Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30pm Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the general disclosure. All Bookmap limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific, investment advice, nor recommendations. Risk disclosure. Trading futures, equities, and options involve substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Pass performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. On my apologies again today, more technical issues. My computer decided to restart again while I was out at lunch. So I came back about 1.15pm, 1.20pm and my computer had restarted so I lost everything so I had to get Bookmap set up again and everything else. So again, my apologies. You can guess what I'm going to be doing this weekend is troubleshooting this computer. I'm not sure what the problem is. Anyway again, my apologies. I'm starting about 10 minutes late so I will go. So I've got about 1.40pm now and I'll go to about 2.40pm. So again, my apologies. Let's get started. My contact information. Here it is. The best way to get in touch with me is on Discord. My name is Doug P. Also on Bookmap Discord. Here's the Options-Doug Chat channel. That's a great place to post questions, comments and content related to the topics of this presentation in my channel and the Options-Doug Chat channel that I'll go over in just a moment. So Bookmap Discord is free and open to everyone and you're all welcome there. I'm also on Twitter, actually formerly known as Twitter X now at Doug Pless is my name. The focus of my presentation and the focus of the Options-Doug Chat channel is Options Order Flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two-step process for trading and the first is planning and I use positional analysis. I look at how traders and market makers are positioned at the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day as well as the directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution and I look at real-time order flow on Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow on SpotGamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And when I talk about setups today, I will be talking about setups in an underlying asset and setups can be taken any number of ways with futures, shares of stock or options for example a setup in the ES500 can be taken with ES futures, spy shares, spy options, SPX options or even ES options. Questions and comments are welcome and I will be watching both the Options-Doug Chat channel and Discord as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. And again, thank you for your understanding everyone, Gray, Joel, Don, thank you very much. All right, my agenda for today, what I want to cover is first of all news items, economic data and events for today, then I'll go through my positional analysis, then I'll review some setups from this morning and then I'll talk about the live market. And when I get to the live market, if anyone has any stocks they want me to take a look at, please let me know and I'll be glad to do that. All right, let's get started with economic data and events for today. So first of all, the big event, economic data event was the core PCE data that came out there and a number of different versions of PCE, but it looked like to me it was all pretty much in line to maybe slightly lower than expected. So there's the PCE data and then of course today is the end of the quarter, end of the month and kind of a minor options expiration. This chart is showing delta notional on the vertical axis with expiration date on the horizontal axis and this is for a combined SPX by NDX QQQ and Russell 2000. So what this is showing is there's the expiration today slightly put dominated, that's shown by the larger blue bar where there is more put or negative delta expiring than positive and that can potentially help fuel a rally, so potential for a slightly negative or put fueled rally as these puts expire and actually there was one other new item today, consumer sentiment came out at 10 AM Eastern time and that was greater than expected, also greater than the previous number. All right, so that is the PCE data, consumer sentiment and the slightly put dominated expiration today. All right, let's get started with positional analysis now, I'm going to start with ESP500, so this is the ES futures in book map and note that because of my restart, I did lose my, excuse me, lose my MBO data, that's the stops and icebergs, so that will limit my ability to analyze the market a bit. All right, so this is the ESP500, before I take a closer look at this chart, I'm going to take a look at a larger time frame, I'm going to go to the SPX, this is a 30-day one-hour chart for SPX, here's the September 15th, very large expiration call dominated and the downtrend began then as calls expired and market makers could sell their hedges and it appeared that that rally may have, that downtrend may have stopped on Wednesday but now price is moving lower again, so maybe that was just a pullback, we'll have to wait and see on that. All right, let's take a look at some levels on this chart, so first of all, the dashed purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move and that is based on the options market, that should be available in any trading platform that has an options chain and that is updated once a week and that's for the week. Then the dashed blue lines are showing the lower and upper daily expected move, again based on the options chain, options pricing and risk and that changes every day. All right, so the SPX is trading within both ranges, the daily expected move as well as the weekly expected move. All right, let me point out some spot gamma levels on this chart, these are proprietary spot gamma levels based on gamma weighted open interest, these are available to spot gamma subscribers, first of all I'm going to go over the key daily levels, so here is the put wall that's at 4200, that's the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support, then above that the 4300 level is the absolute gamma strike, that's the strike with the largest absolute positive and negative gamma, then above that is the volatility trigger, that is spot gammas, let me redraw that, put wall absolute gamma strike volatility trigger at 4350, that is spot gammas proprietary gamma flip level, below that level market makers position on the gamma curve is negative, in a negative gamma environment market makers have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure and that tends to enhance or increase volatility, on the other hand above that level market makers position on the gamma curve is positive, in a positive gamma environment market makers have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure and that tends to subdue or decrease volatility and notice that SPX is trading below that level, the gamma notional at the beginning of the day was negative and is still negative, then finally the call wall is at 4500, that's the strike with the largest net positive gamma that can be expected to act as resistance and as far as shifts in levels for SPX there was only a minor shift lower in the volatility trigger from 4360 to 4350, so otherwise the primary levels, the put wall, call wall and absolute gamma strike all held steady. Alright, let's take a look at SPX for today to see what levels, take a closer look and see if there are any levels in play for today, so really the only level here shown on this chart is the 4300 absolute gamma strike that's showing that as an L3 level also a combo L2 level, let's just zoom a little bit so we can see anything else in play, so again SPX trading within the expected daily range but heading toward down toward the lower daily expected move. Alright, let's take a look at bookbap now and I should zoom in on this chart, sorry all my charts were reset, I didn't have time to reset every chart, alright so this is bookmap, I have my own cloud notes here and I am showing SPX levels, note there is a difference in price between SPX and ES and right now it's a little bit less than 37 and I use 37, so I'm showing SPX 4300 absolute gamma strike at 43.37 ES, so again 37 point difference, I also have the support and resistance levels that were noted in the SPOT gamma AM founders note, they're not shown on the thinkorswim charts but I do show them on my charts, then finally I have SPI levels and they are two lines right here, the label for the 43.15 support level that should, that is meant to line up with the SPI 430 level and SPI 430 is the absolute gamma strike and also the volatility trigger, so this is a very important level for SPI, so that's essentially SPI 430 right there at that level, so I've got SPX levels, SPI levels and then also big ground numbers for the ES, the zeros and the fifties, alright so in the morning session the, initially there was support right around the 430 level, price chopped around the 431 level and then started to move lower around 1130 and we'll take a look and see what options traders were doing, price broke below the 430 level and now is heading down toward the 42.74 level so yesterday for the SB500 there was a very clean, the reactions at the SPI round number levels, very clean, I posted a setup with the reversal at the SPI 425 put wall and a move up to the 430 level, not so clean today for the SB500, alright so those are the levels of play for today, as far as shifts and levels for SPI, there was one shift, the call wall shifted higher from 450 yesterday to 450 to 460 today, so that is well out of play and not really in consideration today, alright so that's the SB500, again we'll take a look at setups in a few minutes, let's take a look at NASDAQ and before I take a closer look at this chart that's in QQ Futures, I'm going to first of all isolate the QQQ levels in play for today, so here's the QQQ volatility trigger, QQQ initially traded above that level then it enacted edge resistance, QQQ making a series of lower highs, a test of the volatility trigger at 362, then VWAP, then the trend line and then a sharp drop lower after that, let me zoom in on this a little bit, alright let's take a look at NDX now, let's actually go back to QQQ, so looking at gamma levels again the volatility trigger, this combo L5 level did act as support until price broke below, then broke below the 360 level which is the absolute gamma strike and that strike did move higher from yesterday from 350 to 360, let's take a look at NDX and we'll see this combo level in play as well that acted as support so just for completeness we'll take a look at NDX, so there's that combo level, the combo level for NASDAQ combines NDX and QQQ into one again one gamma level, combo level, alright let's go to book mount, so for NQ I have my cloud notes again and I have so there's the zero gamma level, NDX levels also QQQ levels, there's the 360 absolute gamma strike, notice that NASDAQ traded up to its upper daily expected move today and then reverse lower, alright so those are the NASDAQ, the levels in play for today, again we'll take a look at setups in a few minutes and shifts in levels, again the absolute gamma strike for QQQ shifted higher and the volatility trigger for NDX shifted slightly higher and Devano says show us BTC, Bitcoin, sorry I don't have any crypto here, yeah I don't trade crypto, I really don't know anything about it, I primarily trade futures and stocks and that are pretty heavily driven by the options market, alright let's take a look at Gamma Notional now to see how market makers were positioned on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day, so here's Gamma Notional for SPX, SPY and QQQ, Gamma Notional for NDX is not significant, notice all these numbers are negative SPX 1.25 billion, SPY 2.2 billion and QQQ 764 million all negative, this indicates that traders are long puts, market makers are short puts and they have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure, so if price decreases their delta notional will increase and they have to sell futures, they want to remain delta neutral and those numbers did become slightly less negative than yesterday but still quite negative, alright let's take a look at the Vana model now and this will give us a graphical representation of what I was just talking about, this is SPX, this chart is showing market makers delta notional and how that changes with changes in price, delta notional shown on the vertical axis, price shown on the horizontal axis, there are two curves on this chart, the light curve is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price only, the purple curve adds