It is so nice to be here, it's here in this room. It's kind of exciting. I went to school in Franciscan and attended talks here, and I've never been on this side, so this is kind of exciting, I know, I know. All right, well, let's go ahead and get started, and we'll begin in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come Holy Spirit. God, all that we do is yours. I give you permission to take over every single thought and every single word that comes out of my mouth, and I give you permission to enter into every single heart that is here. God, we are all yours. Do with us as you will. Amen. Amen, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Hey, hello, everyone, my name is Maddie Pablo. I am coming to you from Miami, Florida. It's a great place. The heat lost the game last night, and I'm not over it, but it is okay, because we have another chance on Monday. All right, so I'm coming to you from Miami. My family is originally from Dominican Republic and Palestine, so I think that's pretty cool. And I got to go to the Holy Land this year for the first time, which is pretty epic. Has anyone been to the Holy Land? Raise your hand. If you haven't, put that on your bucket list, because it's pretty awesome, right? It's the land of holiness, and it's a really great thing. And I got to go to the land of holiness in my Jesus year, so I'm 33. And so, yeah, super exciting. I definitely threw a Jesus party this year, where everyone came like biblical characters from the New Testament. Yeah, yeah, but not Jesus or Mary, because I thought that was borderline, not okay. But I had a back and a Jerusalem, and we walked on water and had water and wine, and it was the most extra thing I've done in my life, and I loved every second of it, and it's wonderful.  The fact that you're here just shows that you want more and that you're hungry, and that's what we're here for. And so this topic and this, when we were talking about what kind of things to do, I was kind of talking about, you know what? I think we need to address our passions and desires, and kind of the things that we love, because I don't think we talk about it enough. And I think way too many of us, and this was my assumption as well, we kind of assume that when you get to your age, you've got to figure it out. And as I get older, I realize I know nothing. So I'm learning and I'm growing, and there's so much more to go, right? And so I want us to just start with that basic question if you're here, you know I'm gonna ask it, right? Like, what are you passionate about? Okay, what are you passionate about? And I want you guys to think about that.  What are you passionate about? Have you guys seen TED Talks ever? Yeah. All right, so there's TED Talks, and this whole thing started from people that just have a lot of knowledge, and they started doing these presentations on things that they really care about, and they're really passionate about, and they're very knowledgeable on, and they started blowing up, right? And there are some that have blown up more than others, and Bernay Brown is one of them that I'm super grateful for. Her thing on, I know she's awesome. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look her up. She has a whole thing of one ability to change my life, et cetera, great. And it's this thing of what amazing things can happen when you give someone a platform to talk about their passions and their knowledge, and people are able to listen and learn. I'm learning more and more that there are areas that I know, and there are areas that I'm comfortable with. So I studied theology and psychology. I'm comfortable in those areas. And there are areas that I have no idea about anything, like finance, and anything with numbers, and anything medical, and anything with the ground. I mean, there's just so many topics that I don't know, right? And it's cool because we're able to learn from each other. And so I wanna do something that's gonna give you a little bit. I know I'm gonna ask you to go out of your comfort zone, but hey, we're here, so why not do it, okay?   But I love that you're ready, I love that you're ready. All right.  And what we're gonna do is there's something really powerful about having conversations with people and learning from each other and hearing each other's stories. And I think we don't do it enough.  I don't do that, right? It's just a conversation. Hopefully you talk to people at some point in life, right?  So if you have to just, if you know this person, turn over to this person. If you know both of them, turn around, right? And what I want you to do, we're gonna do an exercise and listening as well because listening is important. And so this is the challenging part.   And then I'm gonna say stop. And here's the thing, and pay attention because if you're an extrovert and you think out loud like me, when the other person's talking, you are not. Yeah, you're not talking, you're listening, okay? So great job, all right? So you're just listening and actually paying attention. And I think that's a really big thing, right? And if again, if you're like me, when the thousand thoughts come in your head while the other person's talking, really try to focus on what the other person's listening, okay?  Does that sound good to everyone? All right, look around and just like make eye contact to the person that you're gonna connect with. All right? Bye! High school teacher for eight years. So this is just bringing me back. It's pretty great, it's pretty great. Thank you, thank you. All right, raise your hand if you learned something new. Awesome. Raise your hand if you know more than you thought you did about this topic.  Raise your hand if you know less than you think you did about this topic. Here's the thing and one more question. Raise your hand if you wish you had a more time to talk to this person. Guys, be friends. Go have dinner after, you're welcome. Oh good, yay, yay, friendship. Friendship is great. All right, I'm gonna stop and think about these things, right? Because when we talk about our passions and our purpose and kind of this word and we're talking about discernment and I think that's a question, that's a thing that I went to school here and I think the word was used way too much, right? We don't have to discern every single thing but it's a thing of oftentimes and when we talk about the word discernment I'm just gonna go for Google on this because let's keep it simple, all right? The word discernment means the ability to judge well through obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding. So the ability to judge well through the guidance through spiritual guidance, right? And so what that means is typically, we understand this, that it's not, it's choosing two things that are good because hopefully, and again, I think we can over spiritualize things a little bit. It's like, oh, I don't know if to do this or this. Well, if this is a sin, the answer is no, right? Like, right? Like, start with rational thinking and you're gonna hear me say that a little bit as well because I think sometimes like, oh, this is such a complicated thing. If there's an evil or a good, we're always good. That's easy. The hard part is when it's two good things and then things get really complicated and the whole listening aspect, right? That's really difficult because it's not that easy to listen all the time because God isn't always super clear. I would like him to be, but he's not always super clear with me, right? And it's like, God, I wanna do your will and I will do it. You just gotta tell me with like a billboard and some flashing lights and make it real obvious, right? But he doesn't work that way, right? And so in order to talk about these things of passion and purpose and our desires, I'm gonna go super old school and this is gonna be one of the basic questions that anyone will ever ask you and probably one that you've heard since you were a child, right? And it's a very simple question. The question is, who are you? And this is something that, again, I mean, I talk to teenagers often and it's a very big question and I think for a very long time, I thought, oh, well, this topic of identity only works with like teenagers because that's when they don't know who they are and then you figure it out, but then I became an adult and I realized, oh, this question's for me too and this question's for my sisters and it questions for my mom and for my grandma and I'm seeing wounds and things from generation to generation that make it really hard to know what's the answer to this, right? Now, I don't wanna get our signals crossed here so let's make something very clear. Our identity must first and always be rooted in Christ, right? And so first and foremost, who are we? We belong to the Lord, right? We are his son, we are his daughter and that is the root of all our identity. And in fact, every time that I do the sign of the cross, I always, in my head, I say, I belong to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, right? That it connects me to my baptism, that it connects me to, like, from the moment that I was baptized, my parents said that before I was theirs, I belonged to the Lord. And so every time that I do the sign of the cross, it should be a reminder of that, that God, like, before anything happens, I first and foremost belong to you. And I was thinking about this thing of identity and kind of talking about passions and gifts and all these different topics. I was thinking, I was looking at scripture because obviously, hello, it's the best. Okay, great. And I was looking at different stories and I was thinking about, like, oh, the parable of the talents and all these different things. And then I got a different parable that came to mind and hopefully it makes sense because it made sense in my mind, right? And it's the parable of the sower. I'm gonna go ahead and read it and then we're gonna kind of dissect this a little bit. And this comes from Matthew 13. And it says, a sower went out to sow and he sowed some seeds fell, sorry, and as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they had not much soil and immediately they sprang up since they had no depth of soil. When the sun rose, they were scorched and since they had no root, they were there away. Other seeds fell upon thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain. Some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30. He who has ears, let him hear. The word of the Lord, thanks be to God. So I was thinking about this and I was thinking, obviously, God talks about this and he says that the seeds are the word and that there's different terrains and all these different things, but when I was reading this in regard to our identity, I was thinking that God is the sower and the seeds are different aspects of who we are. It's