A little bit more of that vaults that, you know, and so I thought it was very interesting, you know, very beautiful, and everyone knows it was such a good piece. Oh, she was there? Yeah, it was interesting. She was interesting. Like it's tight. I mean, all I can say is, it's simple. I think it's really interesting. Just a music lover. Please join me for a few moments of centering silence. We sing our in-gathering hymn, which is number 300, and the words are found in your order of service. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual, as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the entire congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to any visitors who are with us this morning.  Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and my ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for people holding teal blue colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. And I understand there is a guide who will be available today after the service. Please meet that person over there on what's your left side of the auditorium by the windows there. If you'd like to take a tour of our sustainably designed addition or the national landmark meeting house across the parking lot. We welcome children to stay for the duration of this service. However, because it's difficult for some in attendance to hear in this very lively acoustical environment, our child Haven back in that corner and the commons outside the auditorium are great places to go. If your child wants to talk, sing, dance, run around, do and say normal child things during the service. And you can still see and hear very well from those areas. This would also be a fantastic time to turn off any devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour, especially cell phone ringers, however much we may enjoy those cute little songs. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help make our services run smoothly. We have Chip Quade doing our sound high chip who pitched in at the very last minute this morning. Thank you very much. Our lame ministers for this service are Tom Boykoff and John McEvna. Our greeter is Claire Box. Our ushers are Paula Ault, Brian Connis, Gail Bliss and Gail Henslin. Making coffee for hospitality hour is Lois Evensson. And John Powell will be the tour guide you would meet over in this part of the auditorium. I do have, well first, I call your attention to the announcements in the red floor insert in your order of service. And I do have a very few announcements I would like to highlight. The first one is that the Capital Times editor and FUS member, Paul Fanlon, would like to extend an invitation to attend the Cap Times Idea Fest next weekend and as his guest. Anyone associated with FUS can go to thecaptimesideafest.com and use Paul Fanlon, wait, Paul Fanlon guest, all one word, as your code for free admission. That's very nice, thank you. See Michael Shuler after the service if you have any questions. Another announcement is the Music Director Search Committee, has begun the task of finding our new Music Director and they are interested in knowing your thoughts regarding our music program and the role it plays here at FUS. There is a table set up for you to visit after the service today, over by, it says the coffee machines, I guess they're machines, but they're being filled by Lois. Please do stop by, discuss your thoughts, fill out a note or complete the prepared survey sharing your ideas and wishes. As a founding congregation of the Dane Sanctuary Coalition, all members of FUS are invited to attend the first coalition meeting. It will take place next Sunday, September 17 at 7 p.m. at Madison Christian Community on Old Sock Road. Also, one more, please remember to leave your hymnals on your seats after this service and then they'll be there for the next folks. Thank you very much. I believe that's it, don't want to leave anything out. Nope, that's it. Again, welcome. We trust today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. My name is T.K. Browning, as the name tag says that I forgot to take off. I'm the new ministerial intern. Some people might remember me from 2012 to 2014 when I, along with my family, were members here of the congregation. We've been in Texas for a few years where I got my degree, my ministerial degree, and I have the opening words today. These opening words are from Vern Barnett. On the cusp of autumn as we gather as members of the great congregation whose membership embraces all humanity, whose temple is the world, the world of nature, of history, of inner self, our faith is to proclaim the sacred presence of life for every person is a child of the universe. Beyond all barriers of age, race, nation, class, creed, gender, ableness, or loyalty. We arise within each other, rely upon each other, and secure in ourselves and are secure in ourselves only when all are secure and free. Our covenant is to lift the burden of every oppression. Open the locks of every captivity, heal grief and anger, and live in communion with all persons. Thus do we resolve to honor the planet, each person, and our own capacity to shape a better future. And on this day we hold in our thoughts the people of Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and of the Caribbean islands in Florida as Hurricane Irma continues its approach. We'll now have the lighting of the chalice by Karen up here with me to do that. You can find these words in your order of service, would you all mind standing and reading them with me? Ours is a faith in people, hope for tomorrow's child, confidence in a continuity that spans all time. It looks not to a perfect heaven, but toward a good earth. It is respectful of the past, but not limited to it. It is trust in growing and conspiracy with change. It is spiritual responsibility for a moral tomorrow. And now I invite you to turn to your neighbors and greet the good people beside you. And now I invite all the children forward or the children at heart. That's a thing. All the children come up for a story to be able to see right there. All right, just a couple today, just a few. We're going to be reading a story. The pictures are going to be up on the screen if you can see it. It's called Good People Everywhere, and it's by Linnea Gellin. Today, in neighborhoods all over the world, millions and millions of people are doing very good things. Who can count to a million? Can anybody count to a million? Take a while. Today, carpenters are building fences and houses and repairing homes that have been damaged by storms, like the hurricanes that recently hit Texas and Louisiana. Today, moms and dads are cooking dinners for their families, and cooks are working in kitchens, making meals for people who do not have homes. Doctors and midwives are delivering babies and gently passing them into the eager arms of their parents. Teachers are teaching math, spelling, and reading skills. Musicians are opening their hearts and playing beautiful music, and dancers are leaping across the dance floor, practicing performances that will bring joy to their friends and families and their communities. Today, people are planting seeds, picking fruits and vegetables, and driving them to grocery stores all around the world so you can have a ripe, juicy orange in your lunch. Anyone like oranges? Today, a child is trying her very best to do well on her science tests, and a teenage boy is helping a young child who is sad and lonely. Today, a first grade boy. Who's in first grade? Nice.  Who's a big sister? Oh, nice. It is holding her baby brother while her mother runs across the street to help a neighbor. Today, millions and millions of people will do very good things, and so will you. I wonder what you will do. Has anyone done anything good lately? Want to tell me what good thing they've done? Alright, what have you got? You went to the zoo? That's good. Picked the kale. That's a good Unitarian. Good thing they did. You got homework right there? What have you got? Garlic mustard. That's a good Universalist. You got a TV? What have you got, bud? You got your gardening? You're growing some things in your garden? Great. You got one more? One more. You helped cook? That's real nice. Alright, now we are going to head off to classes. Sorry, I don't want to do a few more. Okay, let's do two more. One more. You saved a house from burning? That's good. Solid. And one more back there. What have you got? Alright, we're going to head off to classes, and we're going to be singing hymn number 182, The Beauty in Life. Oh, you're picking carrots. I'm sorry. Please be seated. So we continue our service now with a selection from Herman Melville's well-known novelette, Billy Budd. And if you remember that particular story from your high school literature classes, Billy Budd is a sailor in the British Royal Navy. And he has been falsely accused of conspiring to mutiny. And the accuser is the ship's jealous and abusive master, sergeant at arms, John Cleggart. Billy is enraged by this false accusation, and he strikes Cleggart in the forehead and inadvertently kills him. And the crew and the captain personally believe that Billy's act was probably justified, and yet protocol does demand that a court-martial aboard ship be held. So here, in the context of that court-martial, is Captain Veer, the captain of the vessel speaking. Your scruples, he says to the crew, do they move as in the dusk? Challenge them. Make them advance and declare themselves. Come now. Do they import something like this? If, mindless of palliating circumstances, we are bound to regard the death of the master at arms as the prisoner's deed, then does that constitute a capital crime, whereof the penalty should be a mortal one. But in natural justice is nothing but the prisoner's overt act to be considered. How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God and whom we feel to be so? Does that state it right? Your sad assent signals that it does. Well, I too feel that way. I feel the full force of that argument. It is natural. But do these brass buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to nature? No, to the king. Though the ocean which is in violent nature primeval, though this be the element where we move and have our being as sailors, yet as the king's officers, our duty lies in that sphere. So little is it true that this is a circumstance involving natural law that we have ceased to be natural agents. Indeed, let me ask, when war is declared, are we as commissioned fighters previously consulted about its justice? No, we fight at command. If