implied volatility to the equation, that showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and implied volatility and that change in delta with a change in implied volatility is the Vana effect, Vana is a second order Greek, so what this chart is showing is if price increases market makers can buy back short futures, their delta notional is decreasing, they always would remain delta neutral, so Frank this would be a put Vana rally with a movement this way price increases, implied volatility drops, market makers can buy back short futures, alright so when I check this morning, let's see, let's go back to the SPX chart, so the high of the day for SPX was about 43.32, alright somewhere around here, so this is indicating at that high of the day very little potential for a put Vana rally, this is showing as price increases and implied volatility decreases, market makers could buy back short futures but this is compared to the last few days not very significant, so not much of a potential for a put Vana rally, so today again we were looking for first of all some loss of puts due to the expiration today and that could potentially provide fuel for a rally as well as put Vana, but at the high of the day at 43.32 that fuel was pretty limited and actually that's right around here, so I drew my arrows a little bit too far to the left, somewhere between these two lines, alright so very little potential for put Vana rally and again remember the expiration compared to especially the October and December expirations that were shown on that chart was not very significant, now on the other hand if price decreases and implied volatility increases, market makers have to sell futures and this is typical of a negative gamma environment, so it works both ways, so if price decreases and implied volatility increases market makers delta notional will increase and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure, so there was a potential for a put Vana rally and so far that does not seem to be the case today, let's just go back and take a look at SPX chart one more time so SPX continues to move lower, right now trading right around 42.80, so if price does rally from here there's more potential for a put Vana rally, so if implied volatility starts to drop price increases now there's more potential fuel for a put Vana rally, on the other hand if price keeps moving lower market makers will have to continue to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure, alright let's take a look at SPI and QQQ, alright Frank I hope that answers your question, so it's something that I was looking for but so far working the other way, again remember that Vana model works both ways, so right now SPI is trading around 4.26, somewhere between 4.26 and 4.27 so SPI is here and if price rallies there's more potential for a put Vana rally, on the other hand if price continues to drop, implied volatility increases market makers will have to continue to sell futures, this always works both ways, take a look at QQQ and by the way these curves with a very steep skew upward into the left these are typical of a negative gamma environment, this type of curve in the Vana model, QQQ trading around 3.57 so that's right around here so some potential for a put Vana rally as well and then again on the other hand if price continues to drop market makers will have to continue to sell futures, let's just take a look and see what VIX is doing, use this as a proxy for implied volatility, so so far VIX is making a series of higher lows all day and continues higher, right so price dropping implied volatility increasing and so far not looking for a put Vana rally, alright let's take a look at some setups now and I'm going to start with this hero signal for the S&P 500 this is the hero signal again from spot gamma available to spot gamma subscribers hero stands for hedging impact real time options HIRO, this chart is showing first of all price for SPX that's with the white line, the purple line is the hero signal that's hedging impact real time options and this is for a combined signal so this is showing options trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal for SPX, SPY, XSP and ES futures, alright instead of initially zooming in on this chart I'm going to take a look at the SPY chart which is one component of this chart and the reason I'm doing that is because of these alerts so I'm going to zoom in on the morning session and this may be difficult to see these icons are pretty small but there's a small yellow dot that says flow here and that there were a number of flow alerts this one what's the best the first one right after 10 a.m. and there's no indication whether this means bullish or bearish Brent's founder of spot gamma talked about that earlier this week in a presentation to subscribers I think one of his main uses of this is to look for mean reversion and that's definitely how this signal worked so on the SPY chart just after 10 a.m. there's a flow alert and right about the same time he will turns lower and price turns lower so let's go take a look at book map now we'll go back to the S&P 500 zoom in on the morning so here's that where that alert came in 10 a.m. note the shift in order flow aggressive buyers shown by the green volume dot those are marked by minus cell delta so a green dot indicates more buyers than sellers magenta dots indicate more sellers than buyers let me just darken up the heat map a little bit there was some liquidity resting at the 4370 level so price reverses as traders start taking negative delta positions note the start the sharp shift and cumulative volume delta that's shown by the dark blue line in the sub chart and again unfortunately I lost all my MBO data that's market buy order data that's what spot gamma uses I mean book map uses for the stock stocks and icebergs so there's the short set up this morning and let's zoom out and a wide book map is not recentering we tone down the heat map more so SP500 was making a series of lower highs and then finally broke below this 430 level shown right there consolidated and continues to move lower now dropping more sharp sharply trading making a series of lower highs again all right you're welcome Frank so Frank ask are there so many puts expiring today so the Vanna was neutral this morning so the Vanna showed at the high of the day a slightly you know slight move up on that gamma curve toward the left so it's potential for a slight Vanna tail one remember that that chart works both ways so if at that starting point if market makers if price continued to move higher market makers could buy back short futures slightly did you know there was a slight Vanna tail wind shown by that chart again on the other hand this works both ways so if we just saw that VIX was increasing price dropping so implied volatility is increasing think of that purple curve applied volatility increasing and price decreasing market makers have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure and yes there are puts expiring today but this is compared to again October and let's just take a look at that compared to October in December fairly minor so this is this is today this is October and this is December all right so that was the really the best starting point for a short this morning that first flow of art on spy and let's just go to the combined signal now here for the SAP 500 so this is combining SPX, SPY, NDX, I mean SPX, SPY, XSP, and ES futures so here's that signal for SPY and this is price initially moves lower then right around 10-20 options traders for the combined signal start taking positive delta positions price responds a little bit higher but just makes a lower high let's zoom out for the day so it looks like let me get to where I'm showing the entire day from the from the cash open so this is the 930 regular trading hours traders were taking positive delta positions really up until about 1130, 1120 that activity levels off and now they've started taking negative delta positions as price continues lower so they're finally joining the party about 1245 let's take a closer look and see what they're doing so today they are buying calls buying puts that's pretty typical buying calls shown by the rising orange line positive notional value they're also buying puts shown by the negative notional value there they call buyers started to take their foot off the gas or around 1120 or so still buying calls and then finally that activity has now starting to cool off even more and then traders were initially it looks like they were selling puts shown by the rising blue line and then right around 1245 started buying puts all right so that's the SB 500 today a little bit of a difficult read today let's take a look at NASDAQ all right so PAS 2910 what about 0 DTE okay we can take a look at that so I'm going to go to next expiry so for the SB 500 this would be options that expire today and the green line here or teal line that's showing the 0 DTE trades so it looks like they are a little bit more taking more negative delta positions than the traders in the all expirations which would be this is the all trades all expirations so this is the 0 DTE with the green line purple line showing all expirations so net for the day they are they've started it looks like they were buying let's just zoom in a little bit so up until about 1245 net for the day they were buying with 0 DTE and all expirations and the 0 DTE was a bit less than half of the total notion of value up to that point then both shifted lower all right let's take a look at NASDAQ so first I'm going to take a look at QQQ that's where these alerts appear so here's an alert at 940 right at the hedge wall the 361 so again this QQQ alerted at the 361 hedge wall and initially QQQ moves higher almost to the 363 level and really the key was just watching hero itself making a series of lower highs so this set up a hero divergent short right around 10 just the same right around the same time as the S&B 500 so let's go to NASDAQ let's zoom in on this sorry give me just a moment to adjust the chart so we can see this a little better right so here's the QQQ 361 level the bounce all the off that level when that alert comes in and then the reversal at just below the 363 level right around the NQ 15,050 level and the NQ upper daily expected move pretty clear shift in order flow aggressive buyers moving price up they're exhausted or the buyers exhaust and then sellers come in that's shown by the shift from the green volume dots to the magenta volume dots and price moves lower as that hero divergent signal signaled that traders were taking negative delta positions all right let's go back to hero now right so again this is for QQQ and so to sorry says met a trend down today from 310 310 is the call wall that is definitely something that I want to take a look at all right since then in QQQ traders have been taking positive delta positions and price not responding let's take a look at the combined signal for NASDAQ this is combining NDX and QQQ similar story as QQQ which is the major component of that let's take a look and see they are buying calls and buying puts call buyers more aggressive shown by the rising orange line the positive notional value all right so after that initial divergence hero it looks like options traders are not not really driving price let's go back to book map all right so maybe NASDAQ is finding support at the 14665 NDX zero gamma level all right let's take a look at some stocks so we'll take a look at Meta this those are I just mentioned let's go take a look at hero Meta so met on this note that Meta 310 is the call wall that acted as resistance to separate outputs and calls so initially call buyers were driving Meta higher up to the call wall they took their foot off the gas and price reverse lower then the put buyers took over and price continues to trade lower down now to the 300 key gamma strike so a couple of key gamma levels and play call wall at 310 acting as resistance and maybe the 300 key gamma strike will act as support so call buyers driving price from the open up into about 10 a.m. they take their foot off the gas they stop buying calls and price starts to drop lower then put buyers come in right around 1050 so when traders buy calls market makers sell the calls and they have to buy stock to hedge their delta exposure on the other hand when traders buy puts market makers sell the puts and they have to sell future sell stock to hedge their delta exposure all right let's go back and take a look at book map right so great short setup here in Meta 310 call wall resistance