gifts and different things that he wants to show us and he wants to tell us and he wants to explain to us and there was a question that I started asking when I went to school here and it was a very simple question is it was, God, how do you see me? God, how do you see me? And it took me years to answer this, but it's a thing of that, often times, I think that God is trying to tell me things and he's trying to show me things, but because of my brokenness, because of my past, because of the family I grew up in who are lovely but imperfect, right? Because of different wounds, because of different things, I have different terrains, right? Like I have areas that because of different woundedness he's trying to tell me he loves me and he's trying to tell me who I am and he's trying to tell me that I am good, but it's a rough area and it's not able to go into the soil and there are areas that I think I got it and I think I haven't figured out, but I'm surrounded by people that are also broken and I think I'm flourishing and then they start choking me and I feel like I'm losing the things that God is trying to do, right? And there are areas that it's not even able to enter because it's a do not enter area. I don't know about you, but there are certain aspects of my life that for a very long time, because of shame and because of different things, I have giant caution signs around. It's like, God, don't even try to mention this, right? Like, I know you know all, but let's pretend like you don't, right? And like, let's not go there. And then there's the beautiful parts that it's like, okay, God, I got it. I know that I am yours. I got it. And the sad part is that in different times of my life, I've been all of it, right? That there are times that I got it and there are times that I'm choked and there are times that I'm like, do not enter and there are times whatever. And you know what the really frustrating part is? And then I start all over again. Oh, it's like, I think I thought I had it, you know? I've been in therapy for many years. Like, yeah, I got it. And then something else happens. Next layer, right? It's like, we have to go in parts. And this thing of God is trying to show us who we are and he's trying to love us and he's trying to tell us, these are your gifts and these are your talents and these are the things that I'm trying to show you. So like, how can the Lord put these things together and how can the Lord restore? And a part of that is recognizing that he is the sower and we're not and that he's trying to give us the answers and he's trying to speak to us and he's trying to help us grow and he's trying, I mean, not only does he give us the seeds, he gives us the like, I'm not a planter person, but fertilizer, right? I have a whore, I mean, I have a gift of killing plants, but like, he gives us the sunlight and he gives us the water and he gives us the nourishments to help that seed grow. But if we don't see that he's trying to give it to us, it's not gonna go far, right? And so in this process, I want you guys to start thinking of this question and it's a basic question, but like, what are your gifts? What are your gifts? What are the things that you're passionate about? What are the things that you get really excited about from silly things?  And look, I just think it's the absolute best. Thank you, Lord, right? I once had an adoration, this is a sad story, but someone told me, one of my priest friends was like, if you ever distracted in prayer, just bring your distractions to the Lord. I was like, all right, I was really hungry that day. I had a full hour adoration meditating upon food and that sounds, I know it sounds funny, I know, but I literally was like, the body is so cool, Lord, and you're so brilliant and like, the digestive system is so epic and the way that all the nutrients work and God, you didn't have to give us taste buds. Like God loves us so much that he gave us taste buds and then I started thinking about all the different countries and all the different herbs and the spices and I, I deep dived, I deep dived, right? But it's this thing of like, this sounds silly, but one of my passions is food and one of my passions is cooking and one of my real good passions is eating, right? So like, since it could be something city like that, but also something, there's deeper things, right? Like I'm a huge advocate for mental health and I will go really deep on that and I've served a lot of teens and a lot of people and I've got to walk with people through attempted suicides and a lot of different things and it's a topic that I really believe that all of us can benefit from counseling and Jesus, right? That they're not opposed, right? That we can grow together and so these are things that I'm passionate about and for years I thought my passions were something that like, oh well God doesn't want to use that, that's just something separate, right? And I realized this, I had a conversion and you'll hear about this tomorrow, but when I first learned about Franciscan, I didn't even know it existed. I was at another school and I was like, oh, I have one semester, I'll just take fun courses, right?  Should I study psychology, right? Like, it seems like God was working through my desires and my passions and sometimes again, we're like, oh, what do you want and what brings you joy? Like, what do you love and that question of like, what do you desire, right? Like, what do you desire? And if you, there's a scripture verse that is always used when talking about desire, right? Does anyone wanna guess what it is? The Lord will grant you the desires of your heart, right? And that, for someone that has had a lot of desires that aren't fulfilled, sometimes is annoying, right? But it's because I only hear the second part of the quote and so I wanna focus a little bit on the first part because there's something very thing and oftentimes this question of like, what do you desire and what do you want, right? It can be very complicated. I don't know if you guys have seen the notebook, if you haven't, you know, it's not a morally great movie, but it's a great movie.  All right, but it's this thing of like, what do you want?  And we're like, oh, and we just over complicated, way too much, right? When I taught theology, I taught morality and sacraments, I would always ask these like questions and my students would be like, Jesus, Jesus is the answer and I would roll my eyes and I'm like, I mean, yes, but no, right? But really the answer of what we want and what we desire needs to first be the Lord. That we need to first be aimed at God, you are what I desire and you are what I want. And the first part of this quote in Psalm 37 is very important. And Psalm 37 says, delight yourself in the? Lord. In who? The Lord. We need to delight ourselves in the Lord. If we don't delight ourselves in the Lord, then we're gonna have disordered desires. That we need to first build our relationship with God and he will grant you the desires of our heart. But at that point, if I'm delighting myself in the Lord, then what I desire, guess what? Is what he desires. And then we're talking, now we're in business, right? But so many times it's like, no, I wanna do my own thing and I wanna figure it out and if your desires, right? Because Satan knows us. Did you know that? One of my favorite books in high school, Screwtape Letters. I know, sounds weird. But, and this was like before my big conversion, but I was like, this book is epic.  It's essentially what it is, right? But it's brilliant because you're reading it and it's like, dang, he's so sneaky, but he's so smart, right? He's cunning as it says in the scripture and he really is.  And he also knows your passions, right? And so very often we need to be careful because he can grab what is good and twist it. We see this in the world, right? We see that we all desire to be known to be loved, to be seen. Like, looking at sexual desires, that's a good thing, but there's been so much twisting of it, right? Then now we're in a different category and that's disordered, right? And so how can we allow ourselves to really focus on God? Like, let me recognize my desires and let me make sure that they're oriented towards you.  Because it is a very simple answer and that answer is prayer. It all comes down to that. Because if God is, if we're, how do I explain this? You can't delight yourself in someone you don't know, right? You can't, it's not possible. And when we talk about prayer, I'm not saying just our Hail Marys and our Fathers. Don't get me wrong, those are very beautiful and please don't misunderstand me, those are great prayers, right? But we need to understand that the root of everything is a relationship and the root of any conversation in the Catechism talks about how prayer is a surge of the heart, right? Embracing both trials and joy, that it's a lifting up of our hearts and that needs to first go by just talking to Jesus, right? I often talk about my God daughter the other day, she's 10 years old. And I often talk about that the other day I was like, okay, Eva, like, we're gonna pray and she's like, okay, all right.  She's like, our Father, who are in heaven. I'm like, yeah, Eva, it's a beautiful prayer. We finished it. And then I was like, let's just talk to Jesus. And she looked at me like, what do you mean? I was like, well, do you know how I pray?  And then she laughed at me.  And if I'm friends with Jesus, then I'm gonna be ridiculous with him. And I'm gonna, when I'm angry, he's gonna know it. And when I'm happy, he's gonna know it. And when I'm, whatever, he's gonna know it because he's God, like, why am I gonna try to hide it from him, right? And so it needs to start with prayer because when we talk to Jesus, then he can orient us towards the good. And he can tell us, like, this is what I've created for and this is what I want you to know. And when we spend time with Jesus, we can know truth, right? And this seems like another thing that I learned in my time here, right? Satan is the father of? Yeah, Satan is the father of lies and he's really good at it. And he knows the lies that we believe about ourselves. And he'll feed it to us, right? You're not good enough. You're never gonna mount anything. You don't have talent. God can't use that. God can't do this. God can't do that. And we see it even with our younger generation. I remember for career day, I had someone come in, oh, I was so upset. This is my first year teaching, okay? And it was career day and he was like an accountant or something like that. And he was talking about his job and honestly, he sounded miserable talking about his job. It was like, this is rough, right? And then he was like, and then he told my kids. He was like, and this is why you need to be practical.  