our judgments approve the war, that's just coincidence. So too is this the case in other particulars. So now, for suppose condemnation to follow these present proceedings, would it be so much we ourselves that would condemn or would it be the martial law operating through us? For that law and the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is this, that however pitilessly the law may operate in any instance, we nevertheless adhere to it and we must administer it. The second reading in a rather different vein but related to today's theme is from Harvey Cox, an essay that he wrote in 1999 and titled The Market as God. Harvey Cox was for many years a professor in the Divinity School at Harvard University and he's the author of many books on the interface of religion and culture. Since the earliest stages of human history, there have been bazaars and there have been Rialtos and there have been trading posts. All of these are markets. But the market was never God because there were other centers of value, other centers of meaning, there were other gods. The market operated within a plethora of other institutions that restrained it. As Karl Polanyi has demonstrated in his classic work The Great Transformation, only in the past two centuries has the market risen above these other demagogues and phonic spirits to become today's first cause. Initially, the market's rise to Olympian supremacy replicated the gradual ascent of Zeus above all the other deities in the ancient Great Pantheon and his ascent, Zeus's, was never quite secure. Zeus, it will be recalled, had to keep storming down from Olympus to quell the dire threats to his sovereignty. Recently, however, the market is becoming more like Yahweh of the Old Testament rather than Zeus. Not one superior being contending with others, but the supreme deity, the only true God whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals. Divine omnipotence. That means the capacity to define what is real. It is the power to make something out of nothing and nothing out of something. The will but not yet achieved omnipotence of the market means that there is no conceivable limit to its inexorable ability to convert creation into commodities. But again, this is hardly a new idea, although it does have a new twist. You see, in Catholic theology, through what is called transubstantiation, ordinary bread and wine become vehicles of the holy. In the mass of the marketplace, a reverse process occurs. Things that have been held sacred transmute into interchangeable items for sale. Land is a good example. For millennia, land has held various meanings. Many of them, numinous. There have been Mother Earth, ancestral resting place, holy mountain, enchanted forest, tribal homeland, aesthetic inspiration, sacred turf, and so much more. But when the market's sanctus bell rings and the elements are elevated, all of these complex meanings of land melt into one thing, real estate. At the right price, no land is not for sale. And this includes everything from burial grounds to the cove of a local fertility sprite. This radical desacralization dramatically changes, alters the human relationship to the land. And the same thing happens with the water, the air, the space, and perhaps eventually with the heavenly spheres. As your program indicates, the Oakwood Chamber players are going to be performing this afternoon, holding a concert at Oakwood Village West, and so I'm sure that they would love for some people to attend. What appears that the Wisconsin legislature is poised to pass legislation opening the door, rolling out the red carpet for the Taiwanese tech manufacturer, Foxconn. This is touted as the opportunity of a lifetime for a state that has been hemorrhaging factory jobs for quite some time now. And the governor and other supporters of this project claim that this will be a great deal for Wisconsin workers, perhaps motivating other manufacturers to relocate to or to expand in Wisconsin. Now there are drawbacks to be sure. A percentage of Foxconn's workers in the states southeastern counties will undoubtedly come from Illinois. The $3 billion worth of inducements offered to the company by state officials that translates into a $230,000 public subsidy for each job created, ensuring that Wisconsin residents will be paying higher taxes for at least the next quarter of a century. The deal also sets an unhealthy precedent by relaxing environmental protections for wetlands and groundwater and the Great Lakes in order to reduce the cost of building and operating that huge facility. But as that phrase that was added to those border crossing welcome signs in 2010 proclaims, Wisconsin is open for business, really open. Now of course no one wants to say openly that we are doing Foxconn itself a huge favor. Instead, job creation. That has been the mantra repeated by conservative politicians to rally support for that and many other similar proposals. That prospect has been trotted out to promote massive strip mines in the north woods and confined animal feeding operations in the states midsection. And I find it somewhat ironic that while state leaders emphasize the importance of greater employment in the private sector, even if it's heavily subsidized, they also argue that thousands of decent paying public sector jobs are dispensable and unnecessary burden borne by hardworking Wisconsin families. Now all of this is of course completely consistent with the near sacred principle of free enterprise and market based solutions. Or as President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked just before the Great Depression, the business of America is business. The degree of commitment its proponents have made to this idea, this principle is I think rather extraordinary. You know some religious conservatives even claim that free enterprise is supported by biblical teachings and therefore it's blessed by God. Others argue that since private sector jobs are largely sheltered from market driven forces, they create these unwelcome distortions in the self regulating system. Still others are convinced that concerns about climate change expressed by environmentalists are simply meant to paper over their hostility toward business and capitalism. And all of the foregoing lends weight to Harvey Cox's thesis, the thesis that the free market in certain respects resembles a deity, and in particular the God of the Bible. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, the Almighty declares in the book of Exodus. Or as Harvey Cox puts it, the market is not just one superior deity competing with others, it's the only true God whose reign must be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals. Now since 1999 when Harvey Cox's article first appeared, the trends that he describes have accelerated corporate lobbyists and organizations like Alec increasingly shaped public policy at all levels of government. The privatization of education, the prison system, even the defense establishment continues apace. In former times as Cox notes, there were other centers of value and meaning, other gods that restrained the markets activities, but that is less and less the case. Writing recently in the Atlantic magazine, Franklin Four, who is the former editor of the New Republic, describes how this is even affecting journalistic practice, the fourth estate, one of the bulwarks of our democracy. In this digital age he says competition for clicks. Clicks are your computer. That provides the evidence of market share for any given story. And this is now playing an increasingly decisive role in journalistic content. The rise of Donald Trump is a case in point, Four argues. He says, Trump understood how more than at any other moment in history, the media need to give the public the circus that it desires. Stories about Trump's ill-living traffic that pleases the data gods and benefits the bottom line. Or as Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS, put it during the presidential primaries, Donald Trump may not be good for America, but he is damn good for CBS. I focused on our free enterprise system and the degree to which it has come to monopolize our thinking and our behavior around values because it does lead to a point that we would all do well to consider. That when we elevate a single principle, even an ostensibly good and useful one, when we elevate that principle to a position of ultimacy, then evil is likely to follow in its way. Now we usually think of principles in positive terms, don't we? Because we think that they reflect the bottom line standard to which we can appeal in making important life decisions or in crafting social policies. And so we speak admiringly of those who will take a principled stand or who will adopt a course of action as a matter of principle. We are not wrong to hold such people in high regard, but only if they have engaged in a thoughtful process of discernment and made an honest attempt to fully consider the full implications of their choice. Mindlessly applying a principle simply because we are convinced that it is right is likely to result in considerable harm. So for instance, in our market driven free enterprise system, pretty much any object or any human activity can be and is commodified. Things that have been held sacred transmute into these interchangeable items for sale, Harvey Cox writes. And typically this is not the result of some conscious decision on people's part, it's just our society's, it's become our society's default position. And so in an essay entitled The Two Economies, Wendell Berry reaches much the same conclusion as Harvey Cox. He contrasts in this essay the industrial economy which exists to serve as human needs and to create wealth exclusively. He contrasts that with the much more comprehensive great economy, but he worries that the former, the industrial economy is going to completely overwhelm the great economy. Unfortunately, he writes, the industrial economy does not see itself as a little economy. It sees itself as the only economy. It makes itself exclusive by the simple expedient of valuing only what it can use. That is only what it can regard as raw material to be transformed into something else. The industrial economy is based on the invasion and the pillage of the great economy. It is a grave error to suppose that we can prescribe the terms of our own success and live in ignorance of the great economy and what makes it work, for in the end we are completely dependent on the latter for our survival. The dilemma that Wendell Berry describes was already impacting Native Americans in the early 17th century as William Cronin's careful study of the New England landscape makes clear. Unlike the Indians, in considering their new home, European settlers thought almost exclusively in terms of commodities, and thus they ignored many of the constraints, the competing values and principles that governed the Indians more considerate use of the land. And as a result of this, Cronin writes, capitalism and environmental degradation went hand in hand, a trend that has continued unabated until today.  