In 2013, Barton Gelman of the Washington Post started publishing stories about what he called the surveillance industrial state that were based on documents given to him by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, along with the work of filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald. Gelman's exposés laid bare an extensive and previously unacknowledged network by which the federal government systematically and illegally spied on American citizens and routinely circumvented checks on its power. Gelman has just published Dark Mirror, Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, which tells the story of his interactions with the whistleblower, bureaucrats, politicians, and the media as he helped reveal one of the biggest secrets in U.S. history. I spoke with Gelman about his new book and his earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning work detailing the ways in which Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and others in the Bush administration exceeded constitutional limits in the name of prosecuting the war on terror. Barton Gelman, thanks for talking a reason. Pleasure to be here. Let's start by discussing the title of your book and, you know, in many ways the controlling metaphor for what you're talking about here, Dark Mirror. Explain the significance of that term. The idea comes down to this. We're living in a world that is akin to those police interrogation rooms where the watchers on the outside can see very clearly what's happening inside the room. The person inside is completely transparent to his observers, while at the same time that person inside the room can't see out. The mirror's opaque on that side. And we're all living inside that interrogation room in some ways because the government has built a surveillance machine that is capable of watching anyone and everyone at will. Before we get on to the meat of your book, you know, extend that a little bit.  But it's also the tell screen from 1984, which is both a in that it's both a mode of propaganda. You can never turn the screen off. It's in every living room and constantly muttering and humbling, you know, while also taking in stuff.  We boot up every day and surf the web and communicate and live our lives online. And we're just feeding more information into the surveillance then, right? Yes, but I don't want to give the misimpression that the government is watching all of us all the time. It has set up a system that is capable of watching any of us any time and the way it collects in large volumes of information, it sweeps up many Americans in some of the programs that aim at foreigners. And once it sweeps us in, once our stuff is captured, the government tends to keep it. Right.  It's incidental. It's not our main function, and we're not going to look through that, but we want to keep it because it may make sense at some point to have those dots that we can kind of connect later. Right. I mean, the fundamental ultimate point that they make, and I had this conversation with for example, Rick Ledgett, who was deputy director of the NSA, said fundamentally, we're not interested in you. You're not that interesting to us. I understand that you're worried about it, but we're just not looking. And that is partly true and partly, I think, not the case. It is true that we're not the targets, typically, unless they get a FISA warrant, a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They're not surveilling Americans deliberately as the aim of their intelligence gathering, but they are sweeping us in. And for some purposes, they do use it. For example, the information that is collected from big US internet companies under a program called Prism gets poured into a giant bucket, and that's the American stuff as well as the other stuff. And my reporting found that for every target they collect, they're collecting 10 bystanders, many of those bystanders being Americans. The FBI routinely queries that database, routinely looks through. And so, for example, the NSA is not allowed by law to say, let me go get NICS communications. But if NICS communications are swept up in the mix, which is very well possible, the FBI can go into that bucket and say, let's see what you got on NIC. So they call it not targeting for original surveillance, but you can effectively target by looking into the collection of what's already been taken. Just as a side note, the book is a phenomenal read. It's almost novelistic in the best way possible as journalism. And you constantly come back to the notion, too, that metaphors really aren't that good. I mean, whether it's like a mirror or buckets or cylinders and things like that, and it's worth keeping in mind because we're really only getting towards what is actually going on. You know, talk about Prism. What did it do and or what is it doing? Is it still actually operational in the same way as you were describing it in 2013? Prism is still operational in the same way as 2013, as best anyone knows. My information isn't completely current, but there's been no suggestion that the government doesn't still value the program, which does produce valuable intelligence. And there's been no legislative effort with any serious backing. So explain in general or give the overview of how Prism operates. Prism is this. The government says, I want all the information you have about person X. Usually it would be in the form of an email address or, say, a Facebook identifier. And then one of the large U.S. internet companies, and they're all swept into it, whether it's Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others, has to give over the information. So there may be gigabytes of data about any given person. You can imagine five-year history of your Gmail account. It could have documents, photos, many, many photos, many, many documents. Tens or hundreds of thousands of emails, all that stuff. The government can get it. Now, it was always true the government could get that stuff with an individual warrant. What Prism did secretly and without the knowledge of the American public was allow the NSA to decide for itself who it wanted to surveil this way and to do it in very large quantities. So on any given day in 2013, which was the last day I had access to the information, and it was growing exponentially, but at any given day, then there were 100,000 accounts on cover. 100,000 accounts that the NSA was getting everything in them. That's a lot of targets. And because for every account, you get an average of 10 bystanders. Now we're talking about a million bystanders that are swept into this collection. Yeah, this is, I mean, we can understand this better now because of COVID-19, right, or the way the coronavirus kind of, you know, there's an infection factor. So it's every one person who's there. It extends far outward, and you have a great section where you talk about hopping and how quickly, you know, a few people like, oh, we're only looking at a few people, but then we have to look at everybody around them and suddenly within a couple of jumps, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people or, you know, practically the entire globe. What, who are the people who are being targeted when you talk about the 100,000? Who are they? They're supposed to be foreigners, not located in the United States, and of interest on any of several grounds to US intelligence community. There's no probable cause. There's a reasonable belief that it's a foreigner who could produce valuable foreign intelligence. So