Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by Marlene Targ Brill, who is an author, educator, presenter and not a drummer. Marlene, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Bart. This is really exciting. Sure. And let me explain the not-a-drummer thing. So you're obviously an author, but you are a bit of an expert on our topic today, which is I think we're pronouncing his name, right? We both kind of said that. Orion P. Howell, who is standalone, he's one of the youngest people to receive the Medal of Honor, which we'll kind of talk about what that is for people who may not know, but but he's also a drummer boy in the Civil War. And before we get in, this is really cool because I had someone comment, Eric McKnight, commented just on a post I put on Instagram and said, hey, Bart, check out this topic and that was like a week ago and here we are recording this. So it's this happened really fast because it was it was quick for me to find you. So all that being said, Marlene, why don't we why don't you tell us about Orion and you know, who is he? What's his? I know his family is drummers. So take it away. Tell us all about him. Well, Orion Howell entered the military well, actually, he wasn't the first one. His father was a veteran of the Mexican-American War and he played the Fife and when the Civil War was getting revved up, he had given his two sons, Orion, who was 12 at the time and Liston, who was 10. He gave them some drums and they were practicing and he would take them out to different rallies to kind of drum up some business for recruiting different soldiers and and it was a motivational kind of thing and it was also a rallying cry and that's one of the main jobs of drummers and eventually his father and Liston went off to war and the thinking was that Orion as the elder son should go to school so he can eventually take over whatever was going on with the family and his father's cabinet-making business and that didn't turn out so well. Orion was having a really hard time being in school. The boys were dropping out one after another and he felt like he was he was kind of a sissy and eventually ran away and he coaxed his stepmother into letting him join the military and that's when he went and joined his brother and they became drummers in the different battles in the Civil War and eventually the father who had been in a different regimen transferred so he could be with his sons. He became the principal musician and he was in charge of the bands in the 55th Regiment. Wow. Now, okay, so let's just clarify too so people know like when he's at school and not going to the you know in the battle and feeling like a sissy, how old was he? Let's because I mean it's pretty wild. He was about 12 years old and so he would keep practicing because he was ready to go, you know, but it wasn't happening and then finally he couldn't take it anymore. All right, now before we move on first off when I was 12, I was like, I mean, I couldn't fathom going to it was a it's a different time obviously, but like, you know, I was playing video games in my parents' basement. I mean, it's just it's a different world obviously, but what obviously he legally couldn't go into, you know, the army, the military, right?  I know it's 1860 and you know, Civil War was on, but that's so young. How did he really get in? His brother was 10.  And I guess he could go with parents permission. I believe the youngest drummer boy was Johnny Clem, who I forgot what his nickname was, but he entered when he was nine years old and I think he got a parent to sign for him or he ran away and got some other adults to sign for him. And so I believe he was the absolute youngest and I know one of your previous speakers talked about how most of the drummer boys really weren't boys in essence. They were older teens, early 20s, but you know, doing this research, I found a whole host of young people who had joined, you know, 10, 12, 14, you know, which is still pretty young. Yeah, you know, and it's kind of cool too because I'm from Ohio, but like I've looked up Johnny Clem before as well because wasn't he one of the oldest surviving civil war drummers? I know he's up there because he's 1851 to 1937, but him and Orion are both from Ohio, which is kind of cool. I'm from Ohio. I think they're more north towards like the Toledo area, but God, 10 years old. I mean, some of these guys I can't imagine being so young.  It's just wild. Now, okay, carry on with the story. So the Howe family is now together, right? Serving together, playing music. The dad was playing the fife, right? And leading the, you know, he was the head of the, what was his role? William Howe was principal conductor. And I guess for some reason, they had qualified older people who were part of the band at the time. And those people left and more and more young people were coming like Orion and his brother Liston. And I guess the soldiers were getting grumpy or about, you know, and had all kinds of nicknames for these, for these youngsters. And actually the family was from Ohio. But when Orion's mother died, when he was a toddler, a little older, and the family moved to Waukegan to be closer to William's sister, so she could help take care of the two young boys. And so that's where they were. And that's when I talk about the 55th Regiment. It was the 55th Illinois. Okay, let's keep going forward here. Obviously, we're leading up to the point where there was obviously a battle and there was, you know, the Medal of Honor and all that stuff. But yeah, what else happened as the the families now together and you keep it going from there? Well, eventually, the boys, mind you, there were about four feet six inches. So when they finally got uniforms, they dragged and the drum also dragged on the ground. And they had to make adjustments for boys as young as Orion and Liston. And the family was together and the father kind of protected the boys a little bit, and that they didn't have to do too many awful things.  And they stayed together and then the father got sick and he left and went home. And that meant that the boys were pretty much on their own. And so it was getting more lonesome and they were finally getting into more battles. And it was a little bit scarier. Geez. Well, back up. So back up for a sec, what were some of the duties that drummers would perform that were not just playing the drums? I imagine they weren't too nice to these young boys and made them do stuff like, you know, cleaning things. And but yeah, what would they do? They were the ones who actually handled all the communications up and down the line, meaning the soldiers. And they had to sleep near the officers so that whenever an officer wanted to send a message, they would be available. So they would drill for a wake up, which meant that, you know, maybe four or five in the morning, they would wake everybody up and they weren't too happy with the boys. They would also sound for lineup and meal calls and lights out. And then they would have to learn other beats to tell foot soldiers to run or stay put. And then they would drum along with, you know, whatever else was going on. Now, the boys also had other duties. They would help with carrying things. They would help with the medical corps and they would help the surgeons. They would be the ones to carry the bodies. Man, picking up bodies and stuff. Again, you just, I guess it's just people were tougher then, but I just think of these poor little kids. You see, if you look on Wikipedia and I'll post one on social media for people to see, but you see these pictures of these little boys and they have these looks on their face of like, I don't know, just like, like they've seen some stuff.  It's like, you got to be tough. It's just so good. You do, but in essence, they were still boys underneath. And I found some information in the olden days. I don't know. I'm sure they keep records now of every, everything that's going on. But there's a book called The 55th Illinois from 1861 to 1865. And that was written by the officers and put together as a record of what was happening with this particular regiment. And that's where I got most of my information. And there's one part I'd like to read to you from the book to show that these were really boys underneath that outside our sleeping quarters, that was in when they were in transit. So they believe they were in St. Louis at the time, faced a huge open square. Here we march and parade, sun up to sun down. Often the weather quickly shifts from clear to cold to rain. The parade ground turns to a sea of gray musts.  We shed our shoes and socks, roll up our britches and hop lively through the puddles. Liston Joe, these are the other people who they hung out with, somebody they called Betsy because he was probably whiny. Philip and I slap along singing John Brown's body. So they were still into doing boy things. Wow, on a battlefield. I mean, so there's a lot of people which is awesome who listen to this show who are outside of America, where maybe you take for granted that people know about the Civil War. We probably should have done this earlier on. But so obviously it's the North versus the South. Orion would have been a Union soldier, which is the North. And it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's known kind of as one of the bloodiest wars in history. I mean, it was just so brutal, and there was no, it's just such a, there's the technology of helping wounded soldiers. I mean, it was just horrible.  