Free market absolutism. But that particular principle aside, we can point to any number of other instances in which excessive devotion to a single less than comprehensive principle has proven unwise. The trial of Billy Budd, as imagined by Herman Melville as a case in point. Everybody on the ship, they like Billy, they admire this young sailor and everybody knows that the master at arms, John Claggart, resents the popular sailor and wishes him harm. Capt. Veer and the crew believe in their hearts, the Billy did not mean to kill Claggart and they probably feel that the cruel man had it coming, nevertheless. The king is the king, the law is the law. In circumstances palliatives don't matter at all, Billy must hang. So here Melville offers a telling example of what can happen when we place principle above people. And this happens all too often. Consider those arbiters of criminal justice who adamantly defend the death penalty even when it's been proven, even when it's pointed out that some unjustly convicted men and women will lose their lives. Or consider those who wish to prohibit minors from procuring birth control because of their moral objections to premarital sex. An unwanted pregnancy? That's just the penalty that a girl must pay for her moral laxity. And what about those folks who would preference the Second Amendment over every other provision contained in the U.S. Constitution? Because for them nothing is more important than supporting those who believe that they have a right to carry at any time and to any place the weapon or weapons of their choice. Now those are somewhat controversial principles to be sure and ones that many of us would not subscribe to. But there are other less controversial principles that also become problematic if they are invested with too much authority. So, first, do no harm. It is often cited as a foundational principle of medical practice. First, do no harm. It is attributed to the ancient Greek physician Apocrates. And this injunction therefore carries with it the weight of many centuries, many regarded as axiomatic. They repeat it thoughtlessly. And that's one of the problems. They don't bother to think through such venerable principles to consider that they might have some limitations. The editor of Harvard University's health publications, Robert Smerling, himself a physician, has taken on that challenge. And Smerling doubts that as a standalone principle, first, do no harm works in practice. If physicians took it literally, he says, no one would have surgery, even if it was life-saving. They might stop ordering mammograms because they could lead to a biopsy for a non-cancerous lump. In fact, we might not even request blood tests because the pain, the bruising, the bleeding required to draw blood are clearly avoidable harms. The fact is, when difficult real-time decisions must be made, it is hard to apply the first do no harm dictum because estimates of risk and benefit are so uncertain and so prone to error. And so Smerling recommends a much more nuanced approach to medical treatment, one requiring considerably more forethought and assessment of potential risks. However, he would not completely abandon the do no harm rule because as he puts it, it is a reminder that doctors should neither overestimate their capacity to heal or underestimate their capacity to harm. The golden rule, that affords another pertinent example here. Many people, Christian or not, invoke the golden rule as the principle that they would appeal to first in making a moral decision. But do unto others as you would have them do unto you presumes that our own personal preferences have universal validity. It could be argued that do unto others what they would have you do unto them, that it makes more sense. It forces us to consider their perspective on what is right or good and not just our own. But if you think about it a little more deeply, the alternative version also runs into considerable difficulties, which is why the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius insisted that a principle like this one should never be treated as a shortcut, eliminating the need for further moral reasoning. It should only be treated as a starting point for more serious deliberation, which brings us at last to our own unitary universalist principles of which there are seven. You can find them on the back of today's program. Although these principles vary in age, the collection as a whole is about a half a century old. And as a denomination, we revisit these principles from time to time. They are not carved in stone. These principles are quite general, but this is intentional because that provides leeway for communities and individuals to be open and creative in developing strategies to accomplish those principles. Now, personally, I think it makes more sense to treat them as precepts rather than as principles. With respect to our seven principles, I don't particularly care for the word principle. They are neither beliefs that we are required to uphold nor rules that we are obliged to follow. They are rather aspirational statements. Similar to Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life, aspirational statements that we all strive to live up to knowing that we are going to fall short. And this approach, treating them as precepts, has more in common with an eastern religion like Buddhism than with the Abrahamic religions where principles are often accorded this transcendent status that makes them almost non-negotiable. Regarded as precepts, we can better understand how, taken together, the seven qualify but also complement each other. The first principle speaks to the dignity and worth of human beings. But it confines itself to matters of human concern, human work. By itself, it would seem to prioritize our own species' interests over those of other sentient beings. But this anthropocentrism is complemented and balanced by the biocentric seventh principle which draws our attention to the web of life, which is Wendell Berry's great economy. And this is also worthy of our concern because we owe to it our existence. There's the fourth principle, calling on us to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Its focus inward, personal, rather than outward and social. But the fourth is balanced by the second, a principle that encourages us to promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations. Principle three extols congregational life, what we do together. But number six stresses the need to move beyond all parochialisms, furthering the goal of world community. And so it goes. These seven principles are not arranged in any kind of rank order, and there are going to be occasions when one of them might take precedence over another. But that requires thoughtfulness. That requires moral discernment. Taken as a whole, these principles, these precepts are meant to serve as Confucius maintained as a starting point for more serious deliberation. Well, in conclusion, the environmental advocate and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, Bill McKibben stresses the need for us to remain flexible in the way that we understand and apply our principles, even the principles that are most dear to us.  Isn't that hypocritical, they ask McKibben? He disagrees, saying it's the best gas you will burn in the course of a year. Because he says we live in a world that we wish to change, and so a bit of hypocrisy is the price of admission that we pay to be in the fight. Whether we call it hypocrisy or we call it compromise, the point is that in matters of principle we cannot evade the responsibility of making difficult choices. Like a physician, we must ponder whether the benefits of a course of action are going to outweigh the harm. And let us always remember, it's never the principle that we are meant to serve, only the person who it's intended to support. Our offering today, as you will see, will be shared with G-Safe, and their good work on behalf of our community is outlined in your program. Please be generous. This week, as a community of memory and of hope, to this time and this place, we bring our whole and occasionally our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past, seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared. We would now pause to acknowledge Kelly Radford. Candle has been lit for her, who had surgery last Thursday and we wish her and her husband Bob well. And Paul Agrimson writes that a friend, Don McDonald of Depeer, has passed away, so condolences to you, Paul. A thank you written in our book to Rob Gurke for the lovely and efficient new book cabinet that you will see over in the Commons area. A wonderful new place to display the books that we have for sale. A beautiful piece of furniture created by Rob, and so we thank him very much. And of course we do hold in our thoughts all of those in the path of Hurricane Irma today, which is due to make landfall at 2 o'clock in Naples, Florida, which is where my own 95-year-old father lives. And I've heard from many people about relatives that are in the path of Hurricane Irma, and we wish them well this morning. And now let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and hope. So by virtue of our brief time together today, may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. Please join me now in singing our closing hymn number 293. Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. And we have a simple request for you this morning. If you can, would you please leave your hymnal and your program, your order of service in your chairs as you exit rather than taking them out, because we will need them for the people coming to the second service. And so may the peace of the deep lakes and the peace of the meandering rivers be with us. May our spirits soar as weightlessly as the September clouds and may the warmth of companionship reassure us on our journeys beyond the golden sunset. May the lure of truth yet to be known draw us onward even into the autumn of our days. Blessed be and amen.


