangsters? Right We're gonna go rip them apart. Yeah, I got it I got it This is this is boomer culture I'm a baby boomer. Sorry junior people We went to the moon. We licked the commies. We built the net What did you do uber Get some ambition We also move a lot marry a lot hurt each other a lot. There's a lot of downside to it But traditional american culture has Has tilted up to this point towards blue and that's part of the challenge. We're having isn't it Part of the challenge is you know hit first ask questions later now This is our these are these are millennials There are also some people who are boomers, but this is the sage. This is about community building This is about doing the long-term thing saving the environment You know treating animals humanely Did this chicken have a name? Was he treated well? Yes His name was sebastian the chicken and he was handheld until he was 10 and then he was killed in a humane way And we're going to eat him today With kale, okay So it's all about developing people and curating your social self and snap chatting each other and giving Giving money to people who are in other places to help them pull themselves out socially And you know, let's get rid of straws in seattle because we're killing the sea turtles I didn't even know there were sea turtles in seattle who knew they probably aren't but we got to get rid of the straws Anyway, this is this group of people now. We make fun of them But don't because some people my age are are yellows and they're incredibly important because they connect dots And that's what the air force needs to do You need to reach out and connect dots and build community and that's what you need to do as a person You need to be inclusive and and connect dots But what's interesting to me is if you think about this for a minute and what the air force is trying to do To expand out to create a more inclusive air force. This is what the future looks like to me The future looks like a few things out if you know this but in the past 15 years We went from 10,000 publicly traded corporations to under four So corporations are no longer the way people are competing. They're competing in federations These are sages Three things about about sages about young people Do you know that over half of all births to women on the age of 30 are outside of marriage? Marriage is no longer normative. I've been married forever. I'm a boomer, right? But young people aren't married and the more educated the woman the less likely she is to be married This is a fact number two when we ask young people what they want to do for a living. Do they want to go to the the air force? They want to work for general motors. What do they want to do? Oh, I want to work for myself and my friends and I want to have meaning and impact And I want to spend six weeks off and hiking in Tanzania and curing river blindness. These are young people These are all good things boomers. You don't kid yourself. You wish you could go hiking in Tanzania too mea culpa mea culpa Finally, what's the fastest growing religion to people on the age of 30? It's no religion plus 19 percent. So for the first time in american history We're seeing a culture that's opted out Of marriage capitalism and religion Now you can be mad about this and you can judge yourself. I'm a capitalist pig I've been married forever, right and i'm a practicing roman kaplik Right an old jesuit So you can be against us all you want, but this is what's coming and what's happening is for the first time We're seeing a generation that's opted out of institutions the very institutions that freed my generation This generation is opted out rather than vilifying young people and young people you rock Right i'm making fun of you, but you rock you represent the future You should look at what they can add to this to this discussion add to this world They're the future now most of time when you look at the political ethos right now or the health care debate It's these two groups against each other. What should we make money at health care? Should we cover everybody? But the real issue is what both of those positions are what they're ridiculous They're ideological. They're dominant logic. The real answer is what? Engaging Right engaging these two cultures are different, but we can engage these two cultures and you can do this yourself at the beginning of your life So how do we do this? First of all, let's go back to our nesting dolls start by looking up In what situations do you typically fail and what situations do you succeed? And don't go. Oh, it's outrageous fortune and fall on your sword Where is it that you're good and stop this baloney? We're all going to be renaissance people Your right-handed or left-handed your life experience is telling you that stop trying to be good at things. You're not good at Try and be great at things. You're good at there's a difference I only do three or four things. My job is to do them really well That's it. Then I have other people do the other things. It's a good philosophy in life So look up. Where do you fail and succeed? So when you make your new year plan plan to be in more places, where where you succeed And plan to avoid what where you fail And you know you read the books. Well, if you just think it, it'll happen. Yeah, that'll work Right Magical thinking that's real helpful Look around Who are the people that are around you when you fail? If you got teenagers, you know how important it is to tell your kids What? Who are your friends become your friends become your successes and failures And the biggest thing with young people is what lose the terrible friends Keep the good ones Surround yourself with the best people you can be with Who are the best people in your life and remember some of the greatest innovators are invisible Somebody who gave you who let you took a charge against earnings who gave you a couple days off Maybe somebody looked really like they were anti innovation, but they actually were a friend Right. Don't judge a book by its cover. That's why we have that saying next Look inside What is it that you really want? That's the problem. Isn't it every year the problem with your yearly resolution? I guarantee if you ask yourself this in the quiet of the night Your big problem every year is what do you really want?  