And if you wanna dance, like forget about that because that doesn't give you money. And I'm like, hmm, listen, I'm sitting in the corner and I'm like, I'm about to punch this man in the face. Sorry, I get a little aggressive sometimes. All right. But it's this thing that at one point it was like, oh, do you have any questions? And I rose my hand and I was like, I have a question. So you keep talking about all the things that you do with your money on the weekends. Like, do you actually like your job? Are you happy? And he looked at me and he said, I like what I do with the money I get from my job on the weekends. And then I looked at him and I said, so no. Okay, cool. And then my whole class was just like, oh dang, right? But it's this thing, right, that we think that God can't use our, the things that seem silly God wants to use because they're mattered to you and because he placed it in your heart, right? And it's not silly. And so for, yeah, I'm gonna tell my students that to be practical, yeah, sure. But that doesn't mean give up on everything, right? And then we need art and we need beauty and we need goodness. And if we don't know how to recognize our, so first, first step, we need to recognize our gifts, right? We need to recognize our gifts and we need to claim them because Satan wants to say, or the world wants to say, or your mother or siblings want to say, right? Or your children want to say because sometimes me and my sisters, haven't always been the most loving to our mother and we think that it's a joke and then I realize my mom's actually sensitive and things that I say matter, right? And so we need to be able to edify each other. So first, like recognize our gifts and then say, okay, God, I claim the truth that I am these things. And I also wanna claim the gifts that you have given me and I wanna use them for your glory. Deacon mentioned this yesterday. I thought it was so beautiful. It was so simple. He was just like, worship is a response. That was so simple, right? Worship is a response. He was talking about singing, but I was thinking if I know my gifts and I use them, that's my response. And so then my gifts can be a form of worship and that's awesome, right? And when you know these things, you become the most alive and you can use them. The Lord is funny and the way I got to speaking is just funny because he's ridiculously creative, right? But it took me a while to realize this, but when I'm speaking, there's a joy in me. Like I get excited. I'm gonna be honest about something. Minutes before this talk, I was telling my best friend that I wanted to run and not do this talk, okay? I've had a rough week. I didn't really wanna be here and I was just like, oh, when I'm up here, I know God's doing it. And not only is God working through me and not only is God speaking for me, but he's speaking to me and he knows that I'm stubborn and sometimes he needs me to say the words so I can listen to myself, right? Yeah, yeah. So when you know your gifts and when you can use them, you come alive. You come alive. And we wanna cling that. And just to clarify, if I were to stop speaking, God would still use me and I would still be fulfilled because we are not in what we do. And that's a big thing as well, right? So yes, I want you to use your gifts and recognize them, but also recognize that there are so many more gifts than just the obvious ones, right? So there's like different levels of different things and this is all a part of doing and following God's will, right? Because this topic of God's will is, it's a complicated one. It's a complicated one because he's God and then we're not. And you know, Jeremiah 2,911, for I know the plans I have for you says the Lord and it's like, great, tell me, right? But it's not that obvious sometimes. So how do we know God's will? The first step is just grace builds upon nature. And what I mean by that is he's gonna start with what is obvious. First obvious thing, and I said it before, if it's a bad thing or it leads you to sin, that's not it. That's not what God wants for your life. So that's option number one. Number two, in recognizing your gifts and passions, the Lord can use them to do his will. He can, not always, but he can use them to do his will, right? And then we wanna just start with basic things. And when we talk about gifts, this is what I was gonna talk about. There are natural gifts and supernatural, right? So natural ones, if you sing really well, if you're really athletic, if you are a great cook, if you are really good and have, you're like a sommelier because you have those taste buds that you can like smell something and be like, this has a note of whatever, like, I don't know, okay? Whatever your gifts are, that's like natural. And then there's one that's a little bit harder to find. And that's those spiritual gifts. And yes, this Bible gives us gifts and fruits and we will talk about that. But it also says that the gifts are endless. And it says that there's so much more than what we mentioned here.  Like there are so many things that I think we've overpassed, like if it's nothing and they're actually really good. Do you know what I'm saying? And if you're here, and I want you guys to think about this right now, and I'm gonna give you guys a minute to just make a list if you have paper and pen and if not, you know, take out your phone and write it or put a mental note. What are your gifts? And I'm gonna give you guys a minute to actually write them down. And I hope you can think about at least five. So what are your gifts? Go ahead and make a list of them. Thumbs up if we're good. If you're here because I asked this to the other day, to a bunch of adults, and there were multiple people that were like, I have no idea. Right? And there was a man actually, he must have been like in his 60s or 70s. And he's like, I don't know. And then I was like, well, are you married? And he's like, yeah, go ask your wife.  But a big part of being in good relationship with people is that the people you surround yourself with should be able to say your gifts. So if you don't know, I hope you do know first of all, I really hope you know. But let's say you listed five. I want you to ask your spouse or your best friend what your gifts are. And they should be able to tell you. And if not, let's work on that, right? And can you say their gifts? Because if you can't, then I don't think we're doing a good enough job of seeing God and others, right? Like I think we should be better at recognizing how the Lord is working in our own hearts and then helping others see how the Lord is working in theirs, right? And to be able to do that. And how can we do this? Grace builds on nature. So start with obvious things, but then it's gonna go higher to just asking God. This is one of my favorite prayers. You'll hear me talk about this tomorrow, this prayer I say it every day of my life. It's just come Holy Spirit. And through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be able to say, okay God, what are the things that I'm created for? What are you calling me to? And how can I take action to this? And I was talking to a friend of mine and she was saying, she's like, some people have really beautiful voices and that's great. And you can hit all the right tone and you can do all the right things, but if you're not using it in the right way and if you're using it to tear people down, it's gonna sound horrible, right? And there's a scripture verse that I'm gonna be honest for the longest time. I could not even, I mean, it's read so much in weddings that I like roll my eyes a little bit at it. The first line, it says, if I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. If your gifts aren't oriented towards the Lord and if your gifts don't involve the Lord and if they're not guided by Jesus and if they're not edifying others and we're not loving each other well as the body of Christ, you're just a gong. And I don't want you to be that because guess what? God didn't create you to be that. God created you to be beautiful and good and to bring out the best in yourself first and in others. And it's in recognizing God, like this is how you created me and these are the things that I am, these are who I am, then I can go forward. And I think sometimes, and we do this as adults and we do this, I saw this a lot in my years of learning and stuff, we over complicate things and we hear things and it's like, oh, well this must be discernment of spirits of X, Y, Z or we start throwing in like super theological terms or we think that every little thing is Satan, you know what I mean? And it's not always Satan, sometimes it's just a traffic light, you know what I mean? Like, come on, man. I remember one day someone was like, they were over spiritualizing to like a high level and he was like, no, it wasn't this, it's because Satan or I was like, actually it's just because you didn't do your work. Like, we can't get to this extreme, right? We wanna be able to just be guided through the eyes and lens of the Lord. That's what discernment is, right? To be able to see things as the Lord sees it and to be able to know, okay, God, this is what you're calling me to and I'm gonna first and foremost do this through love. And if you think that God is calling you to be mean to someone or to be prejudiced towards someone or to reject someone or to bring division to someone, even within the church, that's not God. Because our God is a one of unity and one of love and one of goodness. And if we have that holier than thou mentality, that's not it, it's not it, right?  And I'm gonna be honest, I look at these gifts and fruits, right? Lianne Bowen, I forgot to add her, but this is her artwork, I just wanna make that very clear, right? We have the gifts and fruits. And oftentimes we only think about these things when we're like the sacraments. Confirmation, right? And it's like, kids, what are the gifts and fruits? And they say them, but I don't think they know what it means and I don't think they understand what they have and I don't think they understand a big picture. But in looking at the gifts and fruits that the fruits come from a life with God. Fruits come from a life with God. That because we know the Lord and because we're living with Him and walking with Him, we have joy and peace and charity and kindness and patience and goodness and faithfulness and self-control and gentleness. Because I know Jesus, I'm able to have a life like that. Because I know the Lord. Because I know the Lord and He tells me who I am. Because I know the Lord and He is the one that's guiding my passions. Because I know the Lord and He's the one guiding my decisions, I'm able to have that lifestyle. Does that mean you're never gonna suffer? No, no you will. But it means that even amidst the suffering and amidst the things, like God is with us, amen? And then looking at the gifts, piety and wisdom and fortitude and understanding and fear of the Lord and knowledge and counsel and modesty and chastity and all these things and to know that there's still more to go. And the Lord wants all these things for us. But guess what? My gifts are different than your gifts and your gifts are different than hers and the people that you know, I don't know and the things that God wants to do through you, He can do through me because we're different people and we live in different parts of the world and I don't work where you work and I'm not in your family, right? And so the Lord wants to work through all of us but we first need to be able to listen to what He's saying, to listen to Him and to know that if God is calling us to do something, He's gonna first equip us and He's gonna orient our desires, right? For a very long time when I first got into my faith I was absolutely petrified of becoming a nun.   