level and maybe the 300 key gamma strike as support note the shift in order flow here at this reversal over earlier aggressive buyers into this resting liquidity at the 310 level call buyers take their foot off the gas aggressive sellers start to come in shown by the magenta volume dots and price moves lower than all the way down to the 300 key and the strike and hello trading sale says he's back from Italy San Remo back to work trading options welcome back glad you're here all right so great short setup in Meta thanks again slow to sorry for pointing that out all right the next one I want to take a look at is Microsoft and I want to take a look at is Microsoft be zoom in on this just a bit all right let's go take a look at hero and see what options traders are doing solely puts and calls shown a separate lines go to Microsoft zoom in on this take a look at the morning so this is showing from the open just like Meta traders were buying calls and right around 10 a.m. they take the foot off the gas and they take the foot off the gas one small buy or one buyers come back in call buyers again they take the foot off the gas and price moves lower not near not nearly as dramatic as Meta but price started to move lower just about the same time that everything else did right around 1245 and the call buyers became call sellers all right let's go back to book map so that's Microsoft and not nearly as big a move as Meta but still kind of the same driver call buyers become call sellers take their foot off the gas and price moves lower let's take a look at one other back to total signal look at Netflix thing I want to point out here is the these alerts especially this one right around 950 that may be difficult to see but good indication for a short so these new these alerts just became available on Monday so it's going to take some time to to watch them and to understand you know what based so when I the idea is when I see an alert I'm going to look at heroes see what heroes do doing and also look at book map alright so I I actually have Netflix running on my other computer so I don't have much time left I may not may not look at that today but Netflix that was a great entry point for a short whether you bought a put bought a put spread sold stock all right let's let's scan through now I've got about 10 minutes left let's scan through first of all SME 500 the NASDAQ then we can scan through stocks and see if we'll see if we can find any setups first of all let's check the alerts alright here's one this is a different type of alert the NVIDIA call wall breached I'm just zooming out to the entire day so Netflix has been bearish so it looks like maybe this right so this alert comes in at 120 so NVIDIA move below the call wall at 435 then moved above let's go take a look at that in in book map so so far for the day though the hero signal is very bearish so it looks like there was a move below the call wall then above the call wall which triggered that triggered that alert let's see what traders are doing so so far that for the day they are buying their selling calls and selling calls and selling puts so the calls shown with the negative notional value there the falling orange line and this number positive notional value for the put line indicates their selling puts but the call sellers much more aggressive than the put sellers let's go take a look at book map go to NVIDIA so NVIDIA made a series of calls and selling puts NVIDIA so NVIDIA made a series of lower highs then broke out of this pattern right around 1130 as traders were mainly selling calls and those lifestyle says can gold sir I assume you want me to take a look at gold so I'm good I can take a look I don't have gold in book map let's see if if it's available in hero so I can now gold futures are not here so we can take a look for GLD so that is here right so it looks like traders are taking negative delta positions in GLD note there are a couple of alerts here so in GLD traders are for most of the day they were selling calls and buying puts then call buyers started to come in right around 1230 but so far price is not responding alright so that's that's all I have for gold again don't have don't have gold futures here either in book map or in in hero alright so we found another setup in NVIDIA let's check alerts again I don't trade down but we can take a look at this there's not much so here's actually the latest alert in GLD not sure how to interpret that with the this bump up in the hero signal it looks like traders are starting to take positive delta positions and maybe that would be a mean reversion type of alert or let's take a look at the SMB 500 so now it looks like traders are starting to take positive delta positions let's go take a look at book map so the SMB 500 consolidating right around that 4274 level I'm not sure what this level is I've just got that 426 level I've got the wrong color label there alright so that's spy 426 also the 4274 level price consolidating it looks like large traders are starting to come in we've got collected enough MBO data to see some large traders coming in buying with iceberg orders that's shown by the rising light blue line let's take a look at NASDAQ also consolidating maybe finding support at the 665 zero gamma level here in the sub chart order flow not looking as bullish as the SMB 500 all right to Rajam on I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly says JP Morgan rolled their collar excuse me do you have the new strikes so I know for the current collar the one that expires today 42 10 I believe was the was the put all right great thank you so the new JP Morgan collar is the short 4500 call I assume long 40 50 put and then the short the 3410 put right so it looks like NASDAQ attempting to move higher let's see what options traders were doing so to Rajam on says they may also revise by end of day right thank you for that update let's go take a look at hero for NASDAQ right so traders continue to take positive delta positions and NASDAQ NASDAQ may be responding higher also in the SB 500 trading traders are starting to take positive delta positions starting around 215 or so 220 so let's go to book map SB 500 so if I were looking for a trade in NASDAQ I would look for a breakout of either out of these 357 to 358 range same for the SB 500 that is the 426 level and the 427 level order flow based on the sub chart does look a little bit more bullish in the SB 500 we know that traders are starting to take positive delta positions again so maybe we'll have a late afternoon put Vanna rally all right my time is up I want to thank everyone for watching thank you very much for your questions and comments sorry about my technical issues I will be troubleshooting my PC this week considering buying a new Mac M2 M2 studio so maybe that'll work out again thank you very much for watching thank you for your questions and comments have a great weekend and I will see you on Monday bye


Cuisine of the Southern USA As the USA is a huge country with a population that comes from many different backgrounds across the world, there are a wide range of influences that have shaped the nation's cuisine. One of the most well-known regional culinary styles can be found in the Southern United States, an area that covers 16 individual states, including Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Seoul Food, which dates back to the transatlantic slave trade, includes dishes such as black-eyed peas, pig's feet, grits, and moon pie. Elsewhere across the South, you will find many other local specialties to sample, including barbecued chicken, cornbread, pulled pork, and fried catfish.


I never doubted myself through any opportunity, through any situation, that was never any doubt. And I think that kind of helped me put me in a position that I am today. And I love that. I really love that because some people, opportunity comes to everyone. For sure. But the thing is that some people because, and we all have an ups and downs because you had ups and downs. Some people get so angry because of all of those downs that they overlook those opportunity. They're reminded by the anger, the hate, all of that and overlook it. And that's why they don't see it. They can't grasp that opportunity. But I love the fact that you were able to see it and go head on for it no matter what you were going through. You still believe in yourself. I knew that you were worse more than whatever troubles that you were going through. But how did it feel to have them come back on you in that Superbowl? I was mad. I can tell you something, nigga. That's the first game. Man, I'm about to hear it. The Superbowl. I told you, you can't talk about it to me.  That day, that was a bad day. And this dude next door that you had met, you remember the Indian dude next door on the Egyptian dude? He called me in the middle of the game, look like your wife is a winner of Superbowl. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm the next. And I was like, the Egyptian guy, Mike, Mike is the guy next door. And I was like, man, then after that he called me, I don't look like, I'm like, dawg, don't call me. I was so mad. I was upset because I felt like I lost, you know? But that was a tough. That was tough. That's when I decided in my heart that football is read.  I was like, no, so what's up? That's a day. I'm not the point spread. The point spread is off. Me too. So when you were, what, what caused the, how did you end up in Chicago? I'm just trying to walk through this football thing real quick. Yeah, I mean, after playing in the Superbowl, I kind of made a name for myself, the Turbo Taylor name or whatever it is. Yeah, it was dope. Yeah. I kind of made a name for myself. And I think that kind of carried me out through the rest of my career. And with Atlanta, just, and just being honest on this show, I know I can talk real on this show. This boss talk, what a boss is talking. Yeah, yeah. With Atlanta, I had an opportunity that summer to sign a nice little deal in Atlanta, man. Like inside school, dude, like DQ, DQ, the, the, the defensive coordinator is here in Dallas right now. That was my head coach. Okay. So he brought me up to his office, man.  So he was like, Turbo, he called me TG, like, you deserved it. You just write down the number that you want. You know what I mean? So I'm right there. Did you go up high? Like, you know, I did and he was like, man, we're going to get this done. So what happened was in the Super Bowl, I fractured my tibia and I played through it, but I shouldn't have. And that kind of messed me up. So that offseason DQ is real big on camaraderie, football, camaraderie and just being involved. So man, I'm trying my best to work through the pain and go through the pain, but I couldn't. So that whole offseason, I didn't do anything. So it was kind of like, it, it wasn't a good look on the behalf of me about to get paid. You know what I'm saying? Because I'm a, uh, he, I'm a white, white collar, third damn, whatever receiver that I am. You know what I'm not Julio Jones. I can't do that. Yeah. So, uh, we get to the season and, uh, with Matt Ryan, like, man, I'm spilling all the beans on here. No, go ahead. I'm right here. That's what we're here for. Yeah. Yeah. We're making real comfortable right here. Right. With, uh, with Matt, and, and the whole reason why I didn't sign back in Atlanta was because with Matt Ryan, um, just my, not my work ethic, just I couldn't give him what, what he was looking for. Okay. Because of my shin. So when we were, we will, when we would run routes, I couldn't run as fast and he wants that in game look, you know what I'm saying? So I guess it came off as me, like not giving a hundred percent of my work ethic being off, but I literally couldn't, I had to warm that thing up before I get going because I was in excruciating pain. You know what I mean? And I had to deal with that for the longest. So we kind of fell out over that. And, uh, the, the deal kind of fell out on the wayside. Uh, we never kind of, uh, country, uh, came back to contract talks. And I mean, I was having a good year that year. You know what I mean? So it came to a point in that year towards like, man, I got to look out for myself. I can't keep putting myself in these bad situations. Cause if I get hurt, like, man, ain't nobody want to sign me. I'm, I'm right. You know what I mean? So it was just a, a weird time in my life because I went from being up there, signing that number, me seeing that to now I'm kind of like, uh, I really don't want you, but I just, I want you here to make plays when it's here to be made.