Students come to me all the time and say I want to tell you what I want to do And you know what I always tell them? I don't care what you want to do.  What's the evidence of that? What's the evidence that that's wrong? And then finally Be willing to take a higher point of view and look down at yourself objectively honestly Those are hard moments. They're dark nights of the soul Right, we have this notion that we're better than we really are And at the end of the year in addition to making new goals Let's reflect for a minute on what we really fell short on And what we will continue to fall short on as long as we keep deluding ourselves What is it that we really are? And then own it This is it. This is who I got. What is the number one year for divorce in marriage? Anybody know by far the number one year of people are divorced anybody know overwhelming It's year one What do you figure out in year one? He's not going to change. Yeah, he's not going to change You're not going to change The notion is if you're planning that you're going to have this huge apotheosis and you're going to be sainted for it Good luck How do you build on what you got? So what i'm going to ask you to do is take these four points of view I'm going to ask yourself to think about what doesn't work You don't wake up at two in the morning going oh, i'm so successful.   You're all amazing But your dominant logic is so strong. You're not seeing what you're amazing at Once you've done that I want you to think of your life in the new year as a portfolio You have a portfolio life in a portfolio. What do you do? You buy and you sell The biggest problem that people have when they make goals Is they buy without selling How many of you feel over capacity don't raise your hands. I know you're in the air force But I bet you feel overstretched. I bet you thought over the break.   You want to write a novel? You want to build a business? You want to build a new device? You want to do something remarkable? Whatever it is Start cleaning out the closet because you don't have time unless you do that And stop filling up your time with apps. That's the opium of task pursuit Oh, look at I haven't opening at 7 30 it'll always be filled Once you've sold positions or or reduce positions only then add What is it that I'm going to add that I'm going to start doing So instead of saying I'm going to go to the gym for two hours every day Say three times a week. I'm going to get to the gym for 30 minutes I'm going to add that So three times a week. I wanted to learn how to paint. I'm going to paint. I used to be a great guitar player I'm going to start playing the guitar again I'm going to start adding creativity back into my life The more the air force sucks it out the more you're going to have to work hard to put it back in And what's going to happen over time is you're going to find how what you've got in your life that's creative actually fits You're going to find a place for it at work And that's going to be amazing But you're going to have to rebalance your portfolio life and you start by you're going to start this by stopping Now here's a radical thought for the air force. It's radical What if the whole key to innovation at the air force is not starting anything? What if it's stopping things? Let that sink in for a minute What if the key to innovation here is not starting anything? It's simply stopping things Creating capacity to do what you already you already have That's true for you. That's true for your own life and only then start and it doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the Bathwater doesn't mean you get rid of all the things that work. There are things you want to hold on to And i'm a terrible hypocrite I love innovation, but there are some things I do that are really ridiculously conventional I sit in the same seat. I have to pay a ton of money to sit way far away at the university of michigan football stadium Right the largest stadium in north america second large stadium in the world, right? I drive an old old Mercedes It's really old. I won't check right so the innovation guy doesn't like a lot of things somehow in my life I have to create stability Because if all you're doing is innovation stuff all the time you have no moorings So Things you can do as an artist Things you can do as an artist you can pilot things you can you can modify your room start a revolution Things you could do as a as an engineer You know you can you could start setting milestones you can you can put a budget together You could read the fine prints things you could do as an athlete Go the extra mile overcome boundaries tough it out Right show that you've got some reserve Finally things you could do as a sage Mentor somebody coach somebody You know resolve a conflict somehow empower someone But remember none of this matters unless you have an innovator's mindset I want to leave you with a few things.   