Like, this is 10 year old Marty, right? And then I got into my faith and the God is so good and one of the first things I had to do was think about becoming a nun because if I'm serious about my faith and this goes for anyone, if anyone's serious about your faith you should really take a time for discernment of like, am I called, what did I call to, right? Men and women, like, what do we call to? And that was a big thing and I thought for a while I was like, okay, I had to, I was like preparing myself, like, all right, so I'm gonna be a sister and I'm gonna have it to give up everything and it's gonna be fine and I'm gonna be miserable and I'm like, I'm thinking, this is me thinking early on, early on and then someone looked at me and they're like, what kind of God do you think you serve? And I was like, what?  And I was like, oh, yeah, no, that doesn't make sense at all, actually, right? And then once I knew that, I was able to property discern and I love sisters. I have beautiful nuns that are my incredible friends that I'm so incredibly grateful for. Some of them are in this room and I'm so grateful for them. And I properly discerned if God wanted me to do that but I told Jesus, God, if you want me to be a nun you're gonna orient my desires and you're gonna make me want it and be excited about it and do it or if not, you're gonna help me equip myself, right? Because Moses was chosen, but Moses couldn't speak but then God sent him Aaron, right? And he got his bases covered, right? And so we need to be able to say, okay, God, if I am with you and you're with me and we're communicating and my heart is in your heart, then orient my desires and you will call me and work through my desires.  That would be a very mean God, right? That would be a very mean God. And so Lord, how can you speak and to know that he speaks in a still small voice? Sometimes it's a billboard. And sometimes it's a very loud, clear statement. When I was becoming a teacher, I was like, Lord, should I be a teacher? I opened up St. Faustina's Diary and it said, go and teach in my name. And I was like, got you. All right, right? Sometimes it's very clear. And sometimes you're praying for the same thing for years and years and you're gonna nuttin', right? I have no idea what you want from me, Jesus. And sometimes he speaks through other people and sometimes it's through scripture. Please read scripture. The whole book is talking to you, literally. It's really good stuff. It's also super dramatic and very intense. But awesome, okay? Read scripture. And sometimes it's through music and sometimes it's through your desires because if you are with him, he's gonna work through that, amen? And so, yes, there will be obstacles. Like, yeah, there's gonna be obstacles. There's gonna be things that are gonna be challenging and you'll hear more about my story tomorrow, but life with God is, John Paul II says, life with Christ is a wonderful adventure and it is. It has a lot of highs and lows and times when you're like, woohoo, Jesus and times when you're hiding from Jesus and times when you wanna run away and times when you're like, woohoo, right? It's a roller coaster. And I wouldn't have it any other way, right?   And God's still looking at you and he's trying to plant more seeds and he's trying to remind you who you are.  And he still wants to work in your family. Amen? Amen.  And he wants to show you and remind you who you are. I started praying years ago, God, how do you see me? I was in a household here. And it was this big thing going around my household. I asked Jesus, how He sees you. And I was like, oh, this is weird. This is very weird. And my friends were like, I'm a cupcake. And I'm a daisy. And I was like, and it sounded silly. It sounded silly. And yet, their description about it was not silly at all. And the Lord was pursuing each of their hearts individually through these random examples and metaphors. And then I was reminded of something that God pursues our heart constantly in different ways. And the way He pursues your heart is different than the way He pursues mine. And the things that you love are different than the things that I love. So I feel really loved through food. And maybe you feel really loved through, I don't know, waterfalls. I love waterfalls too, though. My three things are fire, waterfalls, and food. But maybe if you're really loved through carpentry or something, I don't know. Whatever it is, the Lord is pursuing your heart. And I remember we were doing a silent retreat. And it was in Stubenville, 50 girls who talk way too much in a house in a silent retreat was very entertaining. And I remember being on the ground. And the whole day, I had this random song in my head. And it was like, you are beautiful, my sweet, sweet song. And I was like, that is a random song. I haven't heard a song in years. Lord, this is so weird. And I remember I was prostrate on the ground. Our brothers were doing music and praying in worship. And I felt they were singing another song.  And I was like, Jesus, why is this in my head? I'm trying to focus here.  And I was like, wait, am I your song? That's so cute, Lord, right? And I started going through this whole thing of, he started saying to me, you have all these different instruments and all these different keys and all these different things. And I want to be your composer. And if you allow me to be your composer, we can make beautiful music together. Now, was that, I mean, I really do believe that that was the Lord speaking. Why? Because it was a super random thought. So how do you know God is knowing, speaking? One, a really random thought that you're like, what? Two, it brings you peace. Brings you peace. Three, it makes sense. And four, there's follow through. That theme of the Lord seeing me as a song was years ago. And I never really share this part. This is the first time I've ever said it in a talk, actually. But it's this thing of, ask God how he sees you. And be bold to ask for specifics, even if it's something silly like a cupcake or a daisy, that the Lord wants to remind you, this is obviously a metaphor. And I'm way more than a song. But it's a thing of the Lord was pursuing my heart. And he wants to pursue yours. And then when we can know our gifts and we can know what we're doing and what we're called to, then we can really build up the body of Christ. Amen? I'm going to probably say this tomorrow. But I want you guys to understand something. The church is made up of mostly the laity. Do you guys know that? Do you know the percentage of the church that's the laity? What is it? Give me a number. 99%. 99%. I mean, look at the room. Any priest? We got one. Any other priests? Religious? We got four? OK, great. OK, look around. Bout accurate, right? 99%. Why am I saying this? Because we're way to rely on priests and religious. I wish the church did this. Great, you're the church. Do it. Like, you have gifts. And God wants to use you and work through you and edify each other through you. You can be an instrument of building up this beautiful church that we belong to. That we can know, like, right before talking about the body of Christ, it talks about gifts. And it talks about the variety of gifts and the different things and all the things like, ah, sorry. But ladies and gentlemen, the bottom line of this talk is this, you're created with a purpose. You're created with a purpose. You're created good. You are loved and seen by the Lord. God has equipped you to make decisions in this world. He's equipped you to make decisions in this world. And we can't be so over and on analyzing everything that we're praying for God to just show me exactly what I want. We need to take action. We need to take action. And if we're making those steps, those small steps with the Lord, he'll tell you if you're going the right way or not. And sometimes he'll give you big, giant detour steps. And if we're praying well, and if we're talking to him well, then we can see the detours. And we can know that he's telling us, like, eh, eh, turn around. And then we can know where to go and how to move forward. And then we can discern his will, because his will will be our will, because his heart will be in my heart. And my heart will be in his heart. And my desires will be his and vice versa. And then we can make all the decisions we want. And we can know our purpose. And we can take action. And we can make this world better, because, wow, it's not that great sometimes. And God wants to first do that in you. He loves you. And he's given you gifts. And he wants to celebrate in your passions and the things that excite to you. And then he wants to work in you and work through you and work for you. Amen? Can we all stand and pray together? Let's begin. We belong to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. God, you're so good. You're so faithful. Thank you for creating us good. Thank you for creating us with a desire for you that only you can fill. Thank you for the gifts that you have given us. God would give you permission to enter into our hearts and into our minds so that we can know what these gifts are, so that we can know our passions, so that we can foster them. Help us to orient our desires with yours. Unite our hearts to yours. God, help us to see the massive ways that you have already worked in our lives. And help us to know that you are not done yet. Help us to make our gifts and the way that we live our lives a form of worship because it will be a response to the gifts that you have given us. Jesus, we praise you. Jesus, we need you. Jesus, we love you. Jesus, I give my heart to you. Let's say that together. Jesus, I give my heart to you. Jesus, I trust you. I am yours. I am yours. And you are mine. And you are mine. Amen. Amen. Amen to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you all so much, Pring, for all of you.