Thanks for checking out this unboxing video Obviously, we are doing BAM box once again. This is for the oh my god. I'm in such time work the July This is the July BAM box and the theme for this one was supposed to be animal influence, which I was like That's kind of a weird Weird theme, but here's the good news. Here's the great news actually there are a few changes coming to BAM box One of the things being that they're actually going to keep it at a cap to limit for the actual boxes That way, you know, it'll be able to be a little more exclusive and also it's not going to really Compromise who they can get as far as like signatures autographs Artists stuff like that. So if they keep it on the lower end, they don't like it too big certain people who Would otherwise say that's too many autographs for me to do might not say that anymore and they'd be like Yeah, I'll do something for BAM box. So that's one of the cool changes. They're gonna keep it limited The other thing is they are and I'm super friggin excited about this They put out for a vote should they get rid of their themes obviously by my reaction to this animal influence theme I'm not huge on the themes really because you can hit ones like this that just seem odd and you're just kind of like So what they wanted to do they flowed the idea. Hey, how about we get rid of themes? we'll do a vote on it and 82 or 83% of people who voted in it said yes get rid of the themes So this will actually be the last themed box the August box Which we're currently in August, but we'll get it at the end or maybe very beginning of September The that August box will be themeless And so what they're basically doing is just kind of teasing a few franchises that they're gonna have stuff from and just say Oh, we'll have something from this something from this But it's just a mix and I like that way way more They said they felt like the theme was kind of making them a little too pigeon-holed into what they needed to do And they actually had to pass up on some cool items at certain times or some cool people to get autographs from so This way they're totally open and if something really cool comes their way They can just say yes to it because they're not they don't have their hands tied by any sort of theme I'm totally for that. I'm so freaking psyched for that. Let's Get it on with that that said let's open this box this animal influence box and hopefully It doesn't translate to what I think it does because when I heard this I was like animal influence Sounds like it could be bad, but you know Bambox usually isn't Bad bad. I mean there's been like, you know one box that a lot of people thought was actually bad There are a lot of circumstances, but It's been a long time since that box so Usually they have something good As you know, I'm always a big fan of the art prints as well as the pins So I'll be looking forward to these very much. Oh, and if we remember I got a one-up last time I'm assuming I probably won't get a one-up this time Maybe I will I don't know but I got that really awesome Special blood splattered shawna the dead pin really cool Once again tissue paper that my cat will totally love and that's perfect gift for her in the animal influence box Oh To wonderful Chloe's gonna love that Chloe Chloe. I don't know where she is. You might hear her playing with it at some point during this all right, so I'll just do the pin first love the pins It's a it's a gorilla. Is this Harambe. It's this friggin Harambe. No, it's not it's King Kong like a King Kong pin This is interesting. I've not seen this backing or this cardboard for their pins before I don't know if this means like I got a more exclusive one or something but You can see And it says like limited edition enamel pin. Maybe this is just the way they're going with it so there's like a picture of a Gorilla back there. I don't know why they felt like they needed to do that But it kind of like messes with your ability to perceive the actual pin. You can see the actual pin here It's King Kong I mean, that's fine. That's cool Not the most iconic thing though one of the things with these pins I really like it to be like immediately recognizable the thing with King Kong in general is King Kong doesn't really have any Dissernable markings or anything that you can put on there and then people be like, oh, it's King Kong It's more just like it's a gorilla Who is that and then people say King Kong go, okay, so it's King Kong He's mainly known for his size and you can't really show that with a pin So that may have like to see something different But once again with the pins that they have they're extremely awesome quality. They look like the designs look good It's just concept. So That's something in a little I have a patch. Let me do this patch next. I haven't been huge. Oh, I Was just saying in mid saying I haven't been big on patches I'm not huge into that but It's friggin Thundercats man, which is awesome. I was obsessed with Thundercats when I was younger I watched it initially When I was a little kid, but then I also watched it When I was in like middle school and high school too when it was on Cartoon Network with the Toonami programming I would watch it like every day after school. So I have a long Love affair with Thundercats. So this I might have to find something to do with this patch actually I actually have a Thundercats hoodie that is just basically this emblem totally black hoodie with like a red inside And then it has this emblem on the chest like really large, but it's Textured like it's kind of like a rug a little bit. It's really nice and I love Thundercats. So that's cool. If I was gonna have to get a patch. I'm glad it was something like that So there's something in a box. Oh, actually, I think I might have a one-up Let me let me there's something in a box, but I think I've won one up I do Congratulations, you got a one-up card. You have an upgraded or limited edition item in your box So since the pin the King Kong pin said limited edition enamel pins. I'm assuming that's my my one up That's cool. I got two one-ups in a row. I like that, but I'm not huge on I'm interested to see what the normal one was. So anyway, there's a little box here So see this interesting little box And the outside of it looks a little bit like snake skin I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get you just kind of see the texture and that there you go Lights hitting it kind of a little bit so you can see a texture. So it's kind of like snake skin So I wonder if it's gonna be like snake like oh, this is actually cool Okay The dog tags Wolverine dog tags. Oh man. That's actually pretty cool. Oh, wow. Yes Okay, so these are like the replica every now and then or actually, I know a lot of the times But I think they've missed it in a few of their boxes. They try and do like replica items from movies and stuff like that so dog tags So here you go on the one side is Logan try to get the glare off and on the other side it is obviously Wolverine And the Wolverine and it's two of them which is You know true to what they would actually do they'd have one to identify the body one for someone to take to match with the body Yeah, that's cool for an item that's gonna be like a replica. This is one of the better replica items I've seen from them I think the other one which I didn't get I hadn't signed up at that point was the the miniature baseball bat with the nails in it for the As the demogorgon killer from stranger things Yeah, which by the way the stranger things season 2 trailer is awesome, especially because Vincent Price has his voice in it I love Vincent Price awesome. All right next thing. There's another thing in a box. See what this is Okay, so to preface this they did say With this box in their social media if you're getting this box you will be sorted into a house in Like a Harry Potter house for Hogwarts So I have been sorted with this item and it is I'm slithering apparently, but I don't know exactly what this is I Mean it's just like I Mean it looks like it could have been a pin, but then it's just on some weather. It's kind of weird I mean the emblem is well done, and it's on some weather. I don't know what you do with this Like what do you do with this? That's kind of an odd item for me. I'm like I don't know if I really like that for that reason fun idea to be like Oh, you'll be sorted into a house so for people who are like making the Harry Potter people be cool with that But it's kind of weird. All right the next thing it is This is the art print. Oh Wow, this is a cool-ass art print man Okay, so and this is what I say. I love the pins I also really really love the art prints in here the art prints are so cool I like to put them up on my wall in the basement in my man cave So this one is Number 293 out of 500. So I don't know maybe this was my one up I don't know, but this is nice. Look at this. It's a spider-man homecoming. It just come out recently Obviously if you don't know that I don't know who you are Spider-man holding who I assume would be Mary Jane After she got killed that is really good-looking like look at this Look at look at how good that is that looks really nice So this is from their fan art collection apparently the print is called death of Gwen Stacy Okay, that was gonna be my other guess. Oh, I should have known because it's blonde hair Or it looks blonde at least Mary Jane's red so I shouldn't know that it's been hand signed by the artist Logan pack Yeah, you can see where the signature is down there Awesome work Logan pack like that looks that's really nice. I like that quite a bit Next item. I think it might be the last item at this point Okay, so this is the other thing So recently is it two boxes ago? Maybe we had that signed Picture of the guy who voices Yoda for Star Wars rebels. I believe so this is another type thing of a voice actor and it is The hand signed by Greg Sipes or Sips who voiced Beast Boy on the show Teen Titans I mean, that's cool. I'm not into Teen Titans. Well, I mean, I guess maybe I could be I've never even tried watching it So I'm just a suit. I just don't really have much interest in it. It's all so There's Beast Boy right there. That's who this guy Voices so that's cool Not my thing but someone like this what a what a signature by the way look at that That's an easy one to do. See that's that's clearly a person that's had to do enough autographs that they've been like You really simplify my autographs. So it's way quicker or maybe you just did it while he was doing this because I'm sure he had to do a lot. He's just like, oh god. Let me make this easier Okay, so that was it for the box actually a pretty decent amount of stuff boxes empty And they have they switched to a paper which honestly they were doing booklets before and switching to a paper is It's fine with me. I don't it's not that big of a deal. Some people might not like it but whatever so So the oh it was fan art for the pins actually Collection pins from artists the artists who did them is called create and destroy So the I did not get the limited edition one actually for the pen The limited edition was Donkey Kong Look at that That Donkey Kong limited edition one super sweet. I actually wish I would have gotten that That's really cool. And then the one that we got well that I got this the King Kong And is that like gorilla grad or something? Is that who that is? I don't know or maybe it says in here No, it doesn't say it just says a bunch of different. Oh, yeah. No, it is gorilla grad. It says so, huh? I was right. All right. Nice.  