Now, do you know, it's kind of a weird question, I guess, but I guess it wouldn't be documented, really. But like, would he be considered, would these boys be considered like really good drummers or was it just like, like, here's a drum, here's some sticks, play along and don't get out of, out of, you know, time? Like, were they trained at all? Or was it just sort of like, figure it out as you go? No, they were trained. And by the Civil War, there were very specific trainings. And I found where for drummers, during the American Civil War, they were younger than the previous ones, the Revolutionary Wars. So they had to shorten the drums a little bit, shorten all different kinds of things to make them fit the, the drummers who were playing them. And each drummer was required to play variations of 26 rudiments. Does that make sense to you? The rudiment that meant attack was a long roll. The rudiment for assembly was a series of flams, while the rudiments for drummers call, were a mixture of flams and rolls. The rudiment for simple cadence was open beating with a flam repeat. Additional requirements included the double stroke roll, paradiddles, flamadiddles, flam accents, flam acues, rough, roughs, roughs, single and double drags, random acues and sex tuplets. And a lot of this was put down in a book by Bruce and Emmett, Bruce Emmett's 1862, The Drummers and Pfeifers Guide. So early on, even though drumming went back to ancient Babylon, early on during the wars, there was a recognition that you absolutely needed to, to standardize these on both sides, reunion and Confederate. And that, and that was how they, they came to, to do the same things. And in terms of, you know, they weren't rock stars back then, but they were stars in what they did. So they did have training and they did have some standards. Now that's great. And sometimes it, I have to ask a question to then remember sort of more information about it. And, and I recommend people, if they want to hear more about kind of the notation, they can go back to the episode with Mark Beecher, who's the president of the National Association of Rudimental Drumming or Drummers. And he actually talked about, I think he talked about, I believe it was George Washington, who was all like embarrassed about how the drum core sounded. And it was like so terrible that he then actually kind of made it like a thing where it's like, no, no, no, we're going to get these guys and kids sounding better, which then led to obviously more of the, the formation of like, you know, notation and all that stuff. So I think it, it, it sort of was a over time they realized, okay, we need to, it makes the whole army look bad if these people can't play their instrument correctly. So, but that was a great, great bit of information. It's fun to hear you say flamadiddles and paradiddles and all that. Okay, cool. Now, that answer is that. All right. So correct. Stop me if I'm going too fast here. But he obviously got the Medal of Honor, they don't just hand that out. So what happened? And again, pause if there's other things that happened before that are interesting with his family and his, you know, career as a drummer, but how did he end up getting the Medal of Honor? Well, if I may, could I read the section that talks about what happened? Please. And, and let's, and you probably have a better explanation of it. But just so again, people around the world know, not if my pretty bad explanation of what the Civil War was wasn't enough. I'm not going to read a Google explanation of what a Medal of Honor is. So it says, the requirements for the Medal of Honor were standardized among all the services requiring that all recipient had distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. So that's kind of a confusing way of saying that you really have to do something extremely brave and put yourself in danger, right? Just to explain what it is. Yes, that's accurate. Okay, great. That being said, now, yeah, please read this segment. Okay. And this was May 27, 1863. And this was near Vicksburg. And I write this as a first person from a count from Diary of a Drummer Boy, which is fictionalized it, but it's it's got all the rudiments that were from the 55th Illinois Regiment book. This is the first day my head is clear. I have been mending in a field hospital near Vicksburg since May 19. On the fearful day, I was wounded in our attack on the last rebel stronghold before Vicksburg Bluffs. What happened was we drummed the order down the line to strike at about two o'clock. Three cannonball blasts followed signaling the mad charge of howling men toward the rebels. I was supposed to run to the rear supply wagons with the other musicians, but I followed our colors to Fort Hill Ditch instead. I joined this war to help not sit back and watch. Our main line stopped suddenly where the ditch proved too deep to cross. Heavy fire reached within 50 paces of us coming from rebels guarding Graveyard Road, which leads to Vicksburg. Our only cover was to lie flat behind the ditch. The zip zip from pistols made my skin creep. And then he talks about different comrades falling dead. Union soldiers loaded and fired one round after another, then the men started running out of cartridges. Yet rebel fire grew hotter, killing and wounding more men around me. I took it upon myself to collect cartridges from the bodies. I got across the ditch and up the opposite steep ridge. I filled my shirt tails with all I could carry. Then I brought my tiny load to the sharpshooters. Sometimes I tripped over bodies or tree stumps. I remember hearing a chorus of gaffes after one fall, perhaps from men fearing for my safety. On one trip back, Colonel Halberg ordered me to the rear wagons for more cartridges. Bring caliber 54, he yelled after me. The men's muskets were filling with dirt. He thought smaller cartridges would load easier. So this was a slight difference that most people wouldn't pick up. I started back but my path was cut off by rebel fire. I raced toward the clearing.   Suddenly, a bullet struck my right thigh. Blood sloshed in my boot like a puddle of water. I kept climbing the hill but had to stop every few feet. I grew dizzy from loss of blood. My legs wobbled and my eyes blurred. I worried I couldn't make it to the rear regiment. I think I started to cry. Somehow I reached the hilltop and leveled ground. A few yards away, who should I spot but General Sherman? Watching the lines, I hobbled to him and cried something like, General Sherman, please send ammunition to Colonel Malberg. The men are all out. I can't collect any. General Sherman asked my regiment and where the enemy was but he mainly seemed troubled by my bleeding. Never mind me, send ammunition. I told him and he said he would do that and then as he limped off to the hospital he remembered the rest of Colonel's message. I turned around and called caliber 54. I hear General Sherman was most impressed that I recalled the cartridge size while so weak. He plans to write Secretary of War Stanton on my behalf and that's kind of how that happened.  It's just mind blowing that he's so young. I mean, I can't imagine many 14-year-olds today being stuck in that position and dealing with that. Unbelievable. Now, how did the rest of that, so it's the Siege of Vicksburg, is that right? Yes, it was one of the battles for the Siege of Vicksburg and what wound up happening is they didn't exactly break through but they wound up making a significant gain so that the next time there was a battle they were able to take Vicksburg. Wow, that is just unbelievable and you said, it's funny because this episode is just as much drum as it is like military history but you said, so he on purpose wanted to do a smaller caliber, you know, I guess it's not a bullet but we'll call it a bullet for now. But two, because there was dirt and everything filling in the guns so he wanted it to, it would be easier to load that way, right? Yes, yes. That's fascinating. Okay, so all right, so our hero drummer boy, so he gets taken away then, he's out of, is he out of the rest of the Civil War or does he come back? Well, he was sent home so that he could heal but he wanted to go back and once his leg healed, he returned and so did his longing to finish the war and on December 25th, 1863, Orion re-enlisted in the 55th Regiment and this time though, he was assigned as orderly for General Giles Smith and Orion stayed with the 55th until November 3rd, 1864, five months before the war ended and by then he had taken part in 14 battles. Jeez, that's unbelievable.   I mean, I guess she must have been used to a family of, you know, soldiers and then his brother was obviously still in the battle as well, right? Did he make it through? Okay. Yes, in fact, when General Sherman barreled east, they defeated rebels in the, you know, along the way and Liston House stayed with Sherman's division until he reached the Atlantic, so that was the end of the war and Liston became the youngest longest serving Illinois drummer in the Civil War. Wow. There are discrepancies about both boys, especially in Illinois where we're really proud of them. You know, the accolades are that, you know, that Orion was the youngest congressional medal of honor winner, which wasn't true and that Liston was the youngest drummer in the war altogether, but he really wasn't. It was the youngest in Illinois. Now, all right, so that being said, do you know, and I'm sure we can, I can Google it, but like, who was the youngest drummer in the Civil War? Is that a known person? I believe that was Johnny Clem. Oh, that was Johnny Clem. That's right. Okay. Gosh, these kids, it's just unbelievable. Now, it seems like if you're a 10-year-old, how old was Johnny Clem when he was in it? I know you said he entered it at age nine. At nine, oh my God. All right, so if you're nine years old, do you really have any other option of what you can do in the war besides being a drummer boy? I mean, is there anything else for you to do besides drumming? Well, obviously, Orion was an orderly. Oh, sure. Yeah, I'm sure they could help with masks, meaning food preparation. I know as they were getting deeper into the south and food was getting not only worse, but scarcer, the boys would run off and try and scrounge what they could from different farms around there. I guess we could call it stealing. Yeah, no, but pretty serious times where you got to do what you got to do. Okay, cool. Now, this is just an interesting side note that I think you might find interesting. So there's a very famous, and people listening to the show probably know all about this from hearing this, but Sanford Moeller, he's a very famous. I guess you'd call him a teacher. He created the molar technique, which derived from the story goes that he was he would go and when he was younger, hang out with civil war veterans and would watch these guys play who would basically be Johnny Clem or Orion P. Howe, for example, type guys, and he would watch their technique of how they play and how they were getting extreme volume and they were still playing the certain kind of technique at 80 years old. And then he adopted that and created the molar technique, which is still very prevalent today and a lot of drummers use it. But that directly goes back