Okay, look, I don't really like Obi-Wan. Disney plus original Obi-Wan Kenobi. Should have just been Kenobi because god damn that's not fair. I think the Obi-Wan show isn't good, but it's not due to Disney going woke or that they want to paint their audience racist or something like that. I don't like Kenobi because of its incompetence as a show alongside its core existence. I know that's a strong way for me to come off, but I don't want to just single out Kenobi either. I think that every show by Disney plus has been extremely mediocre and it's partially due to the limitations of the Disney plus format. During the circulation of Kenobi episodes, you had other exclusive releases by competitor platforms like Netflix, Stranger Things, Amazon Primes, The Boys. And while Better Call Saul had its midseason break before Kenobi came out, I'm still going to put it up here because that show is amazing. Did you know that you have rights? And with so many shows to watch at once, I did the normal thing, which is to compare everything to one another. And I realized how much I missed the normal TV show format. But Skipper, what's so wrong with Disney plus? Why is the format so mediocre? Why would you blame a streaming service and not the product? All right, let's reel it back a bit and look at the two big fish at Disney plus originals. Oh wait, there's only two Marvel and Star Wars. Who would have thought? So it's November 2018. Netflix is killing it with original movies and shows, but the shift of streaming service apocalypse is about to unleash with everything having a goddamn subscription.  I'm Frankenstein's head on a spider's body. Marvel's making billions off movies. Star Wars is making billions off movies.   And Disney still wants to make more money and start competition with Netflix by putting all the original media in one place for $7 a month. But paying $7 to rewatch Toy Story over and over is going to get stale really fast. But to wait, me, Mickey Mouse, just made billions off of my Marvel movies and Star Wars is crashing and burning.  This is the ticket. Let's make two TV shows to launch this goddamn cash cow. So boom, you have it. The Mandalorian and WandaVision. The Mandalorian had a lot to prove. I know I said that Star Wars was crashing and burning into money, but they still had problems with general reception and creative thinking. Fix that surge. Yeah. I'm gonna gang bang you all by myself. The sequel trilogy was about to conclude, so the big money was gonna wither soon. But Lucasfilm made a billion dollars off of Rogue One, which was a spin-off project, so they still had confidence that they could rate the Star Wars LP and make some fat stacks, no matter what, even without number of releases. Then solo happened.  The original directors were gonna be Phil Lord and Chris Miller. We made great films like Lego Movie, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse. 21 and 22 Jump Street. No! Shooting for the film was three quarters of the way finished and then the directors were fired over creative differences as well as going over budgets. And then days later, director Ron Howard was brought in to finish the movie where he had to reshoot most of it. The budget was almost 300 million and the film would have to make 500 million to even break even and it made 393 million, which put Disney at an $80 million loss because of advertising and external budgets.  The flop was mainly due to incompetence production-wise. Blackmail. I'm not black, I'm OJ. The advertising really sucked. Like, they literally plagiarized the promotional posters. Also, The Last Jedi was controversial and made a lot of people not care about Star Wars. Also, most fans didn't even want a Han Solo movie to begin with, especially after they heard what Disney had down the pipeline, which was a Boba Fett movie and an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. But this is Disney Lucas film and they never learned the right lessons. You see, Solo didn't flop because of lackluster production. It was bad because it recasted legacy characters? This was an actual statement made this year by Kathleen Kennedy.   Even today, most people would probably take Sebastian Stan over CGI Luke. What I'm trying to say is getting an actor to play a role isn't the goddamn problem to why the movie flopped. But nonetheless, Solo flopped and lost a lot of money. So what did they do?   Okay. The Mandalorian was low risk, high reward. It was an original concept of the low production budget due to it using a new VR technology that Jon Favreau also used to make The Lion King. The show was pitched to be like a box of hand-made down Star Wars toys. You have the jaw was, the Tuscan Raiders and the old Boba Fett toy that you paint silver. It was fun, nostalgic, and a massive success, which is the only important thing to these guys. So what that meant to Lucasfilm was, oh, we can make money this way without spending movie money on shit that could possibly flop. Night bump. Ah! The Mandalorian was grounded and interesting. It also tested out the Disney Plus format. Eight 40-ish minute episodes that would be released weekly and since the show was made like a Western, each episode was drastically different from one another. Then two months later, WandaVision was released and there were also eight episodes that were around 30-ish minutes and were very secretive about the show's concept until later episodes. It left you speculating each week about what would happen, making it feel like an actual show instead of a drag-down movie. These two shows had no choice but to really go into the TV show style because there was massive skepticism toward Disney Plus as a streaming service. So these two shows had to really pitch it and they did. Like them or not, compare them to Paramount Plus's Grand Slam, which was the Halo show, where it was insanely cheap-looking while also being insanely boring. With hindsight, it's very obvious that Disney kept tight quality control of these two projects because the same effort was never shown again by either side. Okay. On Marvel's side, they dropped from eight episodes to six and focused on making cheap movies instead of proper TV shows. Besides Loki, the quality dropped drastically with the others. Falcon and the Winter Soldier Watch weekly was obnoxious. It was a shitty MCU movie dragged out with weak cliffhangers.  Not utilizing its awesome concept. If you like Moon Knight, go watch Mr. Robot. It's another story involving a protagonist with DID but the creator actually has creativity and talent.  What I'm saying is since people were already hooked off these debut projects, there wasn't incentive to try anymore and that's why you got filler shows to maintain a circulation of content. But let's go back to Star Wars and see what happened with them. Where the Mandalorian was an isolated project, season two was a backdoor pilot to the Star Wars cinematic universe. Introducing characters like Bo-Katan, Boba Fett, Ahsoka Tano, and Luke Skywalker. But while having to juggle all this backdoor promotion, the show still held its own visually. The Mandalorian, season one and two still look better than anything to come out of TV, Marvel, or Lucasfilm. Look at She-Hulk and the Book of Boba for fuck's sake. The Book of Boba is where we can now pinpoint the massive decline of TV Star Wars. It was cheap looking, poorly directed, poorly written, and codependent off of fan service that had no substance. Instead of making a nice looking show about Boba Fett, the second half gets hijacked by the Mandalorian, where it yonks in a bunch of cameos to make the Man-Children's Shout every week. But some caught on quickly that the show was really bad. I have a friend named Typo who made a whole video about why the show is a mess, so watch that if you're interested. This guy stinks! But the point I'm trying to make was that the quality of the Mandalorian was not kept for the show. It was obvious that the show was pumped out since there wasn't gonna be a Mandalorian Season 3 that December, which is disappointing because in a different multiverse, we possibly could have gotten a really good Boba Fett movie, which would have definitely performed well because it's a movie about Boba Fett, who is loved by the Star Wars fandom. But instead, he was put into a show to advertise his show, where the best part about his show was never him, but instead the cameos from other pieces of media to also advertise their shows. Like I said, MCUing Star Wars. And that's when we get to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Let me take a second to remind you that Disney is worth $200 billion. And Lucasfilm, who was owned by Disney, is also worth a couple billion dollars themselves. I know Obi-Wan Kenobi is a TV show, but anyone miles away could have been able to tell that this was gonna be their most successful show yet on Disney Plus. So why does it look so cheap?  As we discussed earlier, there's multiple scenes from the two seasons of The Mandalorian that are well shot, lit, choreographed, and directed. Some episodes look like shit, but that could happen when you take a risk and give the guy who made Spy Kids an episode. If this was a fan series, then it's really high quality. But it isn't. It's a mini series backed by billion dollar productions. And a core problem into the whole show was it's awful directing.  Every action scene looks like someone dragged in the S Shake plug from Sony Vegas. It almost feels deliberate. Like a goal and set was to make every scene as obnoxious as possible.  I know Disney Star Wars is no big oopsies over the years, but if you look at the action scenes from Rogue One, Solo, and The Mandalorian, you can still find decent camera work, lighting, and editing at times. I actually find it insane that someone gave the green light to this scene in the first episode where Leia is dodging full-grown bounty hunters.   Woo-hoo! The set design is really lazy and uninspired. And some wanna say it's because they relied a lot on the volume, but that's a piss poor excuse. When used correctly, the volume could be really effective. Their scenes in The Batman, their breathtaking were done straight from the volume. Same with The Mandalorian, but in Kenobi you have scenes that just don't look hot. The prequels have dated CGI for sure, but the environments are at least original and interesting so I'll give it a pass, but the shit in Kenobi is just straight lazy. In this scene, you could tell me that Obi-Wan is somewhere in Bum-Fuck Arizona, I would believe you. In this scene, you could tell me that Obi-Wan and Darth Vader were in an episode of The Sopranos, fighting on a construction site, and I would also believe you. What is your problem with Anakin Skywalker? He's a fan! And? Here you have Battle of the Hallway, but it's sluggish and annoying. Not done in a cool way like this movie. Hell, as much as it hurts to say even this movie did it better. Still not good, but better.  