I don't need to show you the picture. You saw good, you know a good thing about So just kind of talks about how they're made like You don't really need to know that got the Thundercats, which is done by fan art. Oh, it was from the same artist Create and destroy who did the pins also did the artwork on the Thundercats logo understand I don't understand that because that's the Thundercats logo like Okay, I don't get it Okay, um, it's not really fan art then there's the Hogwarts schools and What does this say this is? So it tells you you get one of each of the houses and it's Gryffindor Hufflepuff Ravenclaw or Slytherin It doesn't say what this is it just says Hogwarts schools and They're divided into four houses. So like it doesn't even tell you what this thing is. It's literally like here's this thing We just put together. It's not like a real thing, but we just there you go. I don't really like that Then there's obviously the signing for that Teen Titans autograph Don't need to show you anything for that or tell you anything about that And then there was the death of Gwen Stacy fan art collection print by Logan Pack So that's where I got my one up the black and white which actually it's not fully black and white There's some other tones in there But kind of black and white was the limited edition version, which there were only 500 of Then there was the regular one, which is the same thing, but it's colored So I wish there was a little bit more of a difference there, but It's still cool.  So You know what I'm not I Thought I was gonna be pretty disappointed with this But I actually wasn't all that disappointed and that was based off the theme like that and that's the thing That's one of the things I'm like so glad these themes are going because it I feel like I'm just gonna be totally psyched going in each time Because I'm just gonna be like no theme like anything could be in there. Who knows gonna be great But like cuz like with this theme I was just like oh animal influence not excited, but it ended up being pretty good Don't like the Harry Potter thing cuz it's what is it? This is not really for me, but I recognize there will be people who like it I don't usually like patches, but this actually hit it for me Hit it out of the park as far as patches go because I love affair with Thundercats not huge on the pin, but it looks good for what it is wish I would have got the donkey Kong The dog tags the Wolverine dog tags were really a smart move and they came out really well They look really good and they're heavy too like they're heavy metal and this print this print is super awesome So as long as you're giving me for bambox for my taste as long as you're giving me like a well-made pin And I don't I don't always have to love them But as long as they look good and you know, they're well made and I get a good art print I'm happy with the box basically so So for my expectations, this was kind of I guess maybe like a half-and-half type box But pretty good. I enjoy some of this stuff. This is definitely going on the wall. Oh, that's nice But anyway, thank you everyone for checking this out Let's get super excited for the August box when that hits because I already know what some of the Franchises are gonna be because they put it on social media So I won't say it here because if you don't want to know and you want to go and totally blind for my next You know my next video. I don't want to spoil that for you So I won't tell you but I know some of the stuff I am excited about some of them other ones. I'm like both will see but Regardless excited to get going on this.  So anyway, thank you everyone Actually, if you want to contact me for whatever reason you can obviously leave a comment But you can also send me an email to my podcast email. I do a beer podcast by the way Brutal battle podcast at gmail.com and brutal is spelled b-r-e-w-t-a-l and brutal battle podcast gmail.com Anyway, thank you everyone for checking this out and please remember keep it brutal


Shockley, after Asin Sheikh Mohammed was inaugurated as president of Somalia, the UN envoy for the country hailed the peaceful transfer of power. outgoing President Mohammed Abdelahi, Mohammed Femadjo, graciously conceded and congratulated and extended support to his successor, special representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN assistance mission in Somalia, Jim Swann, said as to the UN Security Council. outgoing President Mohammed Abdelahi, Mohammed Femadjo, graciously conceded and congratulated and extended support to his successor. The new president was immediately sworn in and the outcome has been fully accepted. As this council has noted repeatedly, Madam President, it is past time for Somali leaders to move beyond the prolonged political contest to focus on urgent national.


Who could that be? Oh, I don't know. Are you ready to celebrate the holidays? Good job. This is the video you've been waiting for. If you've never seen this before, this is my birds opening their presents. You might be like, okay, listen, this is different than dogs because you give them a present, they're really excited. Birds open their presents, okay? And birds dig through things to find their presents. And one of my birds looks through it after to see what he's gonna get. Ty's playing with a toy from our store called Ring Talks. Made in California for anyone curious. These are their presents. And as you can see, they have the stickers of the birds they belong to. Uh-oh. Vinny wants to come. Vinny wants to come. Look Vinny. Vinny, can you see your toys? Vinny, you have to open the bag. They're gonna open.     They're sick of the people. Oh, Vinny. Vinny. Come on. Vinny. Why are you so mad? It's parents. Vinny. Vinny. Vinny. Can you show us those? Yeah. No way. Is that your toy? He's like, wait on that. Is this a toy or is this practical? This is like getting a bird a sweater. Need a help for mommy? Hey, you're cheating. You're cheating.  If we let him open. He's down here. He's on the actual toy, not unwrapping, because he knows what it is. See? Looks like there's a gift exchange going on. That's not brandos. It's not for brando. I'm sorry, that's not funny. Doing so, Cody and Brando switched gifts apparently. What happened, Ty Ty? You didn't finish opening your gifts. How could it be time for a bed? This one is yours, and this one's yours. Yeah, this is a little.  Brando, can you stop? Stop, you're so dramatic. I didn't do anything to you.   She's such a brat, oh my God. I mean, is this my sticker? Can you find out what it is? Is he excited? He's like, never mind the box. I need that box for tomorrow. So I'm gonna move it tonight, but I need him off of it, please. You should take him off the box. Take him off the box. Jordan is too old for that these days. Whoa, George! Hey guys. He's called you. Who's here? Oh, now I see him. I think he knew. All right guys, thank you so much for watching this video. Let me know your favorite part. My favorite part is Vinny throwing all of the toys. I always love when Vinny throws his tantrum. I kind of wish he would have looked in the toy like he usually does, but you could go back to the last two years and see him doing that. It's just so cute. I love it. But this year, George has a lot of deliveries that came today. So Vinny's obviously really excited. Oh, actually some of those were my Vinny gang hoodies. We had a new re-stock, so they also came today. I love you. Thank you so much for watching. Love knowing your favorite part of the video because it just excites me to see who thinks like me or who has my sense of humor. Bye.


Hi and welcome to the session. I am Arsha and I am going to help you with the following question which says convert the following in the polar form and we have to convert 1 plus 7 out of 2 minus iota whole square. Now as we know standard form of the complex number is a plus iota b and the polar form it can be written as z is equal to r cos theta plus iota sin theta rs the square root of x square plus y square which is also called the modulus of z theta is called the argument of z. So these are some ideas which we are going to use to convert the given into its polar form so they are our key ideas. Let us now begin with the solution and we have 1 plus 7 iota upon 2 minus iota square. Now there is simplified further numerator as it is and I am opening the square and the denominator we have 4 minus 4 iota plus iota square since a minus b whole square is equal to a square minus 2ab plus b square and here in case of a we have 2 and in case of b we have i thus we can write it further as 1 plus 7 iota upon. Now iota square is minus 1 and 4 minus 1 is 3 so we have 3 minus 4 iota under denominator. Now let us rationalize it to remove i from the denominator so multiplying the numerator and denominator by 3 plus 4 iota which is the conjugate of 3 minus 4 iota we have in the denominator 3 square minus 4 iota whole square since a minus b into a plus b is equal to a square minus b square and here in case of a we have 3 and in case of b we have 4 iota and in the numerator we have 1 plus 7 iota into 3 plus 4 iota. Now let us simplify the numerator first 3 plus 4 iota plus 21 iota plus 28 iota square and in the denominator we have minus 9 minus 16 iota square just further equal to now iota square is minus 1 so this becomes minus 28 and minus 28 plus 3 is minus 25 plus 25 iota which we get on adding 4 iota plus 21 iota and in the denominator we have 9 minus 16 into minus 1 since iota square is minus 1 so we have taking 25 common from the numerator minus 1 plus iota upon 25 and now canceling the common factor we have minus 1 plus iota. Now let x plus iota y is equal to minus 1 plus iota and on comparing we find that here x is equal to minus 1 and y is equal to 1 so first let us find r which is root over x square plus y square so this implies root over minus 1 square plus 1 square which is equal to root over 2. In the polar form any complex number can be written as r cos theta plus iota sin theta if we have z is equal to x plus iota y which is minus 1 plus iota so we have minus 1 plus iota is equal to r cos theta plus iota sin theta and on comparing this we find that r cos theta is equal to minus 1 and sin theta is equal to 1 and r is root over 2 so this implies cos theta is minus 1 upon root over 2 and sin theta is 1 upon root over 2 which further implies that theta is equal to 3 pi by 4 which is the argument of z the complex number and the polar form can be written as root over 2 which is the value of r into cos theta theta is 3 pi by 4 plus iota sin theta which is again 3 pi upon 4 so this is the required polar form of the given expression so this completes the solution hope you enjoyed it take care and have a good day.