it could be a terrorist, and that's what they like to talk about because there's an emotional appeal to terrorism that's an emotional appeal to going after terrorists. And it's true that targets suspected of terrorism are an important part of this program, but it's also foreign government officials, foreign corporate officials, people involved in weapons trade, all the usual range of things you would expect an intelligence agency to be interested in. So can you explain how the NSA is not supposed to be spying on American citizens, particularly or people in America? That's the province of a different intelligence operation. How do they, how do they end up, you know, kind of looking at people and things that are in the United States? Well, you used the word earlier, and it's a powerful word. It's called incidental collection. So incidental doesn't mean accidental or unforeseen or even undesirable. It just means that you were aiming for one person, and because of that, you swept in all the people that person communicates with or about or is in a chain. Let's suppose there's a foreign government official who's also interested in turtles or cooking or sports cars and is on a mailing list for people with that particular interest. All the people on that list are going to get swept in because they're in communication with him. And so all of a sudden you're sitting in Toledo, Ohio, and you're a car enthusiast, and your communications are now swept in because they're interested in the Deputy Foreign Minister of Latvia. Talk about muscular. That's another program that you detailed. What is that? Well, this is the spooky counterpart of Prism because with Prism, they go openly, in secret, talking to people who are cleared for classified information. They go to Google and say, please hand me everything you've got on Bart and Nick and 100,000 other people. In the muscular program, they do the collection overseas where the rules are a lot less strict, where there is no FISA court surveillance, that is to say supervision. Congressional committees get much, much less information about foreign operations. And in the muscular program, working with the GCHQ, which is the British counterpart of the NSA, our operators were breaking into and tapping the private data links that connect Google data centers all around the world. So you have to understand that if you're an American and you're sending an email from you to someone down the street, that email is probably going to end up in Singapore and Bogota because Google has giant data centers in both of those places and they distribute the load globally and they back up globally. And so just because the NSA collects overseas doesn't mean that it's not collecting on Americans and American stuff is there. The internet doesn't respect geographic boundaries. And so the NSA was breaking into these links. Google, for example, as other companies do, has thousands of miles of privately owned or privately leased fiber optic cable. These connect these gigantic data centers around the world and the NSA was breaking into those in order to not only to collect lawfully at home according to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, but it was on purely executive authority, purely on the say so of the president, was breaking in without the knowledge of Google and taking whatever it liked. What is the disposition of, you go into this bit of Google, Yahoo, Apple, how do they feel about this? Because part of them, in what ways are they willing participants and in what ways are they kind of dragged into all of this? Well, it depends on the program and it also depends on the company and it also depends on whether you're talking about before or after the Snowden revelations. All of them went along because they were obliged by law to go along under the prison program. When they said, please hand over this data, here's our court order authorizing us to get whatever data we judge to be reasonable. Then they pretty much had to comply. They would make sure the order was reasonable in terms of its framing. They couldn't say give me the emails of everyone whose name begins with a B, but they had little choice but to cooperate. At a certain point they had to cooperate and they were not allowed to tell anybody what was requested. That was then annual. It remains true that these requests are classified. Only a few people at the company are allowed to know. They can't make public anything about those requests. That doesn't show up in their kind of annual transparency documents where they say this many requests were made of us and this is the type of information we gave out. That was highly contested and evolving, but not all the information makes its way into those transparency reports. If you don't mind, I'll just finish that answer. The companies went along with the prism collection because they had to. They didn't know about, until my story, they didn't know about the collection that was going overseas where their data center traffic was being broken into. They were quite outraged by that and that led to a series of actions that the companies took. This is sort of an extraordinary thing. American companies spending tens of millions of dollars to thwart their own government's surveillance programs. Were they successful in that? I think there was considerable success in that, but one of the huge impacts that Snowden had, and we could talk about this later, is that his disclosures led to decisions by many, many companies and eventually became almost standard on the web to encrypt their connections to your computer. Before Snowden, almost all the browsing you did, almost all the email you sent and received, your computer connected to some big server, whether it was in California or somewhere else, in the clear with an unencrypted line. Anyone along the path could just scoop it all in in high volume and the NSA did do that. Now the link to each computer is encrypted. You see the little padlock icon in your browser bar for secure sockets layers, which is the encryption method. That has thwarted high volume collection to a considerable extent. The NSA can still get anyone they want to if they decide to target that person individually, but they can't get everyone as easily anymore. So if we take it back a little bit to get to, because I want to kind of, you mentioned before Snowden or an after Snowden, I mean that's a huge kind of breakpoint in the way we talk about all of this stuff. The FISA courts were set up in the late 70s after, you know, really amazingly disturbing revelations where the most almost the most paranoid fantasies of, you know, right wingers and left wingers about government, the government ability or willingness to spy on just about anybody at any level at any way came out under the Rockefeller Commission and the church committee hearings and whatnot. FISA forced, first off, it made it clear that the NSA couldn't be doing stuff on on American citizens and people in in the country. By after the war on terror sort or after 9 11 walk us through how the Bush administration originally just kind of waved away restrictions on, you know, kind of limitations on things. Who was behind that and then how did it get to a point where the idea still though that you needed a FISA warrant for each target that you were going after where that that then became kind of a mass program where you just needed a warrant to say, we're going to be doing this kind of stuff. Right. So 9 11 happens and there's an understandable desire on the part of the US government to not be surprised again. And so there's a huge emphasis on renewing an expanding collection for intelligence purposes. And that's laudable. I mean, they they needed that information. You know, and if I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you know, one of the things that you make clear. And I think Snowden makes clear. And I know most of the people I know even in the most kind of anti surveillance say people, everybody recognizes the need for government intelligence like secret intelligence and all of that kind of stuff. And that's not a question of whether or not the government should be able to investigate people. It's it's really more what are what are the terms of that and how transparent are they and what are the limitations but continue. Right.  