Welcome to the Boundary Spanners, a podcast on residential decarbonization with me, Nate, the blue collar CEO of HVAC 2.0. And I'm Abhi, a white collar policy researcher based in Canada. In this podcast, we're taking tacit unspoken and hands-on knowledge from the white and blue collar worlds and turning it into explicit and actionable out loud insights for residential decarbonization. The views expressed in this show are entirely personal. You can follow the Boundary Spanners podcast on YouTube or wherever you get your favorite podcast from. Thank you for listening. So this is my, and I'm a policy guy and a researcher. And that's my day job, although, you know, we both have to say that we're here on a personal capacity. And for the last, I'll say four or five years, I have made a conscious effort to spend more time in HVAC communities. You and I, Nate, we did an episode earlier about the white collar and blue collar culture. And we talked about how the pathway towards residential electrification, decarbonization goes through HVAC contractors, goes through blue collar work, and the ability of all these, the best laid plans of policy makers and policy shapers have to rely on the backs of what we broadly call blue collar workforce, the men and women who go into people's homes and fix systems and replace HVAC systems and do plumbing, electrical and all of these things. So for me, and you and I, we talked about this and we were lamenting the fact that blue collar worlds and white collar worlds, again, broadly speaking, seem to be drifting further, further apart. It's not only that, that the implicit and explicit and tacit knowledge domains of these worlds are different, but also culturally were different. We may be watching different TV shows, we may be shopping in different places, we may even be drinking different beers. And so, if knowledge, if we form knowledge about our world, the impressions that we have of our world are constructed socially, by which I mean, if we form an opinion of the world through our interactions that we have with the world socially. What does it mean when white collar and blue collar communities inhabit different social realms. Does that also mean that are the way that we think about problems, the way we conceptualize solutions, and the way that we approach these interactable problems like residence electrification. Does that mean that we will be drifting further apart and how we define these problems and try to come up with solutions. I really do think it does. So, I want to tell a story of my own prejudice where I hated myself for it. So, back when I was I think I was just out of high school, I hadn't gone to college yet, but so I was like it was that summer I was working for my dad. And part of what we do is we'd stock the fridge with pop or soda depending where you live, and we'd sell to the guys it costs like 35 cents a can, something like that. And so I was up there and I had bought just a ton of stuff it was like 1000 bucks of stuff and it was really heavy on a cart. And it was heavy enough I was nervous about taking it to the truck. Because the parking lot was bumpy, and it wasn't super hilly but it wasn't dead flat so it, as I walked out the door, this kid comes up to me, and he says hey I'll wash it for you while you go get it. He didn't have a name tag on or anything like that. And he was African American, and I ran to the truck, nervous that he was going to steal my stuff. And I got back and everything was fine. He was there.  So we talked a little bit and here he was also going to be a freshman the next year at teal college which was 15 miles from Grove City where I was going, and he was playing football. And I'm just like, if he had white skin, I wouldn't have been nervous. And like I didn't realize that I had that prejudice in me, and I hated myself for it. So we all have these internal prejudices that we don't even realize or acknowledge. And in my view, the last acceptable prejudice in society is white collar versus blue. Oh, you shouldn't go do that.  Like that's a common prejudice now. And having spent my whole life back and forth like so one I'm guilty. Like I catch my own thought processes doing that like well no I don't need to pay attention to that opinion because he's just a worker.  You're invalidating someone I mean, so many problems on earth come from invalidating people that are different from you. Right. So to go to your example where you talked about meeting a young gentleman and realizing it and coming to face with like your own.  And this is part of what like forums like, you know, we talk about social construction of knowledge. It's not like you read an explicit book that said, people who look a certain way or talk a certain way are not to be trusted but that idea is formed through your cultural background experiences and how you navigate, you know and through repeated like through, like through osmosis we absorb things that we read and we see and they reform these tacit ideas in our head. And, especially where we are today 2021 culturally I think you know we a lot of us are are looking like you did at trying to second guess our knee jerk reactions that are often formed through like, you know, a tacit implicit in knowledge and ideas that we have an examining that and trying to think of and trying to transcend that and trying to act in ways that we expect of ourselves. And then what you're saying then is an extension of a similar set of this is the last acceptable the more and most enduring a prejudice seems to be discrimination against people who may be less credential than you. Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to even say it as educated than you because you know my someone very close to me used to always say, don't let school get in the way of your education. So if you think about education as a lifelong project, then what we're talking about here and at the day is credentials and what do you have a credentialed and you know, there's different ways to which we established knowledge right so if you have a PhD have some credentials. If you don't if you're, if you're a blue collar worker then you have some credential you have said different ways of expertise, and the way in which we afford the way in which people with different levels of expertise, get to set and define expectations are set to define rules and set to define programs and projects and priorities for goals that we commonly share is uneven. We've talked about this before. When you look at I know I live in Canada and municipalities here over the past four or five years are all developing like local energy plants, you know, with bold and ambitious targets to get to 2050 energy goals climate goals and so on. Then when you read who was a part of like the advisory committee that's helping them put these programs together. Not often as someone who without a college degree reflected on there. It's not often like the blue color men and women who will have to end up doing a bunch of this work. Yeah, I don't know that they're that their priorities are their value systems or their knowledge domains are represented. There are so many problems with that there's so many problems with that. I mean it's I think of like Colonel Klinger from Hogan's heroes, you will do it and you will like it. And you can't do that to people like I don't want to be treated that way you don't want to be treated that way. Yet we design programs that treat the people that actually do the work that way. And I'm like why are they pushing back. And the other piece I mean I'd like to take a step back like we had mentioned culture war last time like be very careful just using the phrase climate change because it tends to trigger people just as using the word capitalism triggers some people where I just view it as a thing I don't view it as good or evil to tool. So, I mean I firmly believe that the main reason that Trump rose to power, a whole lot of the conflicts that we're seeing and this is across the world I mean France had the yellow was a yellow coat yellow vest thank you yellow vest uprising, which was heavily blue collar workers. So, we're creating the schism, and then either ignoring it or being like that tamp down shut up let the meat cake. And we're, this is not good. So, yes we're talking about just residential electrification here is the narrow view of what we're looking at. But the broader view is, this is affecting our lives. It's affecting our mental health. I mean, Trump was a hard president to have not that I want to get political but you couldn't get away because there was always a tweet. I live in Canada. I live in Canada and I couldn't get away. And I'm not even American right and you know just so it affected our mental health but we did that that is the reaction there that's the end result of the schism that I largely think relates back to white color versus white color. It's not entirely but that's, that's pretty close. So there's a couple of things you said there that I think is worth unpacking. So the first thing is that Wildest podcast is about residential electrification. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. I didn't know when I was in physics, you know, we talk about frictionless spherical cows in a vacuum. That's the ideal, you know, like ideal conditions. Yeah, you know, you can model that but once you start adding friction, you get, you know, the second or the third other place. It's the same thing like our residential electrification doesn't exist in a vacuum. You cannot just look at that without situating it in the broader political and cultural conflicts in the world that we're in today. Correct. And the second thing you were talking about is sometimes, you know, it seems like policymakers talk the big talk about including communities and listening to frontline workers and just transitions and incorporating workers. The, the experiences workers and prioritizing them and transitions and stuff like that. This is my personal reflection on this is that I feel like policymakers still do not understand the priorities and there's a lot of passive knowledge about the residential electrification space that escapes the scrutiny of policymakers. And I, as someone who's, you know, involved in, in research and in policy, I wanted to do the work, so to speak, and spend time in, in quote unquote blue collar communities. So I joined online communities of practice. I'm taking classes at a community college to get like my gas certifications so I can, you know, moonlight as a, as an aspect installer when I, if and when I get the time. But the purpose of my foray into blue collar workplace and work spaces is so that I can better understand and have a very tap and to tap into that task in the hopes of, so, of the blue of blue collar policy shapers and makers and policy writers and analysts like me have to rely on if we are to get to our ambitious energy and clinicals, and it might be worth explaining what we mean by explicit and passive knowledge. Yeah, you know, so the way I understand it is explicit knowledge is like the most basic form of knowledge it's things that you can write down and pass on to someone rules of thumb. If you're giving someone an address and say, well, you go there and turn right, take a couple of rights at the next intersection and get to the space that's explicit knowledge. Those are things you can write down you can convey to someone else by writing things. That's the most basic form of knowledge right implicit knowledge is practical application of explicit knowledge. So what this means is if you are using the same, you know, giving directions on a map analogy implicit knowledge is you know because you've been driving in Ontario. That you can take a right at an intersection, even if the right is the light is right.  There's only you'll only see a sign. If that says do not turn right, but not every intersection doesn't have a sign that says you can turn right. Some of it is just implicit knowledge. If you're driving in Ontario you'll notice people doing it. If this is your first time, you may not have even read Ontario Road May user manual. You just know by observing that's implicit knowledge. Tasset knowledge is even more ethereal and a more subtle than that a more ingrained that that tacit knowledge is is your instinct.  If there's a movie that I watched, I would know, but within a reasonable degree of certainty whether you'd like it or not. It's not you haven't written down teams of movies that you like. It's just, I have an instinct about it and I can't even explain to myself. Why I know what I know about how you feel about certain things. Yep. See implicit knowledge I can explain to someone I can say, I know in Ontario you can turn right on a red, because I've seen other people do it, watch and observe. But as tacit knowledge is even more fundamental than that. It's deeply ingrained and you watch and observe and you don't even know how you know these things, but you can just have an instinct. And this is and when you move to a new experience, you don't have any tacit knowledge about anything. I've told this story before. When I first moved to Michigan, a buddy of mine invited me over to his home for Thanksgiving and we actually drove for more than 12 hours to go to his parents place. This was my first Thanksgiving and be like left to six in the morning, got there on supper time.  Are you guys hungry? Do you want food? You must be tired after a long drive. And I immediately said no, because in India, when you go or someone's place they ask you, do you want food? You say no. They ask you again, you say no the second time. And then they ask you the third time and then you're like, well, I guess if you're going to twist my arm, then I will indulge only if you insist. But this is a social dance that I didn't even realize we did in India. No one told me in India you have to say yes the third time. It's just something deeply ingrained. I didn't even know that I knew that. And my instinct was as soon as someone said you want food, but I'm at my friend's place, I said no. That was the wrong answer. Yeah, I'm actually hungry. And they didn't ask me again because like the tacit knowledge in this domain here in America, back then in Michigan, was when someone says they don't want something, don't force them. And then I was too embarrassed to because as soon as I said no, they're like, okay, they left me alone and they're all having fun. And I was too embarrassed. Oh, so you just went hungry that night. You know what I did? Oh man, this is embarrassing to talk about. You can't see it because of my tan, but I'm blushing right now. I slumped across the road. I slipped out of the house and went across the road to a gas station and I ate a frozen burrito. Because I didn't have tacit knowledge of this domain. And so that's a key thing. So could I define it the way that I have it in my mind? Yes, sir. So explicit knowledge to me is written down, or it's somehow like it's, it has been formalized in some way. It's written down it's it's spoken, but I mean it's no longer in someone's head tacit knowledge to me lives entirely on someone's head. So what we're trying to do here is take tacit knowledge of you and I and, you know, others that are working in the electrification space and make it explicit. So that's hopefully we can keep policymakers from inadvertently nuking our chances of actually getting there. I mean, I told you for years my main reason for being on Twitter is to help reduce the odds of policy screwing us. Because basically anything that touches the kitchen table, which is pretty much every program ever. When it comes to efficiency programs, anything that touches the kitchen table creates friction and ends up hurting the adoption of whatever it is. Or if it helps, it helps temporarily but as soon as you take it away, the system is now worse than it was to begin with. Like I'll give one specific example. In gas, the rebate program that I worked with before it came into town, there weren't a ton of energy auditors in Cleveland but you know say there were eight something like that this was before I was an auditor I was just an installation contractor had no interest whatsoever in being the auditor like I just want to get the work done. But Dominion came in and paid auditors, and then they created this program where homeowners only had to pay $25 or $50 to get an energy audit it was it was a third. And it was like hey if you do this you can save $2,000 a year in gas well I only buy $1,500 a year in gas so can you make out the check you know to my name. So there's a lot of that going on like the programs were good but the problem was it killed the businesses of those auditors that were out there, I don't think there are any left in Cleveland right now. So that program came in and ironically ended up destroying a burgeoning industry or at least there was something there and now it's gone. And that is an unintended consequence of that. So I want to like that's now tacitly in my head but now it's explicit. So there's an interesting parallel here between your journey in mind that because you went to Twitter which I mean let's be honest, it's a white collar space. It's educated professionals, credential professionals who are trying to communicate with their peers and so you are I would argue probably the best one of the best known. It's a white collar so quote to quote predominantly blue collar frontline HVAC workers who was, you went on Twitter so that you can turn your past knowledge into explicit. So you can then communicate that explicit knowledge with people who occupy that space. Correct. So my journey was parallel in the other direction so like you and I. You know so I as a quote unquote white collar. I mean like you I you know I've worked in blue collar professions before but predominantly my career art is white collar. And I wanted to be better at my job as a white collar someone who helps understands researchers studies and develop policy I wanted to have a better understanding of the tacit knowledge in the blue collar space so I've intentionally been spending more time in the blue collar space that's the background of this conversation is that you and I are are in a way our project here broadly defined is to take the tacit knowledge in these spaces and turn it into explicit so that we are communicating across these different Yes, so this.