So I'm Richard Bishop. I'm here to talk to you about concurrency Some of the thing about concurrency in Ruby, but what it is what it isn't and hopefully some things you can use in your applications today a Little bit more About me I'm a self-proclaimed Polyglot with a problem. I love programming languages. I Don't know if it's all right to say this at RubyConf But if you're not looking at another language to play with just to bend your mind in different ways You really should there's a lot of interesting stuff out there right now And a lot of them are dealing with concurrency in interesting ways and that's sort of had an impact on me as a Rubyist And then away from the keyboard I'm a huge Coffee and beer nut and it's great that this is in San Diego because I used to live here We also have the best beer in the world in my opinion So if you're out and you see some local beer try it But don't drink too much because you are at a conference and you don't want to make a fool out of yourself And since this is a conference gotta go shout out to my employer. I'm a freelance programmer We are not hiring So for me learning about concurrency was actually an accident I like to call it the other side of rack most of our time is spent on the app.call side and then Completely down the other side you go into web servers and system calls So one night I had this issue With bind 2 and at the time I'm like, what's bind 2 this looks like a method call I don't have a method called bind right not even realizing what a system call was And I kind of went from there down into these patterns that unicorn and all these web servers implement But it's a lot of fun and Ruby's actually a great language for getting your feet wet in concurrency because we have all the primitives and Obviously, of course, it leaves you wishing you had more and that's sort of the story with Ruby in concurrency But it's a good place to get started So I'm gonna talk about today. We're gonna start with just some concurrency basics Some of you are probably familiar with a lot of this or those might be new to you And we'll look at some practical uses of concurrency and Ruby And a lot of the talks actually gonna be about abstractions because that's really what concurrency is all about as I'll explain in a little bit and we're also gonna talk about Ruby because this is RubyConf and That might sound weird, but probably about 80% of this talk is about concurrency in general And then the other 20% it's gonna be about that as it sort of relates to Ruby specifically But concurrency is a huge huge topic So I have a not agenda as well a lot of talks like concurrency start off with spawning some threads and Then seeing how quickly you can put a million integers into an array That's not really exciting And never got me interested in concurrency and that's parallelism anyway, and we'll talk about those differences later I'm not gonna bash the gill because that gets done a lot It's here deal with it We're mostly I outbound anyway, and I'm not gonna look at a bunch of other Runtimes as Ruby is for pretty spoiled we get to run our code on like five different runtimes But each one of those could be a talk all by themselves So why should we care about concurrency? So we all know right we've if you've heard of the the free lunches over we're in a multi core world We need to get more out of our hardware as Ruby is we love forking. It's really expensive Maybe if you don't get the server bill every month, you don't care, but I Think we should be getting the most out of our hardware Another one is better user experience if you look at highly concurrent parallel runtimes And They're very consistent in the response times. They don't have these crazy 99th percentiles or Long-tailed latencies right that are really important Like we just you can't just look at the request per second or the average response time You have to look at the whole picture And the last one was a huge surprise to me as I learning started to learn more and more about concurrency You actually see some better design we design your programs concurrently so let's get into what concurrency is anyway Oh first, let's just just get this out of the way This is George souk here. I think he probably thinks that concurrency came from aliens But concurrency is really confusing because just to start it gets confused with something related known as parallelism But they're actually quite different But thankfully in the last couple years a good definition his surface comes from Rob Pike He's one of the creators of go and done a lot of great Unix stuff. So this is what Rob has to say about concurrency So he says concurrency is about dealing with lots of things at once parallelism is about doing lots of things at once That's a pretty good definition But if you're like me the first time I saw that now I knew what it wasn't but I didn't I still didn't really know What it was there's not really any context around it. So to look at Make this a little more concrete. I think most of us are application developers So first to look at parallelism If you're on a multi-core computer and you're using threads or lots of processes With several cores Those can actually be all CPU bone up to the number of cores that you have at the same time But the big thing is those are just points of execution. There's no sort of communication happening between those things All right. So like in the case of a web server your Requests as a boundary For concurrency, I think a good example would be batch processing even on something like MRI You could you know fire up 30 psychic processors. They're not all actually using CPU time at the same time But they are running concurrently and if you're batching there can be communication with say there's a parent job They can update with failure or success or when they're all done something else can happen There's a lot of communication And there's multiple points of execution, but they're not has nothing to do with time overlap so The reason there's a lot of focus on concurrency right now is that We want the benefits of parallelism, but we want it in a clear concise way so what concurrency is really about are these two things composition and Communication so it's at the intersection of Performance and clarity and that's why there's tons and tons of different models for how to do it So before I really get into the talk while I was working on this presentation. There is this tweet that came across I'm not really a tweet quota, but I decided to throw this one in here. So it says Programmers love two things making generalizations and dismissing other people's generalizations because they're outliers and accept So the reason I'm sharing this is concurrency is a huge huge talk and 45 minutes. I can't possibly cover everything there is about it. You might have Experiences already or experiences in the future that don't fit in with what I'm going to say But there's just a lot to know and I can't possibly cover it all so with concurrency. There's just Covering the basics. There's three things that were were given by operating systems and by hardware developers Let's processes threads and events These are the bare minimum that you'll have and if we look at these in the context of parallelism If you're on a multicore computer again, not Ruby specific With processes, you'll have CPU and IO parallelism with threads. You'll have the same So events are kernel events. Those are only used for IO. There's no CPU concurrency or parallelism with events So This last column is communication because that's really again what concurrency is about And when you have lots of these running you have to find a way to communicate between them So the processes we do that with inter process communication So I'm the same computer that might be pipes or sockets and message queues whatever it might be But that's the only way to communicate between them With threads we know sharing memory is how we communicate between threads and you know all the perils that sort of come with that And then events there. There just isn't a way to communicate between them. They're just callbacks that you run and As they finish they get completed So with with events they need to be heavily abstracted that's why there's that little no-jask Jad there by themselves. They really really get unwieldy If you look at languages like closure or laying or elixir, there's events there, but you don't even know it It's taken care of for you by the runtime So recap the basics so current concurrency is really about composition and communication So the concurrency is how you structure these programs Parallelism is how they're actually executing at the same time And then we have these three primitives that we deal with and we have these in Ruby, of course But the stock it's about concurrency, but mostly it's about threads. So Whether you like it or not threads have sort of been chosen as the fundamental unit of concurrency We haven't really embraced that so we don't have great support for it in Ruby But I think if we get interested in threads and using them correctly Which actually means not using them at all or not knowing you're using them Then it becomes a lot better So when I think of threading in Concurrency, it's kind of like a lot of other hard problems that we've dealt with So I want to talk about a couple other ones real quick so the big thing is something has to be hard to do but Important enough to want to do it and if that's the case We'll take care of it. So the first one is memory management All right, we're all familiar Especially this year with things like Heartbleed how hard it is to manually manage memory But that was abstracted a long long time ago, right? Lisp was the first garbage collected language Ruby's garbage collected, of course We work it, you know a lot of the work we do is in garbage collected languages Or there's other languages to like rust that have an interesting ownership model for dealing with memory But the important thing is we have to deal with memory It's not important to know what you know to be doing it yourself, but to know how it works at least And of course there's sequel right who doesn't love a good sequel injection every now and then But you know in Ruby, right? There's query generators. We have error all to take care of that for us And finally threading is hard Some languages have great abstractions for that Ruby doesn't all right If you're to compare it to memory management, I think thread and mutex are kind of like malloc and free All right, we should know that they're they're being used somewhere, but we shouldn't be dealing with that on a daily basis But we love we love processes in Ruby land right we love forking you know using all that RAM but it's expensive and Communications also very hard between lots of processes. I like to call it Passive aggressive communication you have one process Send something to a message queue and it doesn't know what other process is going to get that message like they're not actually communicating directly and If you're not communicating directly you can't create really robust composable things But there's actually some libraries we can use today. Thanks to our community And I want to just look at a few of those real quick and then hopefully get you interested in using them So the first one I want to look at is called celluloid So this is created by Tony or Sierra. It's a really really great library If you're familiar with the actor model That's popular in languages like Erlang and elixir. The idea is you have these this concurrency primitive They're executing concurrently and they communicate using messages So that's kind of how we view Ruby some people say that methods are messages We'll see how that's not really true in a little bit But celluloid takes that actor model and kind of puts it on to objects and combines it into one really nice library This is actually this has got to be the most downloaded gem that nobody