Then the people aren't running the show. So what happened after 911 the best way to explain it is to take a metaphor or an image that Michael Hayden who is then the director of the NSA came up with. He said there's a Venn diagram. Right.  One is here is everything that we would want to gather if we could. It's our wish list. The second circle is here is everything that we're technically capable of collecting. And then the third circle, he said, is this is what's lawful. This is what's legal under our current setup. And it's at the intersection of all three of those circles where we collect. And he gave that briefing to Dick Cheney, the vice president and Cheney looked at him and he said, just suppose you took that third circle away. Suppose you didn't have to worry about what's lawful. Tell me everything you could do that you're not already doing. And that was the genesis of four different domestic surveillance programs that came into being without legal authority. Without certainly without any explicit court authority or legislative authority in the first years after 911 and and the four were these. One was essentially prism, the content of internet communications. The word spoken, the images sent the documents, the video and so on. Another was the content of telephone calls listening in to the word spoken. And then for each of those two categories, telephone and internet, there was also metadata collection, which just means data about data. It's like the outside of the envelope, who it's addressed from or in a telephone call, when did they talk, for how long did they talk, what's the regular pattern of their conversations. And the people that they talk to, who do they talk to, contacts of contacts or contacts of contacts of contacts and doing big data network analysis. So those were the four programs. In 2004, there was a crisis because the Justice Department came to believe that at least one of those programs was unlawful and refused to sign off on the very expansive executive authority that was claimed by Cheney and his general counsel, David Addington. And that led to a gigantic showdown and very nearly led to mass resignations from the Justice Department, which was being led on an acting basis by Jim Comey at the time and Bush back down. There was a gradual movement after that toward regularizing these programs toward getting the FISA court to authorize them. And the FISA court made some remarkably broad findings. It agreed in litigation and decisions to positions taken by the Justice Department that were more aggressive and frankly more imaginative than anything that had come before that. And so, for example, the government had the authority under the Patriot Act, Section 215, to collect quote unquote business records that were relevant to an authorized investigation of terrorism. And the government came to the court and said, we believe that all records of everyone are relevant because we can use them for this sort of big data analysis. And the relevance is usually in court, it's a legal standard that limits what you can obtain. I can't as civil litigant go into court and say, I want the court to order that the other side produce all records it's ever had and also all the other records of all its competitors and everyone else in the country, just because I might find something important in there. Relevant to me is a confining condition. The court accepted this frankly outrageous argument that every phone call made by every American, whether it's local, national or international, should be collected up in terms of its metadata and they should be able to draw a gigantic social graph of all of our communications. And then what happened to limit certain types of, or what happened that then changed in the late Bush years and going into Obama? How were these rulings kind of changed or what happened that then gave rise to what ends up with the Snowden revelations? So at the end of the Bush years, there were several of these decisions in secret by the FISA court. Now remember that by design the FISA court only hears from one side, it only hears from the government. And it's classified so no one on the outside, not only no one can can brief or oppose the government argument at the time, but no one gets to read the opinion and say, that doesn't make any sense and analyze it. And so in 2007 and 2008, there was also legislation passed by Congress, the more important of which was the FISA Amendments Act, which gave the cover of legal authority to some of the programs. And some of them were never challenged in court because, A, people didn't know about them and B, they were taking place outside the court's authority. The FISA court does not have jurisdiction over intelligence operations that take place overseas that are ostensibly aimed at foreigners. And that's the wiggle room that gave the NSA the power and the practice of bringing in so much incidental communications that cover so many Americans. So explain or walk us through how Snowden got in touch with you originally. And what was your sense of him early on? Because this is, again, in a very serious way, I don't want to reduce your book or your work to kind of cloak and dagger stuff. But because I mean the content of it is so much more important than the telling. But the telling is interesting. How did Snowden contact you? Well, the cloak and dagger is important to the narrative because it really is a sort of real life spy story. And I had to learn techniques of concealment just in order to talk to Snowden. So I mean, when Snowden first appeared, and it was initially to Laura Poitras, the filmmaker, he was an anonymous individual named Virax, which I had to look up. It's Latin for truth teller. And by the way, it was meant to be a little bit of a contrast to Julian Assange who had at one point used the handle Mendax or Lyre. And he said he was a member of the intelligence community with a gigantic scoop about a scandal in terms of overreach of surveillance. And to be honest, my first reaction was, oh, no, not this again.  