to him watching civil war drummers. So I just thought you might find that kind of interesting how it developed from civil war. Yeah. Okay, cool. Now, all right, Orion lived on to be 81 years old. And on that note, it's just so interesting to me that he was wounded in his leg and the level of medical technology at that point, the fact that he could go back into the war. You know what I mean? Like you think of like all of the problems that could have arise from having this musket ball in your leg that's, you know, you think of all the amputations and stuff. So he's pretty lucky that he survived a little and went back into the war. True, because the main the main vehicle for surgery was to amputate. Yeah. Which is awful. That's terrible. So obviously, maybe his wasn't as bad, but it was bad enough that he got to go home and heal. Yeah. Okay. And then I have another like, you know, again, not as drum, drummy of a question, but more of a military question. I've always wondered this, like, so it would have been probably maybe, I forget, you said General Sherman, right? Who was, he was like going and reporting to give more of the ammunition to, right? Like he kind of witnessed his Valor, I guess you call it. Does Sherman then like, I've always wondered, how does someone report that this soldier should get a Medal of Honor? Would it be Sherman then goes to the higher ups and says, this boy needs a Medal of Honor? How does that work? Well, in the olden days, you wrote letters. So General Sherman wrote a letter to the Secretary of State Stanton about Orion. And then President Lincoln awarded him entry to the Naval US Naval Academy in Annapolis, because he was too young to go to West Point. But it took several years before he received the Congressional Medal of Honor. That was in 1896, when I guess some article must have come up or whatever. And people remembered, hey, yeah, this is really brave and he deserves this Medal of Honor. That's awesome.  He lived to 1930. So after the Civil War, the next big war that would have happened would have been World War One, as far as wars that he could have been involved in. So he would have been too old. So. Well, tell some my understanding that Fife and Drone started to be lessened. Yeah, exactly. As communication tools. Because by then, you know, you've got an active telegraph machines. You've got a Morris Code. You've got, um, I was the telephone. They had a telephone by then, although not much. I mean, it wasn't like having a cell phone. But there were other means of communication. So the boy's word is necessary. Sure. And the episode you were referring to before, which is a great one that people can check out is the history of US military drumming with Patrick Jones, who's a great guy and very knowledgeable about all this. So he talked all about that, about how it just, it kind of phased out of like, you know, it's just not as prevalent and necessary. And I've got a lot of episodes. There's actually a recent one, which will be out before this, which is the history of Noble and Cooley, which they made rope tension drums, they made toy drums. And then they got commissioned by the US government to start making drums for the, for the war effort. So it just, it just shook everyone's, it just shook up everything for everyone. So wow. Okay. So then, so he went to the Naval Academy, right?  Obviously, he didn't see battle again. But what did he do after the Naval Academy? No, he was a merchant marine for a while. He was kind of a vagabond, I get the impression. And he came out of Corporal's. So he wasn't all that high level. You know, he moved up, but not all that much. And then he, and then he received schooling as a dentist. And it's a little murkier, exactly when that happened. He moved to Streeter for a while, then he would move elsewhere. And especially died in St. Louis where his daughter was, but that was only after his second wife died in Streeter.  So he was making saddles and things like that. And then he went to be a dentist and, and did that until he retired. Wow. Okay, that came out of that field like, okay, I'm going to be a dentist now. Yeah, it's unclear, especially since he didn't have the most scholarly reputation in terms of when he was at the Naval Academy. You know, it seemed like he was a good guy who was brave and had lots of courage. I mean, I don't, I don't know how to explain him any other way. Yeah. No, that's great. Boy, what a, what a fascinating young, young man.  So let's talk a little bit about your book, which is, it's, it is a kid's book. Like it's, you said, I believe it's for like sixth graders, typically fourth to sixth grade, diary of a drummer boy, which is kind of a fictionalized version of his life, which I just think it's neat because this is the kind of thing where, you know, if you're a young kid and you're drum crazy, like many of us are and many of us were as kids, you'd love reading this. So I think if people out there have grandkids or kids, this is just a pretty neat thing to pick up that's history, you know, war stuff, which a lot of little boys and little girls really like. I know I did. So how did you go about, how did you learn about Orion P how? I was doing a book earlier called extraordinary young people and I was looking for young people who were doing anything that was beyond the norm for their age and we're, you know, and their time. And I went to my library and I saw a flyer where the Lake County Historical Society or Lake County Museum was having a drummer boy exhibit and I didn't know much about them. And so I called up the museum and I said, explain my situation. And they said, we have the perfect boy for you. And that's how I first learned about Orion. But that was only the beginning. I love it when I can do research closer to home and I don't live that far from Waukegan. So I could go there and I could picture his house overlooking the ravine. I could go to the Historical Society and do research first hand. I could get diaries and letters that the boys wrote home and what their families wrote to them and get a clear idea of what was going on in Waukegan at the time and also what it was like to be in the war. Geez, that's awesome.  I tried to get a digital copy and it just didn't work out, but I think we've still gotten a good, very good representation.  Is that kind of what happens in this situation? Well, it's different for everybody. But for me, historical fiction is always about a real person, usually a young person in a real event that happened in their lives. And the reason it's called fictionalized or historical fiction is because obviously I wasn't there. So there's going to be elements of it that have to be interpreted, assumed, if you will.  And I hope it's as close to fact as possible. Yeah. No, I'm sure it's very thorough. Now, a question just popped into my head, which you probably don't know the answer to, but it makes me wonder like, if you're a drummer, boy, like, it almost seems like him playing the drums wasn't like he was a diehard born to be drummer. It's like, because you said he did other jobs, like I wonder if when he got out of when the Civil War ended, if he continued to like, practice his drum playing the snare, or if, you know, in like the, he died in the 30s, I doubt he did when he was, I doubt he got a drum set, you know, in the 20s when they were really starting to get more popularized because he'd be a 70 year old man. But I wonder if he still enjoyed practicing and if he, you know, played, you know, his rudimental stuff and practiced when he was more of an adult. I got the impression that when he was young, he really, really liked it. And of course, probably wanted to please his father. The other in terms of what happened when he was older, there was nothing that I found that he continued drumming. So I don't know for sure. I don't also know if he was allowed to keep the drum that he was given during the Civil War. Not, not all drummers were, were able to keep theirs. In fact, when I was doing a little research recently, I found that one drummer, it verified that he took his drum home with him. But it sounded like it was so odd that it usually didn't happen. Yeah, they're not from what I've heard from doing these episodes about the more, you know, rope tension, kind of Civil War era drums is they're not that common. Like you, a lot of people wonder too, like what they are out there, but it's like, what happened to these drums? Like there's, there was a ton of them made, but maybe they were destroyed, maybe they were lost to fires, maybe they were left on a battlefield and just rotted away. Who knows? It's because they're really, really works of art and historical. I mean, they're so significant. I know the Lake County Museum has, has a Civil War drum. But interestingly, it looked like one that I had borrowed from a neighbor family whose son had a drum set. It was a kid, obviously a kid's drum set, but it had the same kinds of decorations, which they used to have on all the drums back then. So there would be, you know, there, there were paintings that displayed Union Eagles and Confederate shields. Sometimes there would be stars on them. So they were hand painted decorations that were made each one a little bit unique. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. They're, they're, it's, but like you always, you typically see an Eagle. You typically see like designs like that. So the Eagle and all of the Union stuff, it just makes me wonder too, like, so we're talking, this is all pretty much been about the Union, the North, in the South. In your experience, do you know, did they have similar drummer boy experiences? Yes, they definitely did. The only difference I found is that the Confederate States tended to have 11 stars on their drums instead of 13 to distinguish them, but they had the same, same drummer boys who were drumming out the same rhythms to make, you know, to make things happen. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it's obvious because like, we're not, I mean, they could literally be like next door neighbors, but depending on where the state line was, you're now enemies, which is, so it's not like, not like a different country, obviously. It's, it's so, it's such a interesting war, but well, that's great. Okay. Well, this is really fascinating stuff. Is there any other kind of fun tidbits from his life that you think might be interesting to people, you know, drum, drum or no drum? Well, can I add Liston, his younger brother? Oh, please. Yeah, yeah. Talk about his family in general just as, yeah, anything about them. Well, Liston, after the war, he wound up, he moved, he moved to, he worked on railroads and eventually he was the head railroad person in Streeter, Illinois. And then he decided to make more money. So he went into the coal business. He was able to invent something that helped the coal industry. And that's what allowed him to kind of live as the rest of his life in Streeter, pretty much, you know, a lot easier. And both of the boys were honored in Streeter. There's, there's exhibits at the Streeter Museum. There's an obelisk there. There's, there's a school in Waukegan named after, well, that Orion Howe. So they've, they've established all kinds of honorary things besides the Congressional Medal of Honor. That's neat. What a, I mean, for a family like that to stand out and kind of be, I don't know, like there's so many soldiers and there's so many people and so many even drummer boys. It's just fascinating. And it's great that they, they're, you know, valor to keep using that word really stands out to this day. And they really did a lot. I mean, what an impressive family. It's kind of a shame they don't, I mean, a lot of people know about them, hopefully, but right now we're getting the word out more, which I think is, is a great thing. There must be some interest. I know there was an article written in Waukegan about Orion enlisting just this last Veterans Day. So every once in a while things bubble up. And about the same time that my book came out, there were two, two novels for slightly older kids that also came out. And then, then there's been nothing. So it's, it's, it's kind of weird. And there's also a really good book. I don't know if it is accessible now called The Boys War by Jim Murphy. And that has a huge section about, about drummer boys. And that's all again. Cool. Yeah, no, that's great. Well, I feel this is just such an interesting topic and it's different, which I always love to do on the show is to do kind of different stuff. So why don't you, Marlene, tell people where they can check you out. Again, you typically write kind of books for younger people, but I think a lot of people who listen to the show, myself included, have kids and have grandkids and can get them some stuff. So where can they learn more about your books? You can learn more about my books from MarleneTargBrill.com. That's M-A-R-L-E-N-E-T is in Tom. A-R-G is in GeorgeBrill.com. In terms of getting diary of a drummer boy, you can either contact me and I would have hard copies and paperbacks, or you could go just about any place online. It's available for, for on demand. So you could get it that way. Great. Cool. Well, this is a fun one. I appreciate you kind of taking the risk to come and talk to, you know, about drums as a non-drummer. And I think, I think you did a great job. And it was really neat to hear just the excerpts from the story and hear about his moment of, I feel like it really kind of defines you, those moments of like, like in the battle when he was going to get the cartridges or when he was going to get the ammunition.   He's probably more of a man than me, but he's really a little boy. And that's just so impressive. So I loved hearing the story. Well, thank you for having me. This has been wonderful. And something I could tell my daughters is also a drummer. Oh yeah. I forgot about that. So it's cool that your daughter, how old is your daughter? My daughter is 38. Oh, great. Nice. How long has she played the drums? She's played the drums I know since junior high age. She had a band in high school and she just enjoys drumming. So she plays all different kinds of drums and she'll join different groups, but nothing formal now. Oh yeah, sure. But that's awesome. So you get it. You are connected to drummers because your daughter is one.  Well, it wasn't too bad. She entered drumming about the time that we were redoing our basement. So we insulated it. Good, smart. Yeah. Yeah, I'm moving in 10, no, I'm moving in seven days and I'm going to be doing the third floor of my house up and renovating it.  That's but God, the difference between having drums in a basement versus a third floor is big because it shakes your whole house when you're up top. So all right. Well, Marlene, this is awesome. Thank you again for coming on the show and being such a nice person and sharing all of this information with us. And I want to thank Eric. I'm thick. I'm seeing it right. McKnight, Macknight for just sending that comment to me and saying this is a cool topic. So as everyone who listens to the show knows, if you ever have any ideas, send them in my way. And they typically take a long time to put together. So if anyone has suggested something to me, just know that I have a list of really cool episode ideas. There's history of cocktail kits, phosphorus. Let's see, there's a ton of them. Alan Dawson episode, history of Moongel. I'm working on one about the modern calfskin heads being made. But these take a while. But with Marlene, it took about four days for us to get it set up. So that was very fast. So on that note, Marlene, thank you for being here. And good luck with the rest of 2020. And hopefully we make it through. Okay. Oh, I know we will stay safe, everybody. And thank you so much for having me. Okay. Bye, Marlene. Thank you. If you like this podcast, find me on social media at Drum History and please share, rate and leave a review. And let me know topics that you would like to learn about the future. Until next time, keep on learning. This is a Gwynn Sound podcast.


Going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards. We are ripping 22 penini select football each to hybrid ten box break number one Random team style so look again at your end results as always you can find those on the website under the results tab Well as a Lincoln chef No, travesty. No, we have this we have one more after and then it's the 20 box So we have two three more breaks tonight, but this I would do the same thing anything 25 and under As the numbers are a little bit lower in this we got a gold RPA already your gold patch auto But I say Adams pierce strong junior six of ten three colored RPA That's one there Christian Watson red to 49 sauce Gardner rookie and Channing Kindle So the their car is on the night to 49 Baderian Mathis and no no no like It's 20 minutes probably Garrett Wilson Michael Pittman silver a Zudu Red Terry McClourn. Ah scary Terry to 49 LaVisca Chanel and AJ Tarell Who another gold and it's gonna be Christian McCaffery a sweet level three of ten Seyquan and Darian land seen there's a Jalen Hertz red to 49 for the Eagles Magi Sanders Michael Parsons Sam Howell Darnold silver Prescott gold Jonathan Taylor Three of ten Yeah, two gold good running backs to Tua and Tristan Ebbner Stingley Danny Gray silver Channing Tindall Dak Prescott red to 49 sweet level that is 37 to 49 Matt Ryan Matt Jude on Kenny Pickett George Carl Aftis Charles Cross disco Taylor Harneke and Isaac Spiller Whoa, whoa, let me double check really quick Randy. I got you buddy Yeah, Randy. I had you for the Dolphins and the Saints Dolphins and Saints on the What's it called? Illusions. Yeah. Yeah, you're in there twice Randy. I Might have let me make sure I didn't use the wrong name. It's really quick Yeah, no you're on there twice Randy Yeah, I got you Dolphin Saints on that one Silver Jamo blue Justin Fields at 25 15 of 25 Rashad Shahid and Rashid Shahid and Zeke Elliott Silva Jay Jedis red to 49 to force Buckner CMC and Cam Akers This is this select H2. There's Trey Lance Jonathan Taylor and Keontae Ingram Yeah, we just we literally just finished the illusions five minutes ago or so Chris Olavé rookie. There's a blue John Dotson sweet level 20 of 25 Commanders Dylan Ramsey and James Conna to Trent McDuffie. Nice one there to 25 Tyler Elger Logan Thomas Thomas Silver feelin red Jonathan Taylor 49 Jedis and Dax Hill We got green coming up here Jake silver Taylor Harneke green David a job. Oh for the Ravens 205 nice one there. That's awesome. It's your guy is my guy Mike White and Damian Pierce I like the job of this game a lot This Olavé Jay Ferg Pierce, there's a disco Zidaria Smith Every Joe Siffin pattern Williams So one-on-one, I think it is. I think it is that is a black one-on-one Trayvon Walker It is gonna be CJ Mosley One of one Going to the Jets nice one there congrats New York Color match on the jersey Viviana V congrats Really nice one there uno de uno CJ Mosley. Oh That's so sick for Khalil Shakir Joe Burrow red to 49 Isaiah Spiller Matt Brown Viviana if you're watching I have a I have a friend who is The literally the biggest CJ Mosley collector on the planet. I'm sure he would he would be interested in that Silver Wandale Robinson. That's makeup. It's Patrick to 49. He's got literally like 200 It's insane it's a like what it's the one of the craziest player collections I've ever seen Kenneth Walker. That is a Cordero Patterson No, he's Ravens fan It's like he collected him when he was a Raven back from like 14 18 or whenever he left and then he still goes after all the Jets one ones another RPA Danny Gray nine of 25 nice one there two colored RPA for the Niners that is a Kirby Joseph to 49 Josh Allen Tyler Conflin Silver Justin Fields blue Joshua Azidu To 25 shared golf and boy and mafia here at Wilson rookie Silver Tyree kill red Bailey Zappie to 49 nice one there for the Patriots Juju and P Higgins another green coming up. It is Jalen Hertz. That's awesome, dude Three of five for the Eagles on the green color match. There you go. Noah grads, buddy Noah H on the green Hertz more and Asamola These are solid dude these boxes Gold again here. That is gonna be Deontay Johnson No, that's green five of five another green going to the Steelers Rats on that one John Taylor and Josh Jacobs silver Jima red Gino Smith the 49 Ingram and base There's another green. Oh my god silver Mahomes another green Jalen Hertz four of five Two green different Jalen Hertzes Unreal dude four or five on that one. All right. Wow That's crazy, dude Minka and a Keem Hicks.  I mean, they're different levels. Don't get me wrong But still wild Deontay Adams John Mechie and Karen Clorn.  