Frustrated by the unseizing reign of terror and banditry in his state, the Katzine State Governor Aminu Belou Kat Masari has officially approved a resort to self-help and has asked his people to acquire weapons in defense against terror and banditry. Meanwhile, in June, Sani Umar, a resident of Bastari Local Government area of Katzine States, spoke on how Nigeria's porous borders with Niger fuel attacks in the Northwest. Well, joining us to discuss this is retired Air Vice-Machal Femi Wadibor. Thank you very much, sir, for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm just going to go straight off the cuff. A governor is asking his people, out of frustration, obviously, to resort to self-help. In a country where we have the army, we have the Air Force, we have the Navy, we have police, we have, I mean, we have so many security outfits and the governor of that state is saying, well, because we're unable to deal with this situation or our security agents are not able to deal with this situation, maybe we all have to arm ourselves. And the last time I checked, it is illegal to have own a weapon or a gun in Nigeria. If it's not licensed, then it's hardly easy for you to do that. So please help me out. What exactly do you think is going on here? I think we've, unfortunately, some of our leaders have shot themselves in the foot. And there seems to be a lack of coordination in the utterances that are coming from major state actors. So you'll find one governor saying something, the police is saying another thing. We see in some states where the police is working hard to mop up what they call illegal weapons. Even regional security organizations that have been set up are yet to be officially allowed to carry weapons. And then nobody is officially selling weapons. I don't know anywhere where you can go outright and just buy your own weapons. So I know the situation is really getting out of hand. And that options from Dr. Masari, who we know about a year or so ago was visibly seen to be romancing with the bandits or insurgents, is another of these complicated cries and calls that we're getting from our leaders. They need to come together and discuss these issues and have a clear directive from the federal government which will affect the police and then let us know exactly what the people can do. You cannot call people to take off arms and defend themselves and then have the police come next week and start arresting people because they have illegal weapons. I'm really curious because this is the president's state obviously. This is his backyard, literally. But like you have said, the governors including governors Zulum, all of the governors in the states that are facing this insecurity, we get mixed messages from them. But the governors are number one chief security officers in their states, whether it's on paper or not. They are. Why do they have to go to the federal government for a directive? They know what is happening. It's he who wears the shoe that understands how bad the pinch is or the pain is. Why result to the federal government? Does this also mean that there's lack of leadership in these states that they have to go to the federal government who may not have the slightest idea of what they're going through? Well, the idea that a governor is a chief security officer is something that can sometimes be laughable because they have no control over the commissioner or police or the other security assets that are in their state. They still have to lay eggs. For instance, if a governor needs like the brigade commander or some other person to come out and help out, the law still says that the first point of refusal is a commissioner of police who has to say that I am overwhelmed. I need the military. And when the governor, even though they have a state security council, when the governor calls the military, the military has to go through the back door and get a clearance from his service chief and so on, even though there is another way that the governor can get to Mr. President and Mr. President can direct the service chief to go ahead and give the go ahead, you understand? So yes, there are what on paper may look cumbersome, but with a finely walking mechanism, it can be just a phone call away. The only problem we're seeing here is that when a governor gives this kind of directive, we need to be sure of the response that is coming from the superior to either the commissioner of police or the security agencies that are in that state. And I think the governor should stop just going to the press and making statements like this. They should get the very clear mandate from the presidency. He should go to, I mean, I don't know, are they trying to give us an impression that they cannot be Mr. President? Because that's the first point of call. And then the next thing should be federal government giving a new directive on the use of personal arms and how the registrations and the licences can be done. And then at the various state levels, we will begin to have people who have license to sell weapons and they will import them. Yes, you can limit the caliber of the weapons that they're getting. I mean, I get where this conversation is going, but I'm trying to understand why we have to resort to now introducing weapons into our system because we really already, we have so many weapons that are illegal that are in the system that we can't even account for. And now we want to go to a legal way of really, does this not make our security outfits or our security agencies look bad? Does this not also send a message to the so-called bandits that we are extremely overwhelmed and we're running out of ideas? I ask this because, I ask this because early this year we remember a service chief who told, it wasn't a service chief, it was the minister of, I think, the minister of defence that said that we should defend ourselves. So if this is coming from people who are in the federal government, when we say the federal government, it's not just Mr President, why are we still having to want to speak to the president if someone in his cabinet is also saying we should go resort to his self-help? Well, resort to self-help doesn't mean that everybody should drop part of the streets and just shouldn't away. But let's, you see, it still beats my imagination where a community will continue to be ravaged and they'll go to sleep at night and waiting for some miracles to happen. Every group of bodymen, there is what you call neighbourhood watch, there are vigilantes, they're organised private security networks. Working with these people will gather intelligence. You see, one of the schools children, a set of school children that were kidnapped in Cassina, when the whole thing was sorted out, it was revealed that these individuals had to go to markets to buy foodstuff for the children because there were about 300 or so. And so definitely within the market it was noticed that somebody was buying large quantities of certain things.  And so the thing is that our people in the villages, in the rural communities, they are not doing what they should do. You cannot have even a hundred men in the bush and they'll be surviving without foodstuff, some basic amenities. They're very little, they can get up the land. In fact, from history, I know that there used to be some women in some communities that used to cook for these bandits and terrorists who are staying out in the forest. And so it's a question of intelligence gathering, in the question of everybody knowing that they are part of the security network and they can pass information and build in a system where it's done. But the other one I'm talking about is that in communities, they must also build up their own security network where there is a group of people who are staying awake at night, even in shifts, so that you don't keep having this situation where they seem to come out of nowhere and then people are sleeping and they start vandalizing them, burning houses and so on. We must wake up and this is part of what the governors are saying when they say, defend yourself, organize yourself and prepare to face these individuals who are coming. Let's talk about the porousness of our borders because there is a man who gave his story about how he and his community was attacked in the same Katsina state. And he also pointed out that these porous borders between Katsina, that's Katsina and Niger, is what feels more of this banditry because that's where these people are coming in and out of. And it really takes my mind to the fact that there are also people who are surrendering to the army and saying that they are repentant Boko Haram members. How do we know that these people are not the guys who are coming in through Niger and claiming to be Nigerians? I have asked this question over and over again, what is the modus operandi? How are these people being debriefed? Because if we are getting these many people surrender and we're still unable to deal with those who are in the forest, then maybe we're missing something. Are we? Oh, yes, we are missing something. The idea of them being debriefed and so on, it is too fast. Under normal circumstances, they should be held in some safe area, reasonably distant from the crisis area. I noticed, for instance, Dr. Zulun in a quagmire now trying to figure out how to handle the issue of the repentant Boko Haram people. It's not supposed to be the government's problem. It's a federal issue and it's a national security issue. And so it's not for him to be trying to figure out how to settle them. It is for a government agency to take responsibility for these people, take them somewhere. Because like you said, there could be people there who are coming undercover to lie low and to begin to work as double agents or spies. And when the time is right, they just join their colleagues who are coming to pray at work in our lands. As far as the borders are concerned, our borders will continue to be porous because of one simple thing. When the white man sat down in Berlin in the 1800s and decided to share Africa and just draw borders, more or less straight lines or whatever they did, they failed to take cognizance of ethnic groups. So you have ethnic groups that are on both sides of the border. If you go to certain parts of the north, and I know a particular town in other vast states, where the border runs right through the middle of the village. So one side of the village is Nigeria, the other side of the village is Nigeria, and so on. And that's what happens in most of our border areas. So these are relations. These are people. I mean, even when you talk about five kilometers apart, there are the same people who interact together, the farmers together, and so on. So when you even talk about bandits or terrorists, cross-border terrorists, I tell you, when you get some of them, all you can see is that because they're in a from a French-speaking country, they don't speak English, but they probably speak the native language, and they have the same facial features as our own people. So how do you easily differentiate A from B? The only thing that is that when you see those terrorists that are from Niger and Chad, particularly the ones from Chad, they're very hostile, you know, because they've been living in, you know, what you call, in a very hostile environment for a long time.  I've told people before, when Nigerian troops go to a peacekeeping missions far away from Nigeria, they're very effective, because it is clear that you can differentiate one group from another. But when you are in the Nigerian border area and you are having to deal with people who look like your people and who speak native languages and so on and so forth, it can be, in fact, some of them look like people who are in uniform with you. And that's where we even have some problems that some of our troops may be having sympathies, because when you see somebody who speaks your language, it's difficult to now treat them like enemy.  