has any clue that they're using Because it's used by some other really really great Libraries, and I think that speaks to how good of an abstraction this library actually is It has some other really nice built-in things, too You can create pools of these actor objects to do work and then you can also create supervisors Which are a really nice tool for fault tolerance and reliability So for you to look at oops an Actor it kind of looks like this and celluloid you have this actor object inside of it There's a mailbox and then in that mailbox our messages so the mailbox is really just a really fancy queue and then as Messages come off the queue the actor processes them and moves on and what's inside them the the message is just in celluloid is the method that you want to call and The arguments that you want to give to that method So here's a really Contrived example of using celluloid. It's a simple mix in After that you can instantiate object, but as you see you're not actually getting back Your class that you define you're getting back it wrapped Inside of the cell proxy And the way that you communicate is again by doing messages and you want to do a lot of this asynchronous That's why you're using an abstraction like actors So you call async and you get back this async proxy And then you can call greet on it So, but I said just before that method calls aren't messages and I think it's a distinction that needs to be made So if you look at a method call you have to wait for it. It's synchronous So there is a way to get around that right you could do some sort of a thread.new a fire and forget kind of manner But for a lot of reasons that's not something you want to be doing in your code but a big thing behind messages in The actor model is that they're asynchronous? You can make them synchronous by requiring that you get a reply back after you send a message But you start off async and it's only sync if you want to reply So how does celluloid actually do this? The way is through metaprogramming So what you do what happens when you call async and then you give it a method Async proxy implements this method missing and it wraps it in a call and forwards the method and the arguments on so that your program can move on and then That will eventually get called later So the reason I wanted to talk about this library first is the next one that I wanted to show you uses it and I hope Everyone in here is using this library by now Sidekick it's tremendous If you were previously using rescue or still are using rescue or delayed job, I'd encourage you to check it out So this is made by Mike perheim. It's a fantastic background processing library you can a typical Ruby application one of these workers can replace between 8 to 20 in my experience rescue workers and The one weird trick it has for doing this is it's multi-threaded So even an MRI threads are still useful Because you have IO parallelism or concurrency rather If you look at the design of sidekick though again, it's using cellulite behind the scenes. It looks like this So you have this launcher object when it gets started up you get a fetcher and a manager and Then the manager manages these processors, which are the things that actually Do the work of instantiating your jobs and running the code The interesting thing about this There's two things in my opinion. There's really clear visible separation of concerns when you look at these pieces and They're all running concurrently and that's because they're all actors and they're all communicating with each other using messages So the manager can send a message to the processor of a job to work on The fetcher sends that job to the manager or the manager can request from the fetcher also So this is a really great library. I'm just curious who in here is using sidekick That's that's good. That's that's pretty good It's a surprise almost So Ruby's also really popular among startups and I know startups you're all super super busy You don't even have time for stuff like concurrency But there's another really cool background job called sucker punch This is made by Brandon Hillkart also using celluloid. It's completely in memory Same API to sidekick. So if you need to upgrade later, it's very very simple to do and You don't want to use sucker punch for obviously very very important jobs, right? Because it's in memory if your process crashes Your cue is gone, but for prototyping and things like that. It's awesome The last library I want to show you a quick is called Puma. So this is a multi-threaded web server it actually does forking as well and It has a reactor inside of it. So this is like a it's a concurrency buffet. It's got it all But to look at the design of it again You kind of see these clear separation of concerns on the right You have what's known as a thread pool a very very common concurrency abstraction It's basically you'll you'll have a bunch of threads all sharing a resource and they use mutex Which is around this request queue to change that resource And then on the left we have this acceptor thread Which is just a TCP server Accepting requests and then handing them off to this this request queue that I think it's processed by these threads so again very very clear separation of concerns and That's what makes doing threaded like this possible If you don't create good abstractions for threading, you're gonna have a really bad time And another thing to keep in mind when you're doing these types of things This you have to keep an eye for for potential bottlenecks in this case. That's probably the mutex around this queue But realistically not a huge deal because this is the real bottleneck in a language like Ruby I think we can agree So to recap just this section real quick. This is all about abstractions to see actors and thread pools And I just wanted to show you some libraries that you can use right now or should be using right now to To get better use out of your hardware The next section is the one that's really really interesting to me As I've learned more and more about concurrency and have used some some other programming languages That's the design benefits that you get out of designing your programs concurrently so Right now there's or as always I guess there's a huge emphasis on design Right here so much talk about designing in the small or service-oriented architecture Service objects micro services, whatever. There's probably tons of talks here about software design So what design is really about is pain When you're working on a single threaded synchronous app and you have poorly designed software the pain that you feel is unexpected bugs it's hard to make changes and This iterating becomes a bit slower We don't actually have runtime pain in a single threaded synchronous application so As opposed to a concurrent app if you have bad design not only do you have all those other issues But you're gonna have issues with deadlock race conditions and other bad things So be knowing this when you design an application for concurrency You're all a bit more brutal about how you design it. So I want to quickly talk about another language real quick I couldn't possibly introduce you to a language right now, but just some High-level over things. It's called elixir. If you're familiar with Jose Valin, this is a language he created it runs on the Erlang virtual machine If you've ever met an Erlang programmer before they've probably told you how awesome the Erlang virtual machine is within the first five minutes of meeting them If you haven't now, you know me and the Erlang virtual machine is awesome Benjamin Tan why how is giving a talk tomorrow on elixir if you're if you're more interested in this language? But the interesting parts about elixir and Erlang for that matter is they actually treat concurrency as a paradigm all on its own So we think of object-oriented or functional programming as paradigms and they they think of concurrency as a paradigm And you really see that in the language and it's also using actors and message-passing between them When you look at an elixir program it has this sort of structure to it it's known as a supervision tree and All these individual circles are actually running concurrently and they all communicate using message-passing and the red ones are known as supervisors So there's a big distinction in your applications when you write them you have your Your library code, maybe your models your parsing or whatever it is and then you have these implementations of these concurrently running actors and These can be pools each one of those circles could be you know in the case of a web server That might be like a hundred acceptor sockets or something On a pretty normal for a core computer you can have 300,000 to a million of these actors running at the same time. It's really insane As great as the Erlang virtual machine is they're actually world-class at having poorly named things So this little structure here is called an application But they're actually it's actually just a component It's one piece of your application your whole application will look like this One part might be something that's accepting web requests you could have web sockets for messaging and then The Erlang world is nuts. We like to write our own caches It's just really really easy to do in the language so you can have these really really application specific caches. It's pretty neat The interesting thing about this though is it pertains to software design is all of these are deployed individually So something that you hear about a lot in the rails world is like monolith right everybody hates the right the monorail And because when you deploy you deploy the entire code base and you just have to keep doing that every every time right? This is different you can you can configure Create these releases and if you see a that's okay. Our cache is really really getting hit We need to scale this up you can either one you can run more actor They're called processes again Erlang is really confusing their their actors are called processes But the big thing is you have a ton of granularity you can scale all these individually up and down you can Deploy a new node just completely without some of these right it might just be the cache for example But when you look at a typical Ruby application looks like this All right, it's like here's our web server like bow down to the web server right and everything else So We think that single threaded synchronous code is very very simple, but it's a trade-off that we're make just like any other trade-off And so we have these applications in Ruby that have this like crazy distinction This is part of the web and this is worker or everything else So our codes more simple, but our deployments are made more complex because we now have different types of processes that we have to deploy Different probably different commands to run them Maybe different deployment procedures all together So it's just trade-offs. We just I think in Ruby. We've just decided Right now that we're more comfortable making these single threaded trade-offs Than we are the multi-threaded trade-offs, but if you do embrace multi-threading and you do get concurrency You also get positive trade-offs as well in terms of the granularity over scaling So to go back to this elixir design again These are all executing concurrently. They're all in one code base Can be scaled individually So it's very very modular and that's what we want in our design And that's what concurrent design really really gives you I feel and I know this right now And Ruby we're trying to fake this kind of design And it's called this So We look we want those things right we want modularity. We want decoupled things and we want to scale them individually Like 90% of the time I talked to someone about service-oriented architecture It's because they've got some Ruby application. It's deployed 40 times But it could probably only be deployed 30 times if one piece was