And most of them are cranks or they're fakers or they're sincere believers in something, but they don't understand it. And this was a lesson in humility for me because my first thought was that this was likely to be a false alarm. I almost told that to Laura Poitras, but I bit my tongue and heard her out. And I'm glad I did because every time we tested this Virax character and asked more questions, the answers came back more than plausible. And he had one habit which I found especially persuasive, and that is to say, I don't know. There were lots of questions we asked that he said, I'm not an expert in that or I don't have that information. I have this information. If you want, I can make some informed speculation, but it's only speculation. That's confidence building. As was the fluent way he spoke the language of intelligence, the language of network communications, the language of NSA programs, and also the way he sort of slipped into it without even really quite realizing that he had gone from English to jargon. That's common in people who work in closed systems and it's actually kind of hard to fake. So I had endless, I mean dozens of hours of communications with Snowden before I knew his name, just trying to establish his bona fides. Are you for real? Do you have any ground to know what you're talking about? And this is before I've seen any of his documents either. So far, all of this is about, I've got a secret that I'm going to tell you but not yet. He was meanwhile trying to establish my bona fides. Did he believe that I as a mainstream journalist would have the guts to publish a story if he gave it to me? Did he believe that the Washington Post was going to cave into pressure from the government to squelch this story? To me, those questions had obvious answers but they weren't obvious to him. Meanwhile, we're doing all this communication through these spooky channels. We're bouncing our communications all over the world to anonymize them. We're using encryption. We're using short-lived accounts and then switching to other accounts using burner computers and disguising their MAC addresses and their IP addresses and everything we could possibly do to try to basically sneak up on a surveillance machine without being surveilled. Would you talk a bit about, because you were working at the Century Foundation. You had been at the Washington Post. You were no longer there.  And you went to them with the opportunity for that to be the outlet. It didn't work out there. It did at the Washington Post. Could you discuss a little bit the difference of the receptions at those? These are two great legacy media kind of outlets. One was like, yeah, you know what? We're not going to go there. And the other one was, yeah, we're going with you. Well, the sad truth is that Time magazine, which is under new ownership now, but at the time it was part of the Time Warner Empire. And Time magazine did exactly what Snowden feared mainstream media would do. It didn't have to wait to cave into government pressure. It was afraid to touch the story of the first place. I mean, and to me, as a journalist, I was a columnist at Time for a while. I was like, wow, that explains why Time, in a profound way, no longer matters. Because it blinked when given the opportunity to pursue one of the most important stories. Certainly of the post-war era, certainly of the 21st century, the post-Cold War, but in American history, what do you think drove their lack of curiosity or their fear? Well, I should emphasize in fairness that I worked with and for some really great journalists who had all the right instincts. They wanted to go ahead. Sure. But the corporate bosses were thinking of a spin-off. They were going to get rid of Time magazine and the whole magazine division because it was a drag on their fabulous profits in, for example, the film and the theme park industry. So the corporate bosses were afraid of the litigation risk. They were afraid of the Espionage Act. They were afraid of the controversy that might affect regulatory decisions. They just sort of saw nothing in it for them to go forward like this. And they never said, I absolutely refuse to run this story. They simply told me that I would have to operate under rules in which, for example, I couldn't talk to the editors about my story because it was classified. And I would have to only talk to some outside law firm which had a cleared lawyer to tell me what was fit to print and what wasn't. And then I could talk about that. I mean, it was completely a non-star. I mean, it's kind of the difference and we'll get to the post in a second. But Time was no longer, or at least the time you were interacting with, was no longer primarily a journalism organization. It was something else. Well, you know, it was, but it was bound. Yeah. It was limited.  What was your experience at the post? My experience at the post was very different. Look, I had been at the Washington Post for 21 years. As you mentioned, I had left the post in 2010 and gone to work at the Century Foundation working on magazine and book projects. When I got this Snowden leak, I mean, first one document, and then 50,000 highly classified documents, I did not want to be freelance Bart trying to cope with this. I needed the legal cover and the resources and the partnerships of a large news organization to work with this. So after time, I went back to my old employer, the Washington Post. Marty Barron was relatively new as the editor. I had never met him. I knew him by reputation. He led the coverage in Boston of the, you know, Catholic Church child abuse scandal, which was a brave thing to do in Boston in particular, given the demographics there. He had a great reputation, but I didn't know him from Adam. And I called up an editor I did know at the post and said, hi, it's Bart. I need a meeting with the top boss right away. I can't tell you why, which did not really go over very well. So now you're like V-R-A-X kind of going. I've got the greatest story in the world, but I can't really tell you anything about it. Let me talk to you. Well, I didn't want to talk about it on the phone. I wanted to talk about it in person, and I wanted to talk about it with the man who could make a decision. There are various points that I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if anybody watching or listening has, but they should. There's a great movie from the 70s called The Parallax View with Warren Beatty as an investigative reporter who's looking into the murder, the assassination of a senator. And he, you know, he comes off as a crazy person, but of course he's actually right about everything. But I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was likening you to Warren Beatty. I haven't seen it, but now I have to. You'll enjoy it very much. Yeah, I'm always happy to be likened to a movie star.  I mean, there's a scene in the book in which I finally have gathered the lawyers and Marty Baron and a couple of his top leaders from the newsroom and we're in a windowless conference room and I ask everyone to please take their mobile phones and either remove the batteries or take them out of the room. Please hear it, tinfoil hats, secure them, yes. Yeah, I mean, I write in the book that they reacted as though I'd asked them to peel off their socks. It just made no sense to them. Well, you know, and this comes up a couple of times in the book, you know, this was at a moment when it wasn't clear if your cell phones could be worked operated remotely as listening devices and things like that and I can remember the first time I heard people talking about that. I was like, okay, I gotta, you know, there's a train I gotta catch to get as far away from the person telling me that is possible, but, you know, there it is. It turns out that that is true. The NSA has the capability remotely to turn on your microphone and you won't know it. And I just didn't know what I was up against, who I was up against at the time. I didn't expect the NSA to be doing rogue operations against an American journalist, but honestly, an authorized counterintelligence operation might have been legally available to them if they knew what was going on. And I also knew that as soon as foreign governments got wind that I had a lot of classified American documents that I would become interesting to them as well as sophisticated hackers who just wanted to look at the documents for fun or profit. So we did take extraordinary precautions and my introduction to Marty Barron is me telling this guy who's never met me that if we're gonna be able to work together he's gonna have to build a safe room, you know, get a big, heavy safe, remove the guts of computer networking hardware from the computers we use, master new forms of encryption, et cetera, et cetera. And I listened to myself talking and I thought he was gonna throw me out. They really did. You reminded me in those moments of, there's an episode of Seinfeld when George and Jerry are pitching a pilot to NBC and George just starts making categorical demands, you know, non-negotiable demands. I was like, this is the show and we're not gonna dumb it down for anything. But it works.  