Should that even be, should we be even having that conversation? Well, you see, what I'm talking about enemy here. I mean, I've never been to war, so I probably don't understand, but please help me understand. When he's killing your people, or when you catch him red-handed, he's the enemy. When he takes off his clothes, like all those people who are in Bernouste now and say, we are sorry and all, look at those pictures, do you see any enemy there? That is the problem that we're having to deal with. And there's a lot of psychological problems, a lot of issues. So like I said, the simplest thing is to take them on their word, but remove them from that crisis area and then do what we call proper profiling. It is after you've done the profiling, you can determine who is true and stuff like that. But definitely there's no, I mean, if you have a lion and you pick a baby lion or a tiger from the forest and bring it up with your dogs at home, it's going to be friendly up to when it is big and so on. Because you are given cooked food and you are treating it in a certain way. But honestly, the day that lion or tiger tastes blood, you will suddenly see a change in them. And that is true to its human beings. As people who have been into Liberia, all these boy soldiers and everything, it's difficult to rehabilitate these people because they've been through some psychological mess up that they can become for a few days, but just in a bus or in motor park, a little fracas break up and then you will see a tiger coming out of a human being. So does this mean that we're wasting taxpayers' money trying to rehabilitate these people? Because I always point to the fact that we did have some form of amnesty thing for the former set to Boko Haram members who said that they had surrendered. But we also heard from the army that these same people took back information, they became informants and went back to join Boko Haram. So this also goes to Beatrice, what she was saying. So should we not waste our money in trying to rehabilitate these people? Should they be facing judgment? Because we also have to take into concentration that fellow soldiers have been killed. People who are living in those communities have been victims of these same people. The girl that returned with her two children and one of the men who said he's her husband has obviously been, she has been subjected to abuse and God knows what happened to her and now she's been made a wife and a mother. Shouldn't these people be facing justice or rather facing the law so that the people who have been victims can get justice, including our soldiers who have fallen in battle? You see we have family members, wives, children, parents whose children have died in this crisis. We have communities that have lost their people and not just being shot but who have been dealt with badly. I remember one of our Air Force pilots was beheaded and they carried his head in one of the videos. How do you expect these people to feel when you say that you're forgiven? Nobody has a right to forgive people who have done something like this. We talk about amnesty, we talk about you know even you hear about backslides matter and people are still talking about you know rights, things being made right. Psychologically when a people are destroyed or damaged it takes years to get them back and that's why I'm saying that what Governor Zulum is doing it should not be his business. It's an Nigerian business because some of the soldiers who died are from different parts of Nigeria. So it's not just about talking to communities there whether we really take them back and I don't know if anybody's thinking about it but the psychological damage that is going to do to the troops that are out there that are still fighting is something that we cannot afford you know to let happen to us going forward. So there is a problem that there are ways just as we are able to take you know refugees and put them in all these camps we must take these individuals and remove them from that area and then profile them to even see how much involvement they had. That's why the International Criminal Court is there. We see what's been happening even to super presidents in Africa. Charles Taylor went through a long period of you know trial and so on because those things cannot just be reached in a way. We see when they say when justice is being done it must be seen to be done. It must be seen to be done fairly to all concerned. Yes you are sorry but what does that do for me and then you're talking about you know you know you are trying to rehabilitate them. Have you rehabilitated the families that have been messed up? Have you paid up the compensations to them? If this thing has to go both ways for us to get out of this mess we know clearly that Nigerian troops the soldiers that I worked with and those that I trained given the right tools it's not just buying new aircrafts and so on but it also includes giving them the powers to do. A commander in the field is responsible for the actions to take. When orders come from behind to change the game and it's very confusing okay and so at the end of the day we must understand what we're doing and we must do it and be seen to be doing it fairly everywhere from left to right and so on. If you remember in the first maybe major part of the Boko Haram crisis the North West was peaceful. The North West was not affected. When they started having problems it was cattle wrestling but it quickly turned into something else. Now we are seeing kidnapping and people think it's a simple thing but that's part of why do I deny the matter has been messed up because like I think it is a former senator who sent it for our lives. Sani who said every time you capture these terrorists and so on they don't look like people who have handled the millionaire in their lives. Yes they collected 300-400 million naira. Where does it go? It goes to a bureau to change and so some people powerful players central advance say they'll name these people from time to time some top government officials say they'll name the people who are behind all these things. Why are we keeping fire? Why are we handling it? The truth I'll tell you. You just played to my last question because I was going to ask that have we maybe over politicized this issue and that's why the insurgency is seemingly growing in its lips and bounds and now has different names unknown government bandits and even Boko Haram that has been there for over a decade. Absolutely you see 2023 don't any politician who says 2023 is not yet an issue he should go and tell it to his grandmother. People are stashing money because the only politics that our politicians understand is temporary use of money to confuse the masses get the votes and get back on track. So if you have a let's say even a hundred thousand dollars now and you keep it at the rate they are messing the dollar up you're going to get a lot of naira to used to play around when the time comes. So certain things are going wrong and we need to understand it and we need to get to bottom of these things and so politics has no business in war they tell you that when politicians go to war it's young innocent men and innocent civilians that die and at the end of the day you can see what's happening in certain parts of the world right now. So people also have to begin to rise up and complain and protest and not just wait for their politicians to do the right thing when the pressure is on politicians will wake up but when people continue to sit down and wait quietly it's not going to change and the day our soldiers decide to just lose confidence in themselves it will be very sad for this country. Well we pray that it doesn't get to that point the retired Air Vice-Machal Femi Gladibault thank you very much for speaking with us we appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right well that says on plus politics as we end on that very sour note I'll see you tomorrow when we talk more on Nigeria's politics I am Mary Annickle and have a good evening.


very much. Emily, do schools need better security protection? No. If so, how do you better protect students in schools? This is on my mind a lot with all the school shootings and threats. No, I don't think we need policing in the way it's done in our centralized education systems. And our centralized education systems are Emily, as far as I see it, are just destructive forces. So how do you protect students? You protect them by educating them, but our centralized schooling is not education. So it's a horrendous loop. You hire better teachers. You create more learning space. Set up a school where you're surrounded by trees, not by fences. Set up a school where kids can choose their own curriculum. Hire educators and make sure they're not overwhelmed with 30, 40 students per class that reduce your class sizes to 10 maximum. Hire, bring on healthcare workers, mental healthcare workers to deal with that. Feed students. Provide good food in schools. Just in case you have students in your class that are below the poverty line or in your school that are below the poverty line are not getting good nutrition. Provide extracurricular activities such as music, sports, playtime, going for walks in the forest. Build community. There's so much you could do other than hiring security with guns to stand outside the doors. It's a long game. It's not going to solve the problem overnight. It's taken decades to reach this point. It's going to take at least years for us to come out of it.


In this presentation I would like to talk about the foundations of draconian magic and answer some frequently asked questions about this magical tradition. I will speak about what draconian magic is, what the initiation looks like, how it manifests in the life of the initiate, and how to work with it in your daily practice. First of all, I would like to speak a few words about the draconian current in general. When you hear the word draconian, you probably think about dragons as the mythical monsters. On the one hand, this is correct, because the whole draconian tradition as a magical path is largely inspired by symbolism derived from mythological dragons and serpents. It's an old tradition, because depictions of dragons and monstrous snakes are encountered in the oldest civilizations, such as the Babylonian dragon goddess Tiamat for example. It's also a worldwide tradition, because these depictions and references to dragons are found on each continent in many magical and religious beliefs. Those ancient dragons, draconian gods, monsters and beasts usually represented the concept of darkness, chaos, or the harsh and violent forces of nature. And this is also what the draconian tradition is about. When we speak about the dragon, we don't mean an entity, god or spirit, it's a force, or an amalgam of forces that together form a powerful current. On the other hand, we have references to a serpent or dragon force existing within the human body as a potential for growth and evolution. This is represented by the image of the caduceus, with two serpents entwined around the pillar of ascent. So that's a force existing outside and inside of us. What is characteristic about this current? Well, first of all, it's very dynamic, it's always in movement, and it can also transform you in a very dynamic way. Working with draconian magic brings fast and concrete results in a short time. On the other hand, it's very chaotic, powerful and difficult to harness, like the force of a tornado. So you have to approach it step by step to be able to work with this force and learn how to control it. It's also very fiery, and that means fire as a symbol of both creation and distraction, but also as a sexual force or passion. And that means both being passionate about the path and working with it by means of your sexual energy. Some people might say that it's a dark path, but in fact it embraces both darkness and light, and the dragon itself is seen as a symbol that unites all opposites. Another question that needs to be discussed is about the initiation of the path. That's a question I receive on a regular basis. What will happen if I decide to walk the path? Well, for sure it will be changed, but how? That depends solely on you. Draconian path is very individual. Each initiation is different for each practitioner, and there is no role that would apply to everyone in the same way. I can only say that it will take you where you should be, which means it will help you realize your natural potential in the best way. So if your potential for growth lies, for example, in necromancy, it's very likely that the path will present you with opportunities that will help you develop this way. In this process you'll have to face your own demons, your weaknesses, fears, personal barriers and limitations. What these things are and how you choose to deal with them is up to you.  Your views on gold will change and evolve in the process too. So what you want from the path right now is not necessarily what you get, because in the long run, the path will make you realize that there are better, more suitable options for you to develop. The thing is, you won't know until you're there. So when you begin your journey on the path, you'll have to be able to flow with the current to open yourself to what it brings, to see every situation as a potential or a lesson that you can use to your advantage. It's a very personal path, based mostly on experience and a lot of practice. The next question we'll discuss is about manifestations of the current in our daily life. Many practitioners tend to focus on visions and insights received within their ritual space when they perform a ritual. Then they close the temple and go back to their normal life forgetting about the whole thing. That's not how draconian magic works. When you invoke the current, it will enter you, not your temple, or in other words, you are the temple for the current to manifest.   