deployed 25 times and then the others were for five So like okay, well, we got to do services. We got to start doing this So you end up with things that look like this So now you've added a message queue to the mix once you've figured out what message queue you want And then probably misuse it or get it wrong anyway And then your message is also communicate via HTTP Which is really really weird because you wanted to be decoupled But now you're communicating between your applications using a synchronous request reply model So you get this like repo oriented architecture. It's like really what you end up at the end of the day Which is either even worse because I don't know maybe it's just me But I can't even like if I have an API in one Repository and I have a client for that API and another repository like I have a hard enough time keeping those things in sync I got last thing I want is five repos that I got to try and make sure they're all on the same contract So that's the way the whole selling point of the motivation is that you get these force boundaries and you're decoupled And you can scale things individually But if you use something like celluloid or a language like elixir If you use concurrency you can do those things, right? It's just like With elixir, it's like how spicy do I want this one module like on a scale of one to ten? And that's how you you can have hundreds to thousands of actors just like that the other problem with this idea is that Going back to Processes in concurrency the only way you can communicate between processes is by using queues So now you're doing a ton of work over the network instead of doing that in process Which is a lot faster and more reliable And then to go back to the decoupling you're not really decoupled if you're using HTTP For say your user service to talk to your product service, right? If one of those goes down and the other one needs data from it You're you're still very very coupled, but now you're coupled over the network instead of over the code Which is probably worse So to recap design Concurrent design you're forced into modularity from get go Because you this is all executed concurrently if you don't design it while you're gonna have issues and Usually looking for synchronous communication and elixir app is the first place you start when you are having issues You can scale everything independently Which is why we like SOA so much And messaging is really really hard so if you can do it in your programming language in memory it's a lot easier and Then the last thing is that it's just programming when you write an application in elixir early, and you don't think oh This is web, and then this is is everything else web.  There's a talk on it again this year. It's there if the gill is that big of an issue for you But to understand ruby you have to go back to the 90s And I wasn't around and while I was around in the 90s, but I wasn't you know Using ruby in the 90s So let's go back to the 90s. I think people from Portland and Seattle really like the 90s But I want to look at the 1990s programming language design This is all speculation again. I wasn't around but if you look at the languages from this period They all have these things kind of in common So when you're designing a language, it's almost like you start off picking a paradigm the time it was probably object-oriented and We've we chose or you know maths chose object-oriented and thankfully he chose a Good version of object orientation because there's plenty of languages that have really bad implementations of it Now you decide. All right, we're gonna be static. We're gonna be dynamic. I was seemed like really important distinction back then And then somewhere along the line you slap some POSIC threads on which And that's your concurrency, right? And ruby didn't even do that from day one that we had that green threading implementation But the big point is that when ruby was designed Currency wasn't even anybody's radar yet probably So if we flash forward to 2000s 2010s we look at some newer languages. Oh Yeah, it's still the same, huh? So style hasn't changed, but I think programming language design has So if you look at languages now it goes like this step one choose a concurrency model Some languages maybe didn't do this, but they probably picked some other features that leave this door open for them Like immutability and then from that point on it's completely about concurrency You don't want to put something into the language that doesn't support your one of your key design decisions And Ruby I feel like we tend to think like concurrency and parallelism can work like this Like like maths is just holding out on us and Ruby cores holding out on us Come on flip the switch What doesn't really work like that though because you need a few other things So number one is you need a good garbage collector So all of a sudden if you become parallel and concurrent If you have a really crummy garbage collector, you're just gonna be stopping the world and you're gonna have a bad time anyway So what was the point? And you can see right now in Ruby. There's a ton of work being put into the garbage collector, right? 2.1 big change 2.2 again And secondly you need abstractions Everything I've shown you so far is completely Community-driven as far as abstractions Just actors and thread pools. We don't have Anything in the core or standard library. This is it threads, mutexes, condition variables. That's the bearer minimum I mean it's not often that you're using Ruby and you look at a language like Java and you have Envy But when you look at util.concurrent as a Rubyist you feel a little bit of Envy So the other problem or reason why I think Ruby's the way it is right now is that we love simplicity so We're all using this language because it makes our lives easier or makes programming fun and previous languages didn't do that for us The problem is a lot of what's happening in the currency right now It's pretty cutting edge. It's from papers from the 70s and 80s But a lot of those papers were missing implementation details anyway, right? If you look at Look at a language like go and you look at the core team They have probably about a century of Unix programming experience between them. If you look at their websites they have I think between five and six implementations of CSP that Didn't work so they finally landed on one that works. These are really really talented people So the cutting edge is never simple, right? We can't expect Ruby to have a fantastic concurrency model right now When a lot of other languages have gotten it wrong and we look at Node.js That they still want to use an event loop for currency So you have to you have to watch all these other languages get it wrong first and then you can finally figure out how to get it Right and I think Matt's is finally starting to see that All right, so he I don't know why I'm quoting another tweet probably look like a tweet quarter But he's saying he wants to add an abstract concurrency unit such as actors and Then stop using threads or warn you or raise an exception when you use threads directly and then remove the gill already So Matt's is giving us something to look forward to we just have to wait for it And I think whenever it comes it'll it'll be the right abstraction. It'll be simple That's all I got. Thanks


Hi, my name is Matthew Eagleton-Piers. I'm a senior lecturer in international political economy. And together with a colleague here at SOAS, Faisy Ismail, we've designed a summer school course called Capitalism Crisis and the Neoliberal State. And our thinking on this is that you have many stories in the media and academia, such as whether there's going to be trade wars between countries, or the politics of the super-rich, or the rise of right-wing populism. And all these stories are somehow connected to a larger thing, and that is how the politics of global capitalism works, or quite often doesn't work. So our thinking about this course is that it is suitable for a variety of students at different levels, both young and social sciences, but also beyond, as well as practitioners who want to know why is it that we have many crises going on at the current time, and how is neoliberal capitalism imprinted on these crises. And I think that the takeaway contribution of this course, particularly when compared to others that are similar to it, would be three reasons. And the first is that it's genuinely interdisciplinary. There's a lot of people who talk about interdisciplinary work and research, but we want on this course for it to not just be grey economics, but political economy in all its colour, combined with development studies and geography, and that's what we think is more enriching. The second thing features that Fasian and I are genuinely passionate about the topics and the discussions that you'll engage with on this course. That is not just simply because they're intellectually significant, but because they shape all our lives and shape the degree of freedom that we have as we try to manoeuvre in this system. And then the third reason is something which I don't think is available in any other course of this sort, and that is that we do a tour of the city of London, the financial part of London. And I like to think that the city is like a secret society, so we try to lift the lid on this society a bit more, and ultimately the course is designed to be informative, but hopefully entertaining at the same time.


for the 11 o'clock Tiger Financial News Network Market Update and we're looking at on this Monday the 25th of April the Dow's down 422 S&P's down 51 look at the dollar dollars up at 101.72 out 50 cents it looks really good it looks like it really wants to try to get over the next few weeks to the 102.99 all-time high of January I believe it was 2020 and we're looking at gold down sharply gold is down 38 it's really struggling it's gone just below is at the a really important support 1866 will be the level to watch the 200-period moving average is down at 1895 right now you're looking at Crudel having a sharp down day down 6 at 96.03 also in the H pattern that goes to a lowercase M you're looking at so the Dow is down 415 and that's going to be very important because within the context of what we're looking at here this left side right side vertical line technical match much weaker here this is really important that by the end of the day we get some kind of support to at least save the day at 33,411 you want to see 33,620 touched in the next two days on the upside S&P at this particular point S&P is trading at it's down 50 at 4221 not good now we're getting closer to the 418 level than 411 14 is the low of the 24th of February not a very good chart pattern we're looking at QQQ was weak then it was then it was strong then it was weak and now it's weak again it actually was up two points just a moment ago now so 324.58 trying to establish some kind of a base it's really important if you're looking at the VIX index the VIX index keeps holding the highs of the day there it is at 30.52 up 2.31 it's going to have to really slide towards the 2910 2830 level with the Dow turning around and actually being down only about 120 points in the afternoon for this to be become a positive session so far is very weak and also the other thing that we're looking at here is that within the context of the different sectors the XLP which was a leader for so long that's the S&P select staples spider fun very weak right now that's not a good sign so when you get leadership that starts to fail there's a little transitory period where some other sectors try to pick it up we haven't seen where that is just yet we'll see by the end of the day so have a good session I'm gonna hand you over to Larry president a great program again tfm for the rest of the day and check up opening coma dating newsletter and I'll see you back here on the reality is that navigating financial markets can be