What did I say? What am I thinking? What's going on in jeff's head here, right? Author a manifesto.  I don't know something something strong Build something, you know Even if it's out of beer cans. I don't care. I know we're in alabama. Whatever whatever works Draw a map How do you get from here to there jr. Tolkien right the beginning of the lord of the rings paint a picture, right? Do something very artistic Create create a soundtrack. It's one of my favorites. Anybody else screwed into the ears like I am I have a new mix I make every year, you know some years. It's ride of the valkyries You know other years, you know other years. It's put on a happy face. Whatever it is That's your soundtrack. That's your mojo But most importantly I want you to leave room for the stuff you don't know now Just like the day you graduated from high school Now on the website here. I've done something for you. I've written a chap book about 120 page book It's a pdf and if you go to this website and you go to book. It's called the in live and self I wrote it for you guys. It's free. You can download it as many times as you want I'll make these slides available as a pdf to you, right if you're interested in this So the notion is i'm going to give you some clues how you can make your new year's resolutions Actually stick and help creative eyes your life Thanks for having me. I'm going to take a few questions. Thank you We got six minutes before they before they pull me questions comments push back who wants to fight come on You're going to have a shot at the old professor here All right Stand up and I think there are microphones. So stand up get a mic Oh, she doesn't she just wanted to stretch her arm. Okay I just wanted to embarrass you.  She was right in front.  Oh, good afternoon, sir. My name is kina echo from boolean green state university, ohio the first name again Um, kina echo amanda. Amanda. Nice to meet you. Amanda. Um, nice to meet you too, sir I think it was a very inspirational speech And it it talks to the to the idea of you know, not thinking alike And I was wondering what you think is important about having a group of people That don't think alike. Why is that a benefit and Why should we encourage that in the military? Yes, we were taught to be so similar the the reason is simple Dominant logic or conventional thinking amanda Happens when you surround yourself with people are like you Right, that's where the dominant logic and the dunning kruger effect kicks in Where where because you don't see the loyal opposition in any meaningful way You don't have to make provision for it The second worst thing you can do is to compromise across groups and I like to talk this morning It was a great example of not doing that what you really want to do is to engage in conflict. That's respectful. This is very key It's respectful conflict. You you don't say derogatory things now. Don't get me wrong. It's human behavior You're going to have a few there's going to be some fur flying every now and then But the notion is what you're trying to do is get to a shared vision That's the key so start by surrounding yourself with a diverse group of people Next engage because there's diverse groups of people where you're at but you're not engaging them You're not saying well, why do you think that? You know, I don't agree with that and then third create that shared vision Because once you've got the shared vision then you can take all these different points of view And you can harness them in a better way and that's what these creativity clusters do and that's why that's key Now this is important. Is there a time in the military not to be creative? Yes There's a lot of times in the military not to be creative. That's called situational awareness A lot of times in the military you should salute and do exactly as your commanding officer tells you to do But there's also times in the military Where somebody needs a creative solution where the conventional solution isn't working So I want you to think Amanda about your life like a bell curve Can we do that for a minute? Are you imagining a bell curve? I want you to think about when you really change or need to change. Is it in the middle when everything's okay? When do you really change when your life's in a crisis? Right when you got an f at bowling green or your boyfriend broke up with you or something horrible happened to a friend And the reason you change then is the risk of trying something radical And the reward of staying where you're at is reversed Is this making sense? The other time you change is when you got an a plus and you got a scholarship from the air force And somebody gave you a promotion and told you you were the best person ever That's what we call risk capital and you change when things are outstanding because the risk of trying something radical And the reward of staying where you're at amanda is reversed So here's the thing to think about in your life innovation and creativity doesn't work from the inside out It works from the outside in so there's a lot of this is making sense to you So the the big thing is situational awareness that I answer your question Yes, sir. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks, Amanda someone else Questions comments pushback I think that's it.