Battle of the Open Door. God, stop shaking the camera! I like how in Revenge of the Sith, you have the final battle on different set pieces with fun camera work to match the amazing choreography. But for this show's final fight, you have a set piece of the volume, which is a flat, boring planet that is also extremely underlit. The lighting in this show is so atrocious. Tatooine keeps proving that Star Wars has lost the ability to make a desert look cool and instead look like a Nickelodeon set. Tatooine in the original trilogy was a barren desert, but they found a way to still make it interesting with weird wildlife. And even though Jakku is a knockoff of Tatooine, it did the same thing, to not make it feel like a small set piece, but instead a big wasteland. A lot of this could be fixed by just adding dynamic lighting. In Kenobi, the sets are either super bright or dark as hell, making it once again feel like a fan film. In The Mandalorian, you have warm and cold colors used effectively. I don't know why the two main fights are shot in the dark. It makes the lightsaber glow too overbearing and the choreography doesn't help us either.  There was a fan version of the show where they cut out all the filler and compiled the series into a two hour long movie. And it gives you perspective about the missed potential of the show, which brings up the whole point of this video. The Disney Plus format sucks. Instead of getting great shows, you get dragged out movies. Instead of getting great movies, you get dragged out ones with filler. If Kenobi was a movie like originally planned, it probably would have had a better script, had more production budget, and would have made a lot more money. It still doesn't excuse its pissed poor execution though. Recently, the trailer for the Andor show came out and even that looks like it has more effort put in than Kenobi. With the Disney Plus format, it's easier to pump out content quickly, but also sets a dangerous precedent.  When you clap your hands to everything, projects will cut corners because you're going to like it anyway.  Daredevil's an amazing show, and now it's getting 18 episodes for its new Disney Plus show, with each being 25 minutes long without having the same directors or writers. I fear it's gonna be mediocre in comparison to its original three seasons when it followed a normal one hour format without the Disney Cloud. A lot of shows on the Disney Plus format are popcorn circulation content and could be so much better. Can we watch something else? It's about to get really good. It's about to get really good, trust me. They aren't comparable to shows with great quality and actual care like Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot, The Sopranos, Better Call Saul, or Daredevil. But at the moment though, Disney doesn't have much competition. What's stranger to things not releasing another season till 2024. Disney, my god!  So what's the point of switching? The shows make money, they're easy to make, and people will find any excuse to defend them by something as simple as brand loyalty. I have a feeling Manda season three will attempt to keep a level of quality because that's the big boy for the service. And Andor looks interesting, I'll admit it. But the nail in the coffin will be the Daredevil show if it sucks, which it most likely will. But that's it from me. Tell them in the comments if you like or dislike the Disney format. Thank you so much for 100K. And if you wanna see more videos like this, subscribe. Wait, Cars is getting a show? Disney Plus has saved everybody.  No way it's loneliness, is it new to me? We done this, this is not the murder, Mr. Weep.


So guys, I am back with another Halo Infinite video and today I bring you the location of all the nameplates and weapon charms you can grab from the campaign and then use and showcase within that multiplayer side of the game. How's it going guys? My name's DPJ and if you do enjoy the video leave a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more Halo, be sure to subscribe. Also guys, last week's winner of my game, be aware you can see on the screen now. This is you, hit me up on my discord link below. Good news is I'm running another game giveaway. To enter, simply drop a like on this video, leave a comment down below, make sure you are subbed and have those notifications turned on. I will announce the winner next week and I'll pick them from the comment section of one of my Halo videos. So the more my Halo videos you watch and support me on, the more of a chance you have of winning. So good luck. Okay so in total there are 6 nameplates and charms for you to find. To be precise there are 4 nameplates and 2 weapon charms. So let's get into it guys. Now what I will say is if you have an air vehicle it will make things a lot easier on yourself. If you ain't at a level 2600 valour you can't obviously spawn in a wasp, via the fab stations but there is a place on the map you can go to grab a banshee and even sometimes a wasp will spawn in here. So where I am on the screen now on this little point you will have to scale up here with a grapple hook. Once you get up here take out all the adds, have a look around and 9 times out of 10 you will find a banshee or a wasp so I hope this helps. So let's start with the banished nameplate. So this one as you can see on the screen now relatively easy to grab like I said none of these actually require an air vehicle but I mean it just makes things way easier when you're flying from one to the other if you want to collect them all. So come to where I am right near the excavation site grab this nameplate and you are good guys. Next up people we have the infinity nameplate. So this one as you can see on the screen now where I am at their courier squad side mission just right at this you'll find the infinity nameplate lukas so yes come to where I am grab this bad boy and you are good people. Next up guys we have the banished weapon charm looking great as you can see so left hand side of the map not too far away from the excavation site just slightly left of this right near the Lancer squad side mission literally south of that come here grab this weapon charm and you are good. Next up people we have the winful nameplate this one's more or less centred a map so come to where I am on screen now no real scaling required whatsoever just slightly up on the left side but it's not hard to get whatsoever so come here guys grab this and enjoy it. Next up people we have the griffin nameplate so this one as you can see where I am at but on the right side of the map just by far November which haven't actually captured yet I'm gonna capture you after showcases so it's just north of this they come up the side of the structure look for this spiral thingy but I can't remember what these are called I know these are something you collect as well excuse me I'm super tired not gonna lie but just run past these dudes you can take him out like I do if you want jump slightly down and you'll see it's on your left hand side I mean I'm a little confused I'm like hold up a minute it was it just a second ago I'm like oh oh there it is there is so yes guys grab this and enjoy people okay so lastly we have the dog tags weapon charm so this one here again not too far from the last actually actually this is weird because I know to grab this one but when I went back here to double check and make sure like I'm like hold up a minute am I in the right spot here because for some reason that the locker ain't there but it's 100% here guys so again right by 5 November south of this I'm past the wall and you'll see it should be right here it should be right here for you to pick up and there we have it guys from another halo infinite video it helped you out leaving a like really helped me out if you're new around here want to see more halo be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button but guys thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully I will see you on that next one


Our final speaker this afternoon is Lou Rockwell, who most of you I'm sure know as not only the founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, but also the proprietor of lourockwell.com. And knowing and working for Ron Paul over the years, I've had so many people say to me that Ron Paul is what brought them to libertarianism. Ron Paul is what woke them up. Well, I would argue that Lou Rockwell, through his efforts at the Mises Institute and lourockwell.com is what keeps them in libertarianism by providing just an unbelievable amount of content and education and knowledge every day of his life. One of the hardest working guys I know, please welcome Lou Rockwell. Thank you. A sharp Martian visiting the earth might make two observations, one true the other only superficially so, about the United States. On the basis of its ceaseless exercises and self-congratulation, the US appears to be a place where free thought is encouraged and which man makes war against all the fetters on his mind that reactionary forces had once placed there. That's the superficial truth. The real truth, which our Martian would discover after watching how Americans actually behave. So the range of opinions that citizens may entertain is rather more narrow than it first appears. There are, he will soon discover, certain ideas and positions that all Americans are supposed to believe in and salute. Now the top of the list is equality, an idea for which we are never given a precise definition, but to which everyone is expected to genuflect. A libertarian is perfectly at peace with the universal phenomenon of human difference. He does not wish it away. He does not shake his fist at it. He does not pretend not to notice it. It affords him neither another opportunity to marvel at a miracle of the market, its ability to incorporate just about anyone into the division of labor. Need the division of labor is based on human difference. Each of us finds the niche that suits our talents best and specializes in that particular thing we can most effectively serve our fellow man by doing. Our fellow man likewise specializes in what he is best suited for and we in turn benefit from the fruits of his specialized knowledge and skill. And according to Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, which Mises generalized into the law of association, even if one person is better than another at absolutely everything, the less able person is still able to flourish in a free market. For instance, even if the greatest, most successful entrepreneur you can think of is a better office cleaner than anyone else in town and is likewise a better secretary than all the secretaries in town, it would make no sense for him to clean his own office or type and file all his own correspondence. His time is so much better spent in the market niche in which he excels that it would be preposterous for him to waste his time doing these things. In fact, anyone looking to hire him to do the office cleaning would have to pay millions of dollars to draw him away from the extremely remunerative work he is otherwise doing. So even an average office cleaner is vastly more competitive in the office cleaning market than our fictional entrepreneur. Since the average office cleaner can charge say $15 an hour, instead of the $15,000 an hour, our entrepreneur mindful of opportunity cost would have to charge. So there was a place for everyone in the market economy and what's more since the market economy rewards those who are able to produce goods at affordable prices for a mass market, it is precisely the average person to whom the captains of industry are all but forced to cater. This is an arrangement to celebrate, of course, not to deplore. This is not how the egalitarian see it, of course. And now I turn to the works of that great anti-egalitarian, Murray and Rothbard. Murray dealt with the subject of equality and part in his great essay, Freedom in Equality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor. But really took it on head to head in