I swung their Arizona Cam Jerrigans to 25. I don't believe nothing numbered at least no per Gotta hit like a Damian Pierce gold or something. That'd be sick Speaking that that's good. Good vibe right there silver Terry McLaurin red Josh Allen 12 of 49 nice color match there base and base Marlon Humphrey all pro Marla Another golds coming up here silver Brian Cook rookie that is a gold Cooper cup For the Rams eight of ten nice one there ramps Matt Jones, Austin Eichler Drake London rookie Josh Pascal red a Saquon Barkley to 49 David and Joku and Kelly Pickett rookie. Yeah, I think we have another patch. We do another patch auto Drake London that is gonna be John Mechie 18 or no 19 of 25 two colored RPA There you go. Congrats to Andrew Andrew first time breaking with us. Congrats, buddy Mechie RPA that that's nothing to scoff at Kamara to 25 Jalen Ramsey and Nicholas Pacific for a silver locket that is gonna be Zay Jones 249 Minko and Mechie again. I'll get this guy out that that guy out Another green dude silver Darren Bland green Cameron Thomas Five of five for the Cardinals. That's one there. Not the Nets Cameron Thomas despite popular belief They're McLaurin taken queriano Garrett Wilson rookie Pitman, I Jordan Poyer 249 on the red Zion Johnson and DJ more Drake London That's a red Chase Claypool to 49 Dishon Watson T-Law Silver Daniel Bellinger say red Dishon Watson to 49 Cam Juergens Devontae Wyatt Garrett Wilson Pitman Silver Sam Williams rookie blue to 25 PS2 Patrick Sir tan 23 of 25 and Last-back good luck briefs all disco sweet level Devontae Adams and Jeremy Rucker Do a quick recap Really good break here Patrick Sir tan Alvin Kamara Justin Fields Cam Juergens. These are all to 25 by the way Jordan Azuz Zudu Trent McDuffie Johan Dotson golds to 10 Jonathan Taylor Christian McCaffrey Cooper cup greens to five Deontae Johnson David a jobbo Cam Thomas Patch Autopsy at four of them John Mechie Trey McBride Danny Gray and a gold pier strong junior to 10 and we had mags to green Jalen Hertz different levels assuming premier and concourse yes concourse and Premier level and then one-of-one CJ Mosley club level for the Jets that'll do it for the break guys Thanks again for the bill coming up next is penny one


Eight signs who have hurt the narcissist. The narcissist is hurt when their ego has been bruised When they feel less valuable or important When something affects their sense of worth The larger their ego is the more at risk it is of being bruised When they're entertaining their delusions of grandeur Is actually when they are most vulnerable Narcissists are very sensitive people They always have to be right. They always have to be in control So it is actually very easy to hurt the narcissist. You may find yourself walking on eggshells You may become extremely cautious of your words and actions when you are around them Because you're afraid of how they might react But identifying if you have hurt the narcissist can Help you to protect yourself Which is why I have decided to share these eight signs with you one narcissistic rage The most obvious sign you have hurt the narcissist is narcissistic rage They will get very angry They will insult you and put you down They will say and do whatever they think will hurt you the most In this state they can be unpredictable They can be very dangerous They may throw things at you They may damage your property And they may even become physically violent passive aggression if the narcissist feels threatened by you it will become passive aggressive They will express their anger or annoyance indirectly In a way that is designed to confuse you They will say something and then do something different They will pretend to agree with you when they hold a different opinion Because they're afraid of the consequences of expressing that anger directly towards you Maybe they're worried that they might lose some of the conveniences that you're providing to them So instead they become passive aggressive They push just to the edge of what you're willing to tolerate So that it's not enough you to call them out on it so that you don't have a firm conviction To disconnect from them which enables them to continue their behavior three criticism When the narcissist is hurt, it's because they feel less valuable or important But they don't want to reflect on these feelings. It's too painful for them to deal with So instead they try to put you beneath them By tarting your sense of worth They do this by criticizing you by indicating your fault and it is proven way To make you feel like you're not good enough Because that's exactly how they feel But if they can put the focus on you, it makes them feel better It makes them feel like they're not the problem and that's what their criticism is designed to do It's designed to deflect the focus on to you It's designed to keep you looking at yourself Because they don't feel like they're at fault They don't like how it feels And they don't want to do the work to change their dysfunctional behaviors fall Opposition when you have hurt the narcissist The narcissist will immediately become oppositional to you they will refuse to do what you want them to do They will be very disruptive if you pick up on any of their flaws There has to be something wrong with you You have to be wrong because they just can't accept that there anything less than perfect But when you question or confront them They feel like they're losing control They feel like you're taking back your power So to regain control of the situation They become opposed to whatever you stand for Even if they secretly agree with you Even if it's unfairable for them They have to be in opposition to it They will only agree with something If it benefits them 5 silent treatments Sometimes the only thing the narcissist can do is be silent If they know that the situation doesn't warrant a certain reaction, they have no choice but to be quiet They have to accept it But the silent treatment is also designed to punish you. It's a control tactic It's designed to make you question yourself It's designed to make you feel like you've done something wrong 6 Triangulation When you hurt the narcissist it affects the narcissist's sense of worth It makes them feel like they're not good enough It makes them feel like they're at fault Which is something the narcissist doesn't want to accept So they run from the situation It may seem like they're running from you But they're actually running from themselves It may seem like they found someone else But they've actually just found someone Reflects back to them this ideal vision of themselves Someone who validates their false self Someone who supports the illusion and this is what they then reflect back to you It's meant to hurt you It's meant to make you regret your decision It's meant to make you blame yourself Because now there was someone else Who doesn't see anything wrong with them It might make you second guess yourself It might make you think you made a mistake But you didn't make a mistake This new person has been manipulated by the narcissist Just as you were when you first met them They don't know what they really like But the narcissist will use this to hurt you and make you feel like you're at fault 7 Victim plane The narcissist will not take accountability for their actions Instead, they will blame you They will lie They will make false accusations They will exaggerate your faults and mistakes While minimizing or denying their own This is how they evade accountability This is how they avoid any consequences for their actions By passing the blame on to someone else By holding you accountable And they do that by playing the victim By acting as though you did something to them They will often blame you for the very things that they caused The very things that they did to you It's projection They disown the parts of themselves that they don't like And assign them to you This is designed to make you question yourself It's designed to make you take responsibility for the situation While protecting the narcissist fragile sense of self Smear campaign If you don't fall for the narcissist victim plane They believe that someone else will So they manipulate other people They shut on the false character In the hopes that they will find the illusion They will tell them horrible things about you They will bring up things that you confided in them They will bring up things from the past They will fabricate stories They will say what they think will make you look bad While acting as though they did the best for you They try to help you This is designed to punish you For not complying with their agenda And it's also designed to take the focus off of them And all of the faults they made Narcissists run from accountability They don't want to deal with the shame They don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions When you hurt the narcissist It resurfaces everything that they try to bury within Everything they despise about themselves Everything they cannot control When you hurt the narcissist It may seem like they hate you But they actually hate everything that you are resurfacing about themselves That's what they're in opposition to That's what they're running from Because it's something they don't want to accept It's something they don't want to deal with But the truth is That when you hurt the narcissist It really has nothing to do with you All they see is the ghost of everything they once were Everything they hated about themselves Everything they tried to hide And nothing makes the narcissist angrier than that Thank you for watching I hope this video resonates with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description The coaching inquiries You can email me at coaching.naxivetacoloruk Thank you for watching And I'll talk to you soon