I was absolutely George in that scenario. But it worked. Marty said, okay, we can agree to those conditions. Let's talk about the story. So you, you know, in the book, one of the things, and it's clear, Snowden was, he was talking to different types of people and Laura Poitras, you know, a Academy Award-winning documentarian, but a very highly regarded filmmaker who had run afoul of the government with earlier work, particularly about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, Glenn Greenwald a little bit later on at The Guardian. You know, part of what he needed really in a lot of ways was somebody like you who is working in mainstream media. You know, that is also, you know, has a credibility that's something like The Guardian, the British Guardian was not necessarily going to bring. You, you are not uncritical of Edward Snowden. But in the book, you say that you trusted him. Yet there were a couple of times where he clearly had kind of padded his resume, so to speak. What, you know, what were the things where he overstated what he had actually done or what he had in his possession? And why did you trust him so much? Well, first of all, I trusted that I could verify the documents. And the documents were my primary source, not Snowden himself. I didn't rely on him to explain to me what the programs were. And I quoted him in very few stories and only about himself. As I said, he had earned my trust by cabining his answers to things that he knew about and telling me what he didn't know. And I was able to verify some of what he said. And the documents verified a lot of what he said. But there were times when he exaggerated. He wanted to make sure that I would believe him. He wanted to qualify himself. He had a sense that the jobs he had been assigned in the intelligence community did not comport with his abilities. He is one of the smartest people I've ever met. I mean, IQ is off the charts, self-educated and believed he was capable of far more than the jobs he was given. And so he did exaggerate those jobs. I mean, there's a point in one of his resumes, he talks about being a sort of a computer contractor at Fort Mead, which turned out to be a teenage job helping run a hobbyist website that was out of the basement of an apartment on Fort Mead, not working for the U.S. government. And then he also, he claimed that he had listened in on the gang of eight people doing immigration reform as well as members of the Supreme Court. That turned out to be an exaggeration as well. That's true. The biggest thing he ever told me that turned out to be untrue was that in order to prove that any analyst could listen in on anyone, he had deliberately breached the rules, listened to the eight senior-most leaders in Congress and also surveilled the justices of the Supreme Court. Turned out that that didn't happen. And I finally got him to admit it two years after the fact. But I never published it either because I needed backup and he never could give me the backup. So I'm honest in the book.  Yeah, I think so too. In many ways I admire. And he has his human flaws. Now, you also talked to throughout the book, you mentioned this on a number of occasions, people like kind of rank and file employees at the NSA and other places. You say, you know, every time you looked, you found them scrupulously trying to comply with the letter of the law as well as in most cases, the spirit of the law. And yet they were involved in programs that just seemed to be off the charts in terms of, you know, if not being strictly illegal or unconstitutional, just really bad.  Like we don't understand, we never could understand. So they don't really feel a need to be fully honest with us. Is that true? And then how do you put that all together to figure out, you know, where we should be heading with this kind of stuff? Well, first of all, in Michael Kinsley's great phrase, sometimes the scandal is what's legal. You could be following the letter of the law and it's interpreted secretly in such a way that it can do remarkable things, remarkable things that the American public, if it knew about them, would not approve. But no one ever said it was illegal because there was no one there to challenge it in court because it was a secret or because the Foreign Intelligence Court only heard from the government. So there was a great deal that was legal as it was then interpreted. Some of it, Congress has since made illegal and some of it, when it finally, because of Snowden, got heard by a regular Title III of the Constitution Federal Court, a judge found to be unconstitutional. What was the biggest thing that was, you know, that is not happening now because of the Snowden revelations? The biggest thing is the collection of all those telephone records of all the Americans. That program not only was found to be of dubious constitutional validity, court's split on that, but Congress changed the program and effectively outlawed it. And not only that, but even the way that it was eventually allowed to continue, the NSA decided was not worth doing because it had not produced much of anything. That was the great metadata tutorial, right, of 2013 and 14, I guess. That's when a lot of us first heard the term metadata and began to understand its power. Yeah. What were the stories you chose not to tell? I mean, because this says you have, you know, an almost infinite amount of material, but you talk about this, as does Portress and Greenwald, you didn't tell everything there. You didn't publish everything.  One of the things that many people hold up, they hold Snowden in higher regard because he went to journalists who then were discriminant in what they published. What are, how did you make the decision of this is a story we need to bring out to the public and this is something that we're not going to pursue? Well, first of all, there are a lot of things in the archive that just aren't interesting as news stories. They don't raise important public policy questions. They don't raise questions of boundaries. There's nothing to do with corruption or overreach or wasteful spending or anything that's legally controversial. And so just giving out technical information about how the NSA does its job, if you believe in the value of intelligence at all, it's just nothing but harm. It's not a close call. There are other cases where the story would be significant. I mean, it's noteworthy news.  