At the same time it will present you with many opportunities, tests and challenges. These manifestations of the current may come through your interactions with other people, and you'll then meet strangers who will come up with unexpected offers or questions, who would challenge and push you to move forward or to overcome your personal barriers. They may also come in the form of situations. Unexpected, challenging, harsh, requiring you to act. There's always a lesson in such encounters, so you should keep an open mind and pay attention to all those unexpected situations in your daily life because these are often manifestations of the current. This is also the validation of your work, because if you only interact with the current within your ritual space and it doesn't affect you in any other way, then you're most likely dealing with a delusion created by your ego, not with a genuine force. In this case you may have beautiful visions and wonderful conversations with spirits and deities, but there's no growth and there's no initiation. What you have to look for are concrete, tangible manifestations of the current. We have already said that the draconian current is not only an outer force, but it also exists in the form of inner energy. This inner force within the draconian tradition is called the serpent or the dragon force, or a skundani. This is the energy, or a sort of consciousness that we are born with, and it's believed to be coiled at the base of the spine. It is also believed to be the life force of a human being and the vehicle of evolution, because when it ascends from the base of the spine and flows upward, it awakens psychic abilities, cleanses the body and the aura, and transforms and expands consciousness. From the left-hand path perspective we might say that this is the force that transforms man into God. Symbolically, it's represented as a rising snake or two snakes coiled around a pillar or a staff, which is symbolic both of the spine as the central channel for the kundalini flow and the path through which man ascends to Godhood. This however is a huge subject, and if you're interested in the draconian current, the kundalini force and the process of awakening, you will find more information in my draconian ritual book. Another question that we frequently receive is about the feminine symbolism in our work, especially in art and sergents. On the one hand, it is part of my personal path as I work a lot with female magic and my art and writings reflect this work. On the other hand, this is also related to the nature of the current itself. When we work with the draconian tradition, we often encounter an idea that the dragon is a feminine force, like Tiamat or Ta'ut for example, and the whole tradition derives from cults of the goddess, the mother, the primordial womb. Then, if we approach the cliff-off, there's a theory that the whole dark tree is feminine and its name means harlot or whore referring to Lilith. And it is also believed that the entrance to the dark tree is through the cave of Lilith, which is a feminine symbol, or between the legs of the goddess, which can be interpreted in many ways. The Kundalini force, which is the vehicle of initiation, is often thought to be feminine. It is Shakti that rises to unite with Shiva. The term ascending flame, which I use in my work, and in the work of the temple of ascending flame, can also be seen as a feminine force. And we can compare it to Shakina, Shakti, Lilith. There are many possibilities here. In other words, in whatever way we look at it, the feminine current is always dominant in this work. So the symbolism used in the sigils reflects all these aspects in a natural way. And finally, I'll also address here the question about the cliff and the Sephiroth. In what way they are different, and if we can use the same methods of work to explore them. When we look at the Tree of Life, we usually see it as a map, with ten realms and pathways connecting these realms. The same paradigm is applied to the dark tree. This makes the work of these realms logical and systematic. But when we speak about the cliff-off, nothing is simple or logical. We tend to view the Tree of Cliff-off as the negative reflection of the Tree of Sephiroth. The truth is much more complicated. When you enter the night side, you're suddenly faced with an endless mass of tunnels, pathways, power zones, spheres, worlds and dimensions. Nothing here has structure, and nothing corresponds in a direct way to the Tree of Life. When you walk with the Sephiroth, you're used to a coherent and logical structure, and each path leads from one concrete point to the other. The cliff-off and nothing like that. And not all methods of work that you use with the Sephiroth can be applied here. Magic of the night side is intuitive, irrational, and it has to be experienced to be understood. Some might say that the cliff-off are pure destruction, and the Sephiroth pure creation. Again, it is not that simple. I personally see the bright and the dark trees not as two separate concepts, but as one, and connected all the time, like you and your shadow for example. So when you access the bright side of the tree, you also access the dark one, and the other way around. You may choose to focus on one side only, but then there is no balance. I've heard a theory that the cliff-off are like shells on an ant. You have to go through them to get to the core of the fruit. So instead of seeing them as evil or negative forces, I see them as forces that challenge and test the practitioner. And these tests prepare us for successive initiations on the tree. The realms on the tree of life are ruled by archangels. On the dark tree we have archdemons. But if you do some research, you'll easily find out that all these beings are the old gods and goddesses that originally had no center associations. They simply embodied the many forces that the universe is composed of. These forces were creative and destructive at the same time. Of course, if you choose to see them as evil archdemons, you'll most likely see them this way. But it's only their outer form, and in their core the primal beings that you can work with to get to the very root of all creation and all destruction. And that's how we can access them, if we choose to forget about all prejudice and negativity that surrounds the dark tree. For more information about the temple and our work, check out our website, which is ascendingflame.com. And if you have any questions to me, you can contact me through my Facebook page or my official website.


But if your interpretation is incorrect, you're committing intellectual suicide because you are showing that science contradicts a false interpretation. Well, so what? I agree with you. The question is, what is an accurate interpretation of Genesis and does science contradict that accurate interpretation of Genesis? And my point is rather simple. There is absolutely no science in Genesis to contradict. There's no biology, no zoology, no astronomy, no science anywhere in the Genesis account. That is why for anybody to say, oh, I can't believe Genesis because a contradict science is intellectually dishonest because there's no science in Genesis for modern science or ancient science to contradict. It's that simple. Okay. So in Genesis, when it lists the order of events that God created, supposedly, is that order accurate to the order that things were actually created?


In terms of opportunities or benefits of the technology, I can mainly see two basically. The one is about creating new businesses and that's thanks to the disruptive nature of the technology because it allows to basically disintermediate certain parties in the value chain and by doing so you can simplify the ecosystem, you can reinvent the value proposition. Sometimes you can even invent new value propositions which didn't exist before just by enabling this peer-to-peer communication between a buyer and a seller. And we do this basically for various verticals inside the company. The banking vertical, the health vertical, government and insurance. So we try basically there to support our various customers with consulting services at the minute but also with infrastructure solutions. There's a second part of the equation, it's also how the technology could be used internally as a telco and here it's more basically looking at how it can help us reduce costs on certain processes like number portability or even roaming. But at the minute the level of maturity and these ideas is not as far as it is for the other technologies. I think the biggest concern we see on the B2C segment is the whole privacy concern. The fact that originally in the original Bitcoin blockchain all the transactions are completely transparent, seeable by all the participants, by all the miners and we have lots of basic corporate applications where this is not a requirement wished by the community or by the ecosystem. So there basically it forces us to create lots of workarounds in order to provide to still benefit from the distributed activities, from the fact that the smart contract, the fact that they can execute a logic but still by preserving a certain privacy for various parties. That's the biggest concern we have at the minute and the biggest challenge for my point of view. That's a difficult question. I didn't have a lot to do on that front so far. But I suspect that the main question will be what is the legal validity of the ledgers you are creating. Does this have a legal recognition at the court? There were already lots of jurisprudence on this type of questions. It's mainly going into the right direction so far but I believe this will be the biggest challenge in the future. That's a difficult question because I wasn't involved with the standardization body so far but there is no real need also because it all started from open source movements. We have the Bitcoin, we have Ethereum, we have Hyperledger and there is no real need for a standardization body coming in and regulating things. However, in the future what I can imagine is what type of proofs are needed again to have a legal validity in front of the court, what type of elements, the record that you need to bring. The biggest challenge will probably be in the trade finance where you have good movings from one geographical region to another and how to get a record being validated from one jurisdiction from another. I think that would be the biggest help standardization bodies could bring on that front.


This commentary is a tool, a guidance tool for practitioners to apply, who have to apply and interpret the Third Geneva Convention, so it contains a detailed commentary on every provision on the 143 articles. It's an article by article commentary giving further guidance and details on the meaning and interpretation of these specific provisions. The previous commentary was finished in 1958 and obviously in the last 60 years there's been many developments in the area of law, but also in the way we understand how armed conflict is fought and the certain protections needed for individuals. So we really needed to update and find a refreshed way, a modern way of ensuring that the protections are understood and applied. The process starts with the research into the sources to capture these developments in law and practice and on this basis initial drafts are produced and then these drafts go through various review stages. An important step in this review process is the peer review process, which includes 50 external experts, both academics and practitioners, who have reviewed each draft in their personal capacity and their feedback has been integrated. We aim for those who actually have to apply the Geneva Convention, particularly the Third Geneva Convention, to be those who would find this updated commentary the most useful. So of course that means states, that means diplomats, members of the armed forces, but also policy makers and those who are interested in understanding more about international humanitarian law. It's a very useful tool that helps commanders, that helps RME people to understand what exactly shall be done in order to respect and comply with the IHL today. I have never seen a military commander, I have never seen a soldier who would tell me that no I'm not going to comply with IHL because I'm against it. No, never. But I have many who told me well okay this is clear but technically on the ground what am I supposed to do? So that is the question that commentary is actually answering. Military lawyers know that ICRC commentaries are treated with respect and they carry a great deal of weight. In those circumstances it's obvious that even when they may disagree with the contents of the commentary they're going to want to know what the commentary actually says. In that respect it's a very important resource for military lawyers and through them their commanders. The commentaries offer us various important points and also contributions that we highlight as valuable. On the one hand we could point out those criteria that they establish to determine the reach of the definition of Article 4 on war prisoners. In the same way they develop some criteria regarding which we should take into account to determine if a person belongs or not to the armed forces, with which there is an impact regarding the measures of protection established in the convoy. In the last 60 years we have seen a vast increase in the number of women directly participating in hostilities. So you will see in this updated commentary a much more clearly articulated area relating to female prisoners of war, in particularly their protections and issues such as privacy. The commentary is also important because it hasn't avoided some of the difficult issues. This includes things like the relationship with international human rights law. It also includes some of the issues such as the use of force in relation to prisoners of war. While with electronic documents these days you don't need to be too careful about what you take care of, with you you can always fit things on a disk. I think if you're still going on a deployment or you're going to a conference or to a meeting where prisons of war issues are going to be discussed in any great detail, I think you should probably find room for a hard copy of this particular commentary.