So I'm now up in early already in Umblanga. I'm outside Jeanet's house and hopefully we get to capture what her secret is It's gonna be interesting morning. Let's check it out What is the morning gonna look like now? We are off to the Umblanga promenade. Yeah We're gonna have a little walk and we're lucky. We're going to see the dolphins We've been in Umblanga now for 17 years close to 17 years And I think before we had children we lived on this beach with our dogs We were here three four five times a week and we've stayed here I think it's just quality of life. Amazing quality of life. It's unbelievable. It is just You can't get better than this. What's your philosophy? What's your secret? I think to be flexible to have you to do list you'll never be perfect and superwoman has hung up at Cape You can just be the best that you can be you're an attorney and You have your practice here at home. So that's quite convenient. How long have you had the practice at home for? 12 years. Wow A house we've been 16 years. Wow. Sure. That's nice. So you really have you really want a slunger girl Yeah, yeah What kind of law do you practice? I do a lot of family law. Yeah You're anti-national contracts to do lots of those Everything doesn't go so well anymore to divorce this My passion is mediation Mediation would be the process of getting two people to not learn to communicate but to communicate with each other Any secret to success that you have? Any advice you can give our viewers? Definitely have a list but have a very flexible list and have a diary that You use yeah, definitely have the diary that you use a phone. That's always charged. It's a good good addition Very good advice And I think just be flexible. Don't be stuck in your ways and have listen use your ears That's why there are two of them in one month Find the space you need in a home you love Private property a home for everyone


and how to find the mysterious Utah monolith using Google Earth. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 25, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, way north of the monolith, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were talking a little bit about that monolith just now, as well as the mysterious smoker on Sarah's property. If you want to unravel both mysteries, go get that wider show. Good day, Internet. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The US FCC rejected ZTE's petition to remove its designation as a national security threat. This means that the FCC's Universal Service Fund can't be used to buy equipment and services from ZTE. That fund is used to subsidize building telecommunications infrastructure in underserved areas. Companies are allowed to spend their own money to buy ZTE equipment, however. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts better than expected demand for the iPhone 12 Pro models offsetting some weaker than expected demand for the 12 and 12 mini. Kuo also sees evidence that Apple will redesign the form factors, the look different for the Apple Watch and MacBooks in the second half of 2021. Kuo also estimates AirPods sales will fall 5 to 10% in the next six months and that the next version of the AirPods will be delayed a little until the April-June quarter. You know, I find a lot of people say that they like the mini. I guess they're still in the minority. Square announced that it's buying Credit Karma's tax unit for $50 million in cash. Credit Karma tax provides a free do-it-yourself tax filing service and will be incorporated into Square's cash app unit. This follows the Justice Department requiring that into it to sell Credit Karma's tax business in order to clear into its purchase of Credit Karma for $7.1 billion. Google is planning a fiber optic connection called Blue Rahman from India to Europe that would directly connect Saudi Arabia and Israel for the first time. Oman telecommunications and telecom Italia are reportedly helping to finance the route. Google still needs approval from the Saudi government, among other regulatory sign-offs, but it's more likely than ever because the U.S. has brokered some historic recognition of Israel by UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, and Israel's Prime Minister apparently met with the Saudi Crown Prince Sunday, at least according to two Saudi government advisers. The Wall Street Journal sources say that Salesforce has been in recent talks to buy Slack technologies. Slack is currently valued at $17 billion, and this could represent Salesforce's largest acquisition ever, still in talks. All right, let's talk a little more about why you're always picking up your cell phones. Scott, some scientists did some studies. That's good because I've been wondering what the heck I'm doing. A study of smartphone use by the London School of Economics and Political Science found that 89% of phone interactions were unprompted while the remaining 11% were because of notifications. So some people just picking up the phone to look at it. 37%, sorry, 37 participants in the study in the U.K., Germany, and France wore cameras to record their phone interactions. Users spent less time on their phone when they were home with other people, and the most time when in public transport trains, that sort of stuff. The study indicates more research is needed about why people interact with their phones and how. That's fascinating. The common sense is that it's all those notifications. You get barraged with your notifications. Just turn off your notifications and it'll reduce your screen time, apparently not. To me, this entire thing mimics my COVID lockdown time. My time from March until now has been marked with these moments of me going, why am I looking at my phone again? What am I doing here? I don't need to be in here and not because of some notification. I still get those, but it's usually maybe you on Slack or it's somebody out of my mom trying to get a hold of me or something like that, and I'll respond to those. But most of the time, it's just me going, the world's weird. I'm kind of tired. And I think TikTok will take my mind off of it. And it's a lot of those interactions, way more than before March for me. So more study is needed, obviously, but I'm really curious about how this all pans out if they talk to more people around the world. I'm a minimal notification person. In fact, there are lots of apps that will send me a notification every once in a while. Or I'm like, what? How did I not turn that off in settings already? And I go in and, no, you don't need to ping me about this sort of thing. I will come to you if I want to. But I have found, and we've talked about this on the show before, because, you know, the whole smartphone, mobile phone, you know, mobile device, anything that is easy on the go is just not something I need all that often. I mean, sure, if I'm at the dog park, I might look at my phone and just make sure I'm not missing anything, but I don't really go anywhere. So when I'm at home, the phone's always near me, you know, and it's what rings, but then, you know, my laptop rings too on FaceTime. I'm using my laptop almost exclusively, even something like TikTok. I look at my For You page on my laptop, because I'm like, there's just more area, and it's easier to type, and all my messages are there anyway, and there are very few things that I can't do on my laptop that I feel like I want to do on a regular basis. And I don't think that that's just, oh, because I, you know, I don't leave the house anymore. I am now just so less used to being on the go, being in transit, for example. You know, someone is standing on the subway for 45 minutes, yeah, you're gonna be looking at your phone. I'm now, I'm so not used to it, that now I'm sort of like, eh, eh, I don't look at that. It's just a smaller version of my computer. I don't do notifications. I very much limit notifications myself, but I still use my phone a lot. So I think what the study is showing is that people don't realize when they're picking up their phone. They're picking it up absentmindedly. In fact, a few study participants were kind of shocked when they looked at the video and like, I don't remember doing that. I don't remember picking up the phone. I don't remember why I did it. There's been some other studies that show that psychologically when the phone is in the room with you, even if you're not looking at it, you think about it. It reduces your attention level on other things because it's kind of pulling at you. So this is another study in those planks of what effects phones are having on our mental state. The word addiction gets thrown around a lot and I'm not sure if it's exactly appropriate or not because it carries a whole lot of clinical meanings that are complex, but there's certainly a pull to having that phone there. And this is another study that shows that. France has decided not to wait for a worldwide agreement on tax treatment of tech companies and will proceed unilaterally. Tech companies legally record income in parts of Europe where they have headquarters with lower tax burdens, such as Ireland. France wants to take a cut of that revenue by imposing a 3% tax based on where sales are made rather than where revenue is recorded. French tax authorities have started to send tax bills to collect the new digital services tax. This is starting a dispute with the United States. Essentially, the United States has been saying, all right, we get your concern, but let's figure this out. And France is saying, we can't wait anymore. And I don't know exactly why President Macron is saying we can't wait anymore. Obviously there's a financial crunch on all countries right now and maybe that's all it is. He's like, we just need the money. We can't wait around. It could also be a way to try to push some leverage to get the global deal done faster. We'll see if that's the case or not. But if you don't understand what's going on, it's essentially a way to get tax people for what's happening in their country. I mean, that's what Sarah just said, but to put it in another way, if I operate in France, but I had my headquarters in Ireland, I could take all the money I make from selling things to people in France and transfer it to my Ireland division and then I'd pay tax under Ireland and say, well, I didn't make any money in France. I transferred it all to Ireland and that's legal. That's not illegal. That is the way Europe set up the tax code. They're following the law. A lot of people start to treat this as if they're doing something illegal. They're not. They're doing something that is absolutely within the design and what France is trying to say is, well, let's change the design. I want to put a tax on sales made in my country. Whether you transfer the revenue or not, let's change the law. That's what you should do when you think a law isn't working, right? Just change the law. Let's tax the sale in the country. The problem is the US companies are most likely to be affected by that. So the US is objected