So let's suppose they find specific evidence of a breach of a nuclear weapons treaty in some country. And you say they found out about this breach by the following means. Well, they're not going to have that means anymore. The bad actor, the adversary, is going to learn how to conceal. And those are stories that I wasn't interested in publishing. I mean, so they could be fantastic, sensational stories.  So I've come up with a sort of a fanciful... So some of them are boring and not interesting, and others are too big to really reveal? Well, others get into very specific targets and very specific channels of surveillance. I mean, here's my fanciful illustration. Let's suppose that I find out one day that the NSA has invented mind-reading earrings and has placed them on the mistress of the Emperor of Mars. And by this means has detected the plans to invade the Earth and thwarted it. You would say, holy moly, that's one of the stories of the century. That's humongous. And a reader would read the story and say, wow, that's a big deal. I'm sure glad that they stopped that plot.  On the other hand, if the NSA produced mind-reading technology, that would be a fairly big and important thing to debate because it has pretty significant civil liberties implications as well. So you might not talk about the earrings of the Emperor's mistress on Mars, but you might want to say the NSA is developing mind-reading technology and it raises all these questions and it's being done in secret. I'm also worried if we can get to Mars when we're still wearing earrings. I don't know. It seems like uneven progress. I need to work on that. In a few minutes left, I want to ask a couple of questions about the continuity of the willingness of the intelligence community to kind of push and circumvent and hide and obscure and obfuscate from the public. We are taught to believe that George W. Bush was awful in a particular way. Some of us think Obama was awful in a particular way. Many of us believe Donald Trump is awful, yet more awful in different ways. Is there a continuity, though, among people in the intelligence community that Obama, and you have one of his advisors saying, we would be, and Obama said this actually when the Snowden stuff came out, like, oh, I welcome a conversation about surveillance and national security and all of that kind of stuff, but it never seems to happen unless somebody pushes it from the outside. Is it safe to say that there's a logic to the intelligence community that runs cleanly through whatever administration, whether they're liberal or conservative, whether they're Democratic or Republican, and they're just going to do what they're going to do or get away with as much as possible. Hayden has that metaphor about dirtying the lines, like really working the line that's out of bounds. Is there a continuity there that escapes any kind of partisanship that's meaningful? I think there is a continuity. The continuity is, first of all, the intelligence community wants to protect the country and wants to obtain the information that the president and the president's people say they need. I need to know what the economic plans are in China. I need to know what the real fallback negotiating position is of this rival in a set of bilateral or multilateral talks. I need to get to yes, so tell me what he's really willing to give up. There's a whole long list of literally thousands of items of interest that guides intelligence community behavior, and they also know that there is zero tolerance for failure, that if you miss something big, another 9-11 or something, even as relatively small as one guy with explosives in his shoe, getting it on an airplane, you're going to be blamed. Of course, they want to use every tool they could possibly get. Of course, they are going to push the rules. Hayden's image was that he wants to play the game with chocolate as cleats. He wants to be right on that line. If you're allowed to define in secret where the line is, it might not be a line that others would accept or that outsiders would accept. There's a continuity in that. That's why institutional incentives are toward more intelligence gathering and more secrecy. Can I ask, a presidential election is essentially between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. You asked a lot of the former heads of intelligence services, are you comfortable that Donald Trump is now getting to call the shots given the way that you yourselves operated in many gray, if not absolutely black areas? How did they respond to that? Then also, Joe Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, who was really bad on journalists who were trying to expose the national surveillance state and who was a faker, a knock-off skater on a lot of what was going on in his watch. How did people respond about the Donald Trump question? Do you think, is Joe Biden an apostle of transparency in any meaningful way? That's interesting questions. Well, first of all, with regard to Trump, you have to rewind a little bit. When Snowden raised the question whether we could trust government with these enormous powers, members of the intelligence community thought that was obvious. They trusted themselves. They trusted each other. They trusted the rules. They knew that their actual motives were to protect the country, and so they thought, why would anybody challenge this? When they look at the same programs, under the auspices of Donald Trump, someone who is no respecter of rules or traditions, someone who can't be relied on to tell the truth, I mean, can be relied on to lie every day of his presidency, they're much less sanguine about the government accumulating this enormous machinery of surveillance that is subject to horrific potential abuse. I mean, we're living in a world where, within living memory, we had J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon and flatly illegal surveillance programs, and those things could return. So they're surprisingly thoughtful, I think. I'm not surprised they're thoughtful. They're surprisingly willing to make concessions about their doubts about programs they had taken for granted for their whole careers, and I have several long scenes in the book of conversation with Jim Clapper, who was the Director of National Intelligence, who shows fresh doubts in the book about those programs. Joe Biden, no, he's not been an apostle of transparency in the national security world. He was a strong backer of the prosecution of whistleblowers and leakers in the Obama administration, and there were more prosecutions with charges of espionage against people who talked to journalists during the Obama administration than in all previous administrations combined, which had a chilling effect on national security reporting. At the same time, you can't claim that they shut down national security reporting or anything like that because, to be honest, in the time since 9-11, there have been more huge revelations about secret programs than at any other time in journalistic history. Mark Elman, thank you so much for talking to reason. The book is dark mirror, read it with the lights on. Thanks, Mark Elman. Thank you very much. Pleasure being here.


The hybrid perovskite material mappy has been found to have significantly longer carrier lifetimes than other materials due to its indirect gap structure. This is caused by the presence of spin orbit coupling which splits the energy levels of the material into two bands, one of which is indirectly gapped. This results in slower recombination rates, allowing for greater efficiency in solar cells. This article was authored by Pooja Azarhush, Scott McKetchney, Jarvis M. Frost and others.