egalitarianism as a revolt against nature. What serves as the title chapter of his wonderful book that's, I'm sure we've still got some copies outside available of that. It's from Murray that my own comments today take their inspiration. The current devotion to equality is not of ancient provenance, as Murray pointed out. He said the current veneration of equality is indeed a very recent notion in the history of human thought. Among philosophers or prominent thinkers, the idea scarcely existed before the mid-18th century. It was mentioned if only as the object at all, if only as the object of horror or ridicule. The profoundly anti-human and violently coercive nature of egalitarianism was made clear in the influential classical myth of Procrustes, who forced passing travelers to lie in an iron bed and if they were too long for the bed, he lopped off those parts of their bodies, which protruded while he racked out the legs of anyone who was too short. What do we understand by the word equality? The answer is we don't really know. His proponents make precious little effort to disclose to us precisely what they have in mind. All we know is that we better believe in it. And it is precisely this lack of clarity that makes the idea of equality such an advantage for the state. Northen is entirely sure what the principle of equality commits him to. And keeping up with ever changing demands is more difficult still. What were two previously different things yesterday can become precisely equal today and you'd better believe that they are equal if you don't want your reputation destroyed or your career ruined. This was the heart of the celebrated dispute between neo-conservative Harry Jaffa and paleo-conservative Emmy Bradford carried out in the pages of Modern Age in the 1970s. Equality, Mel Bradford argued, is a concept that cannot be and will not be restrained or nailed down. He tried to make Jaffa understand that equality with a capital E was a recipe for permanent revolution, not a problem for Jaffa who, of course, came, as has been pointed out earlier today from the neo-conservative Trotsky tradition. Now, do the Caledarians mean we are committed to the proposition that anyone is potentially an astrophysicist so long as he is raised in the proper environment? Maybe, maybe not. Some of them certainly do believe such a thing. In 1930, in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, it claimed, quote, that birth, human infants, regardless of their heredity, are as equal as fords. We've heard of Mises, by contrast, held that, quote, the fact that men are born unequal in regard to physical and mental capabilities cannot be argued away. Some surpass their fellow men in health and vigor, in brain and aptitudes and energy and resolution are therefore better fitted for the pursuit of earthly affairs than the rest of mankind.  By the standards of the egalitarians, again, we don't really know. Then there's so-called equality of opportunity, but even this common conservative slogan is fraught with problems. The obvious retort is that in order to have true equality of opportunity, sweeping government intervention is necessary. For how can someone in a poor household with then different parents seriously be said to have equality of opportunity with children of well-to-do parents deeply engaged in their lives? Then there is equality in a cultural sense, whereby everyone is expected to ratify everyone else's personal choices. Cultural egalitarians don't really mean that, of course. None of them demand that people who dislike Christianity sit down and learn thestics, theology, scholastic theology in order to discover something important about the Christian's belief. And here we discover something important also about the holy egalitarian program. It's not really about equality, it's about some people exercising power over others. At the University of Tennessee this fall, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion explained that traditional English pronouns are oppressive to people who do not identify with the gender they were, quote, assigned at birth. And so ought to be replaced with something new. The Diversity Office recommends as replacements for she, her, hers, he, him, his. The following. G, here, hers, here's, Z, Zir, Zir's, Z, Zem and Zir. When approaching people the first time students were told, we should say something like, like, nice to meet you. What pronouns should I use? So when the whole world burst out laughing at this proposal, the University was a pain so we're sure everyone, these of course were just suggestions, I'm gonna be right here. Of course we're not a suggestions of the thought that all right thinking people are expected to have about moral questions that have been decided for us by our media and political elites. Another aspect of equality that's been in the news in recent years is of course income inequality. We're told how terrible it is that some people should have so much more than others. But rarely if ever how we told how much of any extra wealth the egalitarian society would allow the better off to have or the non-arbitrary basis on which such a judgment could be rendered. John Rawls was possibly the most influential political philosopher of the 20th century, a terrible century. And he advanced the famous defense of egalitarianism in his book, A Theory of Justice. He attempted to answer this question among others. If I may summarize his argument in brief, he claimed that we would all choose an egalitarian society. If as we contemplated the values of society, the ones that we'd wanna live under, we had no idea what our own position in that society would be. If we didn't know if we were to be male or female, rich or poor, talented or untalented, or we would hedge our bets by advocating a society in which everyone was as equal as possible. That way should we be unlucky and enter the world without talents or as a member of a despised minority or saddled with any other disability, we could still be as short of a comfortable, if not luxurious existence. Rawls was willing to allow some degree of inequality, but only if its effect was to help the poor. In other words, doctors could be allowed to earn more money than other people if that financial incentive made them more likely to become doctors in the first place. If incomes are equalized, people would be less likely to go to the trouble of becoming a doctor and the poor would be deprived of medical care. So inequality could be allowed, but only on egalitarian grounds, not because people have the right to acquire and enjoy property without fear of expropriation. Since no one in his right mind accepts full-blown egalitarianism, Rawls was bound to run into trouble. The trouble came in the form of attempts to deal with equality between countries. Even the most dedicated egalitarian living in the first world doesn't want equalization of wealth between countries. College professors who teach the moral superiority of egalitarianism during the day want their fine wine and cheese parties in their beautiful homes at night. So Rawls came up with a strained and unpersuasive argument, but although inequality between persons was outrageous and could be justified only in the basis of whether it helped the poorest and equality between countries was quite all right. He then proceeded to give reasons, even though these were the exact reasons he had said that inequality between individuals was unacceptable. Even if egalitarianism could be defended philosophically, there is the small matter of implementing it in the real world. Just one reason the egalitarian dream cannot be realized involves what Robert Nozick called the wilt chamberlain problem. James Audison has called this something like the day two problem. In Chamberlain's heyday, everyone enjoyed watching him play basketball. People gladly paid to watch him play. But suppose we came with an equal distribution of wealth and then everyone rushes out to watch Chamberlain. Many thousands of people would willingly hand over a portion of their money to him to watch him play basketball, and he now becomes much wealthier than everyone else. In other words, the pattern of wealth distribution is disturbed as soon as anyone engages in exchange at all. Are we to cancel the results of these exchanges and return everyone's money to the original owners? Is Chamberlain to be deprived of the money people freely chose to give him in exchange for the entertainment he provided? The reason the state holds up equality as a moral ideal is precisely that it is unattainable. We may forever strive for it, but we can never reach it. What ideology could be better from the state's point of view? The state can portray itself as the indispensable agent of justice, while at the same time drawing ever more power and resources to itself over education, employment, wealth redistribution, and practically any area of social life or the economy you can name. In the course of pursuing an unattainable, egalitarian program. Quote, equality cannot be imagined outside of tyranny, Montell and Baer said. It was, he said, nothing but the canonization of envy. It was never anything but a mask which could become reality, which could not become reality without the abolition of all merit and virtue. The course of working towards equality, the state expands its power at the expense of other forms of human association, including the family itself. The family has always been the primary obstacle to the egalitarian program. The very fact that parents differ in their knowledge, skill levels, and devotion to their offspring means the children in no two households can never be raised equally. Robert Nisbet, the Columbia University sociologist, openly wondered if Rawls could be honest enough to admit that his system, if followed to its logical conclusion, had to lead to the abolition of the family. Quote, said Nisbet, I have always found treatment of the family to be an excellent indicator of the degree of zeal and authoritarianism overt or latent in a moral philosopher or political theorist. Nisbet said, he identified two traditions of thought in Western history, one he traced from Plato to Rousseau, that identified the family as a wicked barrier to the realization of true virtue and justice. The other, which viewed the family as a central ingredient in both liberty and order, he followed from Aristotle through Burke and Tocqueville. Rawls himself appeared to admit the logic of this argument, that the logic of his argument tended in the direction of the Plato, Rousseau strain of thought, though he ultimately and unpersuasively drew back your Rawls' own words. It seems that when fair opportunity, as it has been defined, is satisfied, the family will lead to unequal chances between individuals. Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a certain primacy, the idea of equal opportunity inclines in this direction. But within the context of the theory of justice as a whole, there is much less urgency to take this course.  