and say, hold on, before you just started punishing our companies, let's figure out a way to make this fair for everybody. And France agreed to put it off for a while, but I guess their patience ran out. It's easy for... I mean, I barely understand her own tax code, so I don't have a lot to add here, but I did want to say this. It's easy for us to want to say, well, there's a big transition coming to the US government this January and we're about to get a new president. Do you think that has any effect on when other countries decide to go ahead and pull stuff like this? Not pull stuff like this. Obviously, it's taken into consideration for sure. Yeah, I'm not sure what effect they think that will have, whether they want to put some pressure on the Biden in the coming Biden administration, whether they think they could get a last-minute deal out of the Trump administration. I don't know. Yeah, that's, again, very unknowledgeable in this area, but it does feel like every time anything happens on a big world stage, I'm like, wow, it's because of this election, you know, but I'm sure I'm not right. It's always more complex than just that, but you're not wrong that it's part of it. Sure. Let's talk about underwater scooters. What? Web. Yes. The next web has a write-up of the Genino S2 underwater scooter. It's a backpack-sized device with two propellers. So sort of a half quadcopter, except the propellers are one on each side of the main body and instead of being pointed down like in a quadcopter, they're pointed backwards. So they propel you forward. You hold on to the device with one hand on each of the posts to connect the main body with the propeller. You got the propellers to the right or left of your hand and then you kind of get propelled through the water. It can keep you going for up to 45 minutes on a charge and cost $399. Now, the S2 is the more consumer-friendly version of the S1 model. It's also been refined and the battery made more efficient, et cetera, and it includes a Bluetooth connection for remote control, which I think will make it more family-friendly if your children are using it. You could make it surface or something. CTO, Dr. Wang Shengwei, has told the next web they came up with the idea when someone had taken one of Genino's underwater drones, which was built for exploration and started tooling around in the water with it. Now, that's a pretty good idea. Maybe we should make one that does that on purpose. They originally built the S1 for marine professionals, serious divers doing exploratory work either for industrial or science uses, but they decided to widen the market when they made the S2. So this one is for more recreational uses, still probably diving uses, but the company says they do plan to make another version for the swimming pool use. So if you're just in a big old pool of your own, I assume, not a crowded one, you could tool around in the deep end. I mean, if I had a pool, I would totally do this. It makes pretty good sense. And that price isn't too bad. Basically, we're describing a thing as a kid that I would have thought was science fiction we'd never get to be able to do outside of some really expensive scenario out in the middle of the ocean. And what you're telling me is I can have a submarine in my own pool. I mean, what's not to like about this? We're just going really fast, right? In the past, it was like, I don't know. I had to be a mermaid or wear like really great fins to be able to go faster than I could swim.  This would be quite a bit faster. I wonder if you're in a small pool, you sort of like in circles, but is a pool where I live now pretty big pool? I think people could have a lot of fun. And you're not going far enough that you can't come up for air every once in a while. You know, the whole idea of like being able to go under the water for 45 minutes, well, you need air under there with you unless you're doing some sort of like a hybrid snorkel type thing, which I guess is possible as well. But, but yeah, people are going to have some fun with this.  And we all thought, oh, that guy's cool. We should do this one day. There's a little taste of that, you know? And if you're somebody who has to have all those kinds of toys, you got a couple of ATVs, maybe a jet ski in the garage. What's a extra flotation underwater device going to cost? No big deal. There's a technical achievement here too that we should note. They had to really experiment with the power versus efficiency of the battery and the propellers. They wanted it to make it fast enough that it was worth doing that you'd be like, okay, I'm going faster than I could swim on my own, but not so fast that it ate up the battery in two minutes. So they did a lot of work to kind of balance that out, make the motors efficient, make the propellers efficient. And so they could make this be a backpack-sized device. Battery is small enough that you can bring it on a plane. It's like a laptop-sized battery, so it's not huge. Hey, folks, if you want to join in the conversation in our Discord, you could start sharing your tips on underwater scooter use right there. Join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash D-T-O-M-S. The Verge's Tom Warren notes that despite the Xbox Series X having more powerful hardware, the PS5 has been outperforming it, particularly in frame rate. This is according to benchmarks from Digital Foundry. In Devil May Cry 5, high frame rate modes above 40 frames per second ran better on PS5. Assassin's Creed Valhalla showed screen tearing and regular dips below 60 frames per second on the Series X, ran smoother on the PS5. For Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, the Xbox falls behind in 120 frames per second mode, although it does hold at 60 FPS in some scenes with ray tracing where the PS5 fell to 40 FPS. On Dirt 5, the PS5 showed better texture filtering and little higher average resolution overall and performance mode dipped below 120 frames per second more often on Xbox. Codemaster promised to fix already for this with indications this is a software problem and therefore a fixable problem. In fact, Digital Foundry editor Richard Ledbetter suspects an API limitation that's on the Xbox side. Microsoft started taking submissions for Series X certification back in June after an update to its game developers kit and developers had access to PS5 dev kits a lot earlier than that. So that might factor into this bit. Microsoft also says it's actively working with its partners to identify and resolve the issues to ensure an optimal experience. Well, as you may wonder or guess, I spent a lot of time thinking about what this might mean. So I ended up getting my hands on an Xbox Series X. PlayStation 5's have been a little more elusive given less stock availability, but also Xboxes are hard to get to for that matter. And I've had a really impressive experience so far with the Xbox, but the more I've thought about it in light of this news, most of that has been first-party stuff. So really super-enhanced versions of Gears 5, for example. I'm not sure I've seen a better-looking video game in my life. It's unbelievably beautiful, performs really well, but it's first-party. Third-party engine, though, and Unreal, which leads me to think this API thing is probably indeed the problem. And thankfully, that's a thing that you can fix with software. But this is interesting. Microsoft's come into this generation with all guns blazing and a really strong value proposition for players, and it basically said, look, we've all been asking when's Netflix for video games coming? Well, we think we have it now.  Pay it off over two years and pay no interest. And I've got all these ideas to make the experience a more valuable per-dollar sort of experience for players. Whereas Sony's kind of holding the line saying, well, we're gonna do what we always do. Lots of good exclusives. But games are gonna be 79 bucks, and that's up from the 59 they used to be, and this sort of thing, or 69 for average ones. Anyway, the point is of all this discussion, Microsoft's had a bunch of wins in a row, and Sony has had limited stock.  That always happens. You're always gonna have some trouble at first. But some notable problems they've had with some notable people out there. And so my thinking was, oh, no, this isn't looking good for Sony. They're already kind of having to fight against this new business model that Microsoft's presenting. And now this has flipped a little bit. It's now, you know, we're having to reckon with this idea that the Xbox, which was reportedly more powerful, and it is by the numbers, isn't producing with those same third-party games the way the PlayStation is. So even if you can fix it, the hearts and minds of gamers matter in this very competitive space. So I don't know how quickly they can do it or what they should do, but Microsoft really should get on that and get that fixed ASAP, because this kind of stuff, even if it's minor or temporary, tends to permeate the game sphere.  