Hello people of the internet, my name is Johnny and welcome back to yet another FNAF news video. Today we're talking about FNAF Plus. It's been a good while since we last brought up FNAF Plus here on the channel and that's because development has been kind of quiet. Which is understandable if you don't know Fiznom who is the creator of FNAF Plus. Said a while back that he doesn't want to reveal too too much, he doesn't want to put out as many teasers or trailers for example until the game is getting very close to completion. However of course that doesn't mean we don't have any news to talk about. Because very recently on Twitter he posted some possible UI designs that will appear in the game. So in today's video we're going to be taking a look at all of those designs as well as a bit more info that he revealed. So if you're excited for the brand new FNAF Plus info hit the like button, subscribe so you stay up to date with all the FNAF news here on the channel and let's hop into it. So very quickly, if you don't know FNAF Plus is a official reimagining. I'm pretty sure it's the word Phil likes to use. It's not quite a remake, it's a reimagining based off of how Phil would re-imagine the first game. It's a part of the Fazbear fanverse initiative, it's going to be ported to platforms and it's going to hopefully get merchandise in the future. And of course the main thing it is officially funded and kind of looked after by Scott even though he's not directly helping with the making of the game. So technically it's a official FNAF reimagining and we have Phil more developing the game. And recently Phil has asked for the input of the fan base to determine what UI designs the game will have and we finally have some answers and we have some UIs to take a look at. This first tweet isn't about the UIs but it is about changing the variables and UIs that can appear in the game. He said I want to turn hard-coded variables of FNAF Plus into config options that you can modify. For example, the intensity of the screen warp, the vertical movement, the scrolling speeds, fog, lighting and particles, etc. Are there any things in FNAF games you wish you could change on a settings menu? So just some features you can toggle on and off or just via a slider, it's not clear which one it will be. We don't know exactly what we're going to be able to toggle or change via a settings menu in the game. I think those examples that Phil brought up are most likely going to be in there. Some other options that got brought up in their replies that Phil responded to were moving the HUD and also being able to adjust or just straight up turn off the static in the game. So now moving on to the actual user interface of the game Phil made this tweet, still working on the final UI for FNAF Plus. Finish the concept markups for a default UI and the classic UI. Both options will be accessible from the options menu. Going to work on four more bonus styles and let people pick their two favorite ones as bonus options soon. So what you're seeing right now is the concept for a default UI in the office. It's also worth noting that Phil said, please note that some elements of the UIs have been removed in these images to avoid spoilers. Only the elements already present in the original FNAF were included. So in this image you can see you have a 12am clock at the top right, as well as the day of the week. Bottom left, you have the power meter and the power usage and of course the camera button that you press on or just hover over to open the cameras. And based on that other tweet, I have a feeling that there are definitely going to be some other UIs in the game that we're just not seeing right now. But yeah, technically this is our first look at gameplay. If you want to call it that, it's pretty simple. It's just some basic UI elements with the office blurred out, but you can still make out the office.  And this is a mock-up of the default UI for the cameras. Now Phil does slightly update the UI for the default option that we're going to take a look at in a second. But this would be where the cameras are located on the map. You can see you have quite a few cameras. So it looks like you have one camera in every major room and two in the dining room. I'm going to take a guess and assume that 1a is the entrance to the pizza area. Cam 2 is going to be the show stage. Cam 3, I would assume, is some sort of backstage or back room area. Cam 5 is obviously the bathrooms. Cam 1c and 1b are the dining room. Cam 4, I would assume, is Pirate's Cove. Either it's Pirate's Cove and it's just in a separate room, or it is the prize counter. Because you can see another square that could signify either another stage or a prize counter at the bottom of the dining area. And that is exactly where a prize area is in Help Wanted and FNAF 1. So I would assume that that is the prize area and Pirate's Cove is just in a separate room. Cam 6 looks to be in some sort of supply closet. Interesting that there is also a dot in that room. Because the only other dot on the map is where we are in the office. So what do you think that dot is for? Let me know in the comments down below. Cam 8 appears to be another back room. Cam 10 is most likely the electric room. We know based off a previous teaser that there is a electric room and I believe it was around Cam 10. Cam 7's the kitchen and of course 9A and 9B are the hallways. Now I'm gonna deviate quickly from taking a look at the UI and bring up something interesting. Cam 1B is in the exact location that we see a error message pop up in the Connection Error Teaser video. And that's right after we see Bonnie right in our face in the cameras. So either one that shot was just made for a creepy shot in the trailer, or B, the animatronics can deactivate our cameras. And we do know that Foxy is linked to the cameras. Since we went on a wild goose chase last time, taking a look at all the shots that Foxy's in and breaking and entering. And it turns out he's linked to the cameras. So could Foxy be disabling the cameras? It's an interesting thought. Anyways, let's get back to the UIs. So this right here is the quote unquote classic UI. It's made to look extremely similar to the UI you see in classic FNAF 1. It has that same kind of 8-bit font, you know? And instead of saying Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., it'll say Night 1, 2, 3, etc. And in a reply to these tweets, Phil said UI and options are important to enjoying games. And since they don't spoil the experience, I don't mind showing their progress. Currently planning to adjust the usage dots and button sizes for the default UI, plus adding options for left-handed users, plus toggling cam names on or off for visibility. So there you go, you got more options. I love all the options we have in this game. Phil also made a tweet not too long after the first showcase of the UI, updating and adjusting the default UI based on feedback from the last post, simplified vision cone, decrease the size of the usage dots, made the camera button slightly more pleasing to look at. The default UI will probably change a lot during development. And this is the updated UI for the default UI. Honestly, I love it. I think it looks fantastic. It's also a great callback to the original map UI for FNAF, where the cameras would show what direction they're pointed at. I think that's so cool. And this is the updated power meter. Nice. And now we move on to the four bonus UIs, but only two of them will be added to the game. First up, we have the thin UI, where, believe it or not, everything is super thin, very simple. Taking a look at the office, I think the main difference is the power meter and usage down at the bottom. It's all compact into one unit. I think it looks pretty cool. And now I move on to the camera shot for the thin UI. It looks pretty similar to the default UI, except now the names of the cameras, you know, their numbers don't show up on the icons. The second bonus UI is the night UI. Right. Here's a look at the office night UI design. I think it looks pretty sleek, pretty simple, nice and clean. And then this is the camera UI for the night UI design. So it uses the classic FNAF one camera icons and everything has a, you know, dark nighttime black aesthetic to it. The third possible UI for FNAF plus is the future UI. This is the office. And my, oh my, do things look sleek. You can see the power meter at the bottom is split into two meters. And this time they're going vertically, which is crazy. Never done before in a FNAF game. That's absurd. That one, Fillmore. Honestly, I love the look of the