Can Rawls, he wondered, long neglect the family, given its demonstrated relation to him inequality. Rousseau was bold and constant enough where Rawls is diffident. If the younger to be brought up in the bosom of equality, early accustomed to regard their own individuality only in relation to the body of the state, to be aware, so to speak, of their own existence merely as part of that of the state, unquote, then they must be safe when Rawls' so refers to us, quote, the intelligence and prejudices of fathers. The obsession with equality in short undermines every indication of health we might look for in a civilization. It involves madness to complete, so complete that although it flirts with the destruction of the family, it never stops to consider whether this conclusion might mean the whole line of thought may have been deranged to begin with. It leads to the destruction of standards, scholarly, cultural, and behavioral. It is based on assertion rather than evidence and it attempts to gain ground not through rational argument, but by intimidating opponents into silence. There is nothing honorable or admirable about any aspect of the egalitarian program. Murray noted that pointing out the lunacy of egalitarianism was a good start, but not nearly enough. We need to show that the so-called struggle for equality is in fact all about state power, not helping the downtrodden, he wrote, to mount an effective response to the reigning egalitarianism of our age, therefore, it is necessary but scarcely sufficient to demonstrate its absurdity, the anti-scientific nature, the self-contradictory nature of the egalitarian doctrine, as well as the disastrous consequences of the egalitarian program. All this is well and good, but it misses the essential nation of as well as the most effective rebuttal to the egalitarian program, to expose it as a mask for the drive to power of the now-ruling left liberal intellectual and media elites. Since these elites are also the hitherto unchallenged opinion-molding class in society, the rule cannot be dislodged until the oppressed public, instinctively, but incoherently opposed to these elites, are shown the true nature of the increasingly hated forces who are ruling over them. To use the paraphrase, to use the phrases of the new left Murray said of the late 1960s, the ruling elite must be demystified, de-legitimized, and desanctified. Nothing can advance that desanctification more than the public realization of the true nature of their egalitarian slogans. The only Rothbardian word missing from that stirring conclusion is one of Murray's favorite de-bambusel. It is that above all that needs to be done. The Mises Institute has accomplished many things over the years advancing scholarship through our academic conferences and scholarly journals, educating students in the economics of the Austrian school, and reaching out to the public to give them a free education worth vastly more than what many people spend six figures on. But put it all together and it amounts to perhaps the greatest de-bambuseling effort of all time. Once you understand the economics of the Austrian school and the philosophy of liberty and the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything, not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing the same way again. Help us carry out our great de-bambuseling mission as we devise more and more programs and outreach to the public and provide a new generation of brilliant young scholars with the tools they need to resist and defy a regime that would intimidate us into silence. Their way is violence, envy, and destruction. Our way is peace, liberty, and creation. With your help, we can tear down the state's benign facade which has bamboozled so many for so long and reveal to all to see that the only winner in the state's crusades is the state itself. Thank you.


Hello, this is Laptop Media, and today, we will show you how to open the Acer Swift X14 and what's inside of it. To get inside this device, you need to undo a total of 11 Torx head screws. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool, and lift it away from the chassis. Please remember, it would be of great help to us if you just hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. That would motivate us to make even more and better videos for you. Here, you can see a 76Wh battery pack. It lasts for 11 hours of web browsing, or 9 hours of video playback. To remove it, you just need to unplug the battery connector. Memory-wise, there are 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM soldered to the motherboard. As for storage, you can rely on a single M.2 PCIe X4 slot for Gen4 SSDs. This device has two heat pipes shared between the CPU and the GPU. Contrary to the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7, this one only features one heat sink and one fan. On the bright side, both the VRMs and the graphics memory have a heat spreader for additional cooling. If you'd like to see more disassembly videos of the latest notebooks, we would highly appreciate if you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.


This is stock number 10384. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Dodge and Minivan headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2018 Dodge Grand Caravan GT package. This vehicle has a 3.6 liter Pentastar V6 motor and from this HD video you will be able to tell that this van is extremely clean all the way around. This van has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off and this van is 100% ready to go. It has the hideaway roof rack. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device turn them on right now because it is like you're right here looking at the vehicle with me and definitely your best way to check out the vehicle quality and condition before seeing it in person. In fact in the upper right hand part of your screen is a link to our website where you can see more pictures of this vehicle. It has the 17 inch painted and polished aluminum rims and in the front we have Otani 225 65 R17 tires. Really new tires on here I'd say 80 to 90% of the tread left on those tires so lots of good tread didn't see any scuffs or scrapes on that front rim. You get the blacked out headlight bezels part of the GT package. Front bumper is in excellent condition no dense dings or scuffs on that. Didn't see any denser dings on the hood. Passengers side fender is in really nice shape as well and that passenger side rim no scuffs or scrapes on that.  We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down you can still see the vehicle hear the vehicle and have confidence that it's going to be a high quality vehicle for you so it's going to be worth making the trip down this side very clean. We even offer a Summit Auto Fastpass option right on our website where you can apply for financing get pre-approved and even appraise a trade if you have one in the upper right hand part of your screen. Click that and check it out there. On the back we have Michelin Energy Saver tires and these tires are just as new as the front tires. Lots of tread left on those I'd say 80 to 90% on the back tires. As we come around the rear bumper is in excellent condition no dense dings or cracks on that and you get a really good idea for that Onyx black paint. I think it's just a renamed brilliant black from the old Dodge Chrysler Jeep lineup is brilliant black but anyways it does have the factory subwoofer and those third row seats do fall down into the floor so how you do that just follow the numbers one two three then you pull the fourth tab and it'll come on back like so and to get it back up you just grab the fourth tab here flip it like so grab number two that'll release it and then you can pull it right back up back storage area no rips or tears back here really nice and clean and to get that gate down you just press this button it'll beep at you three times and then it'll come on down it does have the backup camera right there and down this side of the van just as clean as that passenger side I didn't see any denser dings on this quarter you can see just how reflective and mirror like that paint is really nice condition on the paint here back rim is in excellent shape as well and down the rest of this side of the van very very clean we want to give you the most accurate representation so when you get here there's no surprises heated power mirrors inside the GT package gives you the black leather interior with the red stitching very similar to the RT package of a couple years ago you do get the power driver seat with lumbar factory floor mats throughout power windows power locks power mirrors and it does have the power fold out third row seat windows which you can't get with the pacifica auto headlamps and as we hop inside the van here you can see that this one has 50,729 miles you get a digital speedometer outside temperature and compass display you get the heated leather wrap steering wheel cruise controls on the right bluetooth and information center controls on the left comes with the six-speed automatic transmission the 430n radio which gives you the factory navigation this is also where your backup camera shows up you also get a hard drive on here which gives you a hundred or 28 gigs of storage space and you do get am fm and serious xm radio capabilities on here as well down here is your climate control as well as your heated steering wheel and heated seat buttons that's the one thing that GT package had over the RT is that it came with the heated steering wheel and heated seats standard you can see you got the side window shade in the second row and you do get your power sliding rear window or power sliding door and rear gate buttons and this one does have home link system for your garage door security systems and lighting systems you do get your map lights up there and it does have a hideaway mirror so you can see what's going on in the back auto dimming mirror we'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we will check out under the hood so i know it said i said it had floor mats throughout it's the floor mats in the front my bad the second row quad seating does have the latch child safety system the carpeting is very clean back here no rips or tears these seats do store into the floor with the stow and go system and like i said it does have that side window shade which is a really nice feature if you got little kids that's the also the other thing that the GT had over the RT i have an RT grand caravan third row seats i wish mine had the sunshades and the heated steering wheel and heat seats like this one does and the nav but it does not anyways third row seats very clean no rips or tears and to get this door closed you press that button there and i'll show you just how smooth that door closes always nice to know that the accessories that you're looking on looking at on the vehicle you're looking at are working such as the power sliding doors and the power gate and everything under the hood we have the 3.6 liter pentastar v6 motor engine base very clean runs very smooth this van has been fully safety and inspected per our state of wisconsin's inspection has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off it's been gone through gone through mechanically 100 percent and is 100 percent ready to go to see more pictures of this van or one of our other 450 new and used cars trucks scvs minivans wranglers half tons recoder tons one tons you name what we got to go to our website www.summitauto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com and if you'd like to check out more hd videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our youtube channel and your left a link to more used inventory videos like this one on your right if you have not been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website click those check us out and we really look forward to helping with this super clean 2018 dodge grand caravan GT package thanks again