So you gotta be careful. Yeah, if people don't realize, the Xbox Series X is capable of 12 teraflops of GPU performance. And the PS5 does 10.28 teraflops. So by the numbers, the Xbox is more powerful. Maybe not that much more powerful. It all depends on how it's used. And that's the point here. And I think Scott, the fact that you're having a good experience with Microsoft's first-party games shows that, hey, those folks inside the company that may have had a little earlier access to the dev kits did better than the folks who didn't get it till June and are still trying to work through bugs and issues. That's just the way anybody out there in software development knows. That's just the way it works. The more time you have to quash bugs, the better performance you'll get. And this really does seem to be an API or some kind of software issue, which means it's fixable, which means by next summer, we might not even be talking about this. We may have forgotten all about it. Yeah, maybe even sooner. The other thing too is this is basically the exact same conversation that many of us were having back in 2005 and six when the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 were the new consoles in town and the conversation was flipped. People were having better development and technical experiences on the 360 at the time, especially at launch. This evened out later in the generation, but PlayStation 3, not so much. They had a really difficult program for custom chip architecture. There were other factors at play, but some of the same results. You get the exact same third-party game and it just ran better on the 360 despite the fact that Sony's claims and actual technical specs looked like it should run better over there, but it just didn't. And some of that stuff just had to be worked out over time. This might even be faster because we're just talking about custom PCs here, basically the architecture. So I think it will be sooner than later that this sort of thing gets figured out. But what a crazy... I love this part of the video game industry. I love talking about it. And I hope people don't get too up in arms about their Coke versus Pepsi kind of arguments because it's actually more fun to see how these companies respond, how they choose to compete, how they choose to answer one another's successes and failures. And this is a chance for Microsoft to say, hey, look, we're on it. We'll fix it. We're good to go. Well, side note, we mentioned yesterday that it might be hard for Scott to get that PS5 because they're out of stock. The official PlayStation account tweeted today, though, our Wednesday, rather. Well, that is today. The more PS5 emittertory will be coming to retailers before the end of the year. Please stay in touch with your local retailers. So the holidays may be saved after all. It's Wednesday for us. We don't know what it is for you. It's true. Yeah. Could be next Wednesday. Don't even ask. Security researchers Montas, Sasnazkas, James Clee, and Rony Carter, working with CyberNews.com, discovered a backdoor vulnerability in routers under the brand JetStream, which is sold by Walmart and WaveLink, sold on Amazon and eBay. Winstar's technology makes these routers. The backdoor can be accessed remotely. It's not a physical access backdoor. This is one that they can get to from the internet and you don't want to keep your router off the internet or else why have a router? So this appears to be actively exploited as well. This is not a theoretical vulnerability. It's being exploited by the Marai Botnet. Who knows what else? And there does not appear to be a firmware fix in the works for it. So if you have a JetStream or WaveLink router or you might want to check and see of any router that you have is made by Winstar's technology, don't use it. Take it off the internet right now because there's no way to safely use it at the moment. Well, this is one of those things where sometimes the cheap model isn't the right model. I hate to say that because I don't want to say that. You get what you pay for situation, right? Yeah. And routers, we think of them as just like, well, it's like getting a fridge. It'll just work. Plug in the fridge. It'll freeze. It'll make things cold. And you're right. But sometimes you realize, oh, wait, there is a hierarchy of quality here and we've gotten on the ground floor. In this case, a very insecure floor and that's unfortunate. Yeah, and your head could go to all kinds of places of like, oh, was this done on purpose? Do they know about it? Sure, maybe. I don't know. More likely, it's just incompetence. It's just a company that's trying to sell things really cheap to make money and therefore they don't spend money developing their product. And that means they end up not having a good firmware pushing system and not having good software bug squashing. So just be careful when you're buying cheap stuff. We're headed into one of the biggest shopping days in the United States here in a couple of days and you're going to see a lot of deals. Make sure you're buying reliable things, especially when you're buying electronics. Spread the word. Yep. Well, how about this one? Bit of a head scratcher. On Tuesday, the Utah Department of Public Safety published a photo of a 10 to 12 foot steel object found on November 18th in an inaccessible canyon in the Utah desert. The department found no obvious indication of how it got there. The location is also so remote. It hasn't been published for fear that someone would get stranded and need to be rescued if they went out there and tried to find it because there's nothing out there. However, Reddit user Tim Slain found satellite images on Google Earth of something in the middle of a small redstone canyon that was casting a tall narrow shadow. The object is visible in Google Earth photos starting in October 2016. So may have been there for the last four years or so. Slain says he used cross-referencing skills he developed by playing the game GeoGuessr. Yeah, GeoGuessr was the part that really hooked me with the story. I mean, yes, 2001 Space Odyssey references also hooked me, but I love that first of all, never tell anyone you can't find something by not publishing the address because Reddit and Google Earth exist and somebody like Tim Slain is gonna find it. And there's a game that he plays called GeoGuessr that trains you to find things based on just what you could see on the photo. Like he's been training his, well, not his whole life, but he's been training for a while for this very moment.  And I love it, but don't go down there looking for it. I've been in that place.  So don't go. Oh, gosh, right. I found yesterday in particular, it was crossing all of my, you know, all my feeds, all my circles were like, what do you think it is?  I haven't been to this particular part of Utah, but if folks going over in a low-lying helicopter were able to see it, then someone could have gone over in a helicopter in order to drop it in the past. It doesn't have to be an alien. You think someone would see a helicopter carrying a big monolith flying out of the desert, but maybe not and you're right. If you can get there somehow to see it, there obviously has to be a way to get there and put it there. Even if they drove an altering vehicle out there and just covered up their tracks, I mean, it's very clear from the photos Slain found that in August 2015, there were scrub brush there and in October 2016, that brush has all been cleared. So, yeah, somebody was out there and cleared the brush and set up the monolith and took off and you're in the middle of nowhere. So it's easy. Can you imagine, you know, so October 2016, you're like, all right, we did it. Let's see. And the years keep going by and it's like, no one's gonna notice it. No one's ever gonna notice it.  Yeah, the long con on this thing is strong and I have to mass respect for whoever pulled it off. But yeah, it'll be, it's one of those things unless somebody comes forward and says, yeah, that was me. We'll still be talking about it around here anyway for the next couple of years. I highly suspect that the person or persons and it probably took more than one that did this enjoyed that it hadn't been found. They might be disappointed.  Yeah. Maybe they had bets about how long it would take someone lost. Yeah. Well, we haven't lost because we get your emails and we read them on the show right now. We do. This one comes from Kevin. Kevin says, we've been talking about kind of, you know, smart home life hacks all week. Kevin said, I used to have issues with my Echo being too loud at night and then too quiet in the morning. My solution was to make it part of a routine. So at night, I say, it's time to relax. This triggers a few smart lights to turn off but it also turns the volume down on my living room Echo Dot to two down in the morning. When I say good morning, it turns the volume back up to four. It might not be the best solution, but it's worked for me. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. Oh, that's that's clever. I think I kind of knew you could do this, but maybe I'm just lazy. I didn't. I did not know that I could I could set volume as part of a routine because that actually helps me a lot. Oh, big time. I'll total. I'm doing this today. This is fantastic to learn. It makes sense that it seems like basic functionality. I think about it, but I didn't know I did that. Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. Keep in coming everybody. If you've got got a life hack for us or a question or a comment or something on your mind, anything, send it to feedback at daily tech news show dot com. And thanks to everybody who sends us emails on the regular. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Paul Thieson, Kevin and Paul Boyer today. Thanks to Scott Johnson for being with us. We missed you Scott last week. Hope you had a nice vacation. What's going on in your world? Well, I was down in the south part of the state, not very far from where the monolith interesting. That's convenient. Yeah, that was weird. And Veronica Belmont was there the week before. So I'm not doing it. I'm just saying, you know, just get that conspiracy out of your heads now. But anyway, it was I did miss you guys. That was one part. I did not like about my Wednesday away. So it's great to be back for now though. I'd like to just point people to my comic strip. I do every week called Fred and can it's about a guy named Fred Lizard, the sentient can of expired cream corn. And they're talking about Thanksgiving, the last couple of issues. I just put one up yesterday and I think people will like it and enjoy it. And truly it is a great example of their relationship. So check it out. Fred and can dot com. And if you're trying to poke me in public, you can find me over it on Twitter at Scott Johnson. Hey patrons, it's that time of year. We're going to be sending out a holiday card again. So you want to make sure you have your mailing address available for us to be able to see you give us permission to send you a thing and then we'll send you a holiday card. So make sure you get in there and do that. There's also all kinds of other benefits to be in a patron. Add free RSS feed. It can have just DTNS or just good day internet or both. Check your tier on Patreon to see if it says DTNS GDI or all. And if you want to change just change tiers at daily tech news show dot com slash Patreon. We are live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 21 30 UTC find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. That said we are off Thursday and Friday for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. So we'll see you all back here on Monday. Have a good one. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.