camera UI for the future UI design. I don't know how to describe it. I think it looks cool. Whatever. When you highlight on a, on a camera, it turns green. I like that. That's cool. But yeah, this is the third possible. Again, keep in mind possible UIs for FNAF plus only two get to move forward. And this is the fourth and final possible UI. It's called the old school UI. And honestly, this one might be my favorite. It is so sick. It's in that, dare I say, old school Windows UI. This is the office. Again, I think it just looks so visually appealing. Such a throwback. It looks so sick. And this is what the cameras look like with the old school UI. Again, it just, it looks so cool. I love it so much. But only two of those four options can get in the thing UI, the nighttime UI, the old school UI, and the third one I'm forgetting, the future UI. That's right. And the two that made it in are the night UI and the old school UI. Now the game will have four different UI styles you'll be able to choose from, from the options menu, default classic night and old school. We'll probably work on implementing those next month, currently busy wrangling character animations into the game. So as a reminder, let's take a look at the four UIs that are going to be in FNAF plus. First up, you got the default UI, default UI for the office and default UI for the cameras. Then you have the classic. This is what the office looks like. And this is what the cameras look like. It's meant to mimic the classic FNAF one style. Thirdly, you have the night UI. This is what the night UI looks like for the office. And this is what it looks like for the cameras. And finally, you have the old school UI meant to mimic those classic, dare I say again, old school windows icons. And this is what it looks like for the cameras. But we're not done just yet. Alongside different UIs, I also want to make multiple color schemes for the usage bar plus the options for the active cameras colors, default red, classic lime green, et cetera. One of my aims with FNAF plus is to absolutely overwhelm people with customization options. Phil, I love that. And then he shows off some different color schemes we could get in the game. Just to let you know how in depth I'm going with options and why FNAF plus takes so long to make. Here are some examples for the UI option. So this is like everything he wants to accomplish with the UI. Four available UI styles. And we already took a look at those. Styles can be mixed and matched for a custom config. Mirror power usage and camera mini map locations. So I think what this means is if you want the camera map on the left instead of the right, you can do that. If you want the power on the left, I mean on the right and not the left, you can do that. Customizable color schemes for usage bar and active camera button. We already took a look at those. Though I don't think that those were the final color schemes. I think that's just to get you an idea for what he means. Enable UI only while looking at the cams except the panel button. Change the opacity of the UI elements. So if you don't know what opacity means, it's basically how see through they are. Mini map can change the opacity if not hovering over it with the mouse. Disable the camera borders for visibility. Disable static, awesome. Scanlines, night labels and camera labels for visibility. Change the static opacity. Again, how see through the static is or not. Enlarge the cam buttons if you hover over them. Change the format of the night labels. So if you want Monday to show up instead of night one or Tuesday instead of night two, you can do that. It's going to take a lot to implement all of this, but it'll definitely be worth it. And that is all of the updates we have for FNAF Plus.  I freaking love it. I never realized just how much I wanted all these, you know, different options in a FNAF game until Phil tweeted all this out. So it's awesome to see that he's really working hard to get a lot of customization in the game. I really appreciate that as a, you know, a fan, a viewer, a player of the game when it comes out. So thank you, Phil, for all of that dedication. That definitely is a lot, but hopefully it is worth it. But yes, that is all the updates we have on FNAF Plus for now. Again, there was that whole post bin that I could cover if you guys really want me to. But that's gonna do it for all of the UI and color schemes and all the different options we're talking about in today's video. And thank you, the viewer, for watching. And I'll see you all on the flip side. Goodbye.


Hello! My name is Catty Januzzi and I'm here again this week to interview another UVM student. Her name is Grace Parker and she just joined now and again we're not expecting too many viewers on the live itself but it's more for keeping the live on the Instagram page to continue to raise awareness, raise awareness for CCTV time-meeting TV and the importance of it. So I'm going to, I always struggle doing this, okay. Nice to meet you! You as well. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah of course. You know we're gonna talk about some really cool stuff. I think you've done some awesome stuff so.  Yeah so like you said my name is Grace. I am from Jackson, Wyoming. I am a senior here at UVM majoring in political science. I'm on the pre-log and I've done some research at a law firm in Burlington and some other things like that. Yeah awesome. What law firm did you do research? Pain Law. It's actually based out of UVM interns. That's really it. Yeah I was going to ask about what your major was because you know the girl that I interviewed last week she was I believe she was a studio art major or something and that really interested me because I was you know I was assuming that you know the people who get really involved with like local politics and you know town policy and everything like I would assume that they would be more you know politically inclined in their major you know but it was interesting to know that you know it's just something that you can be passionate about without having it be like you know something you're studying so. Yeah totally. Yeah all right so tell me about your political experiences you know and your their experiences of how you've gotten involved in the town of Burlington. Yeah I guess that would really start my for my second year on campus is when I got more involved with volunteering on various campaigns and stuff. I've always been kind of politically active growing up at home and in my hometown and then I got involved with college Democrats my sophomore year through friends and then was asked to volunteer on Richard Dean's city council campaign that year and then with that same group of people volunteered on a couple other state senate campaigns and then Burlington city council campaigns as well. So how many total campaigns do you think you've been a part of? I would say maybe five or six campaigns. Nice it's awesome can you tell me about what you do when you're involved like how how you specifically got involved in them. Yeah a lot of the work I've done when we were in person was doing like canvassing in the Burlington area phone banking and then now when we did our most recent campaign I was involved in it was always fully remote because of the pandemic obviously so that was doing a lot of like phone banking honking waves just really trying to connect with um voters and get them like engaged and excited and also informed that you know there were elections coming up and things that they should be involved in. So that's really really interesting so how do you get the reliable information about what's happening with local issues is it harder or easier to get this than it is national political issues or? I definitely oh sorry I definitely think that we a lot of what is easily accessible is going to be the big national issues when it comes to politics because that gets a lot more coverage so for folks that aren't really looking into specific local issues and they just go to the news or whatever it is that they get their information from they're going to find the larger stuff something that I do to stay um engaged with like local stuff following like hashtag BT poly on twitter or hashtag BTB poly just to like see what issues people are actively talking about but then also looking at the different newspapers in Burlington and kind of knowing who writes about the different issues to stay up to what is being talked about and decided in the area. So what are some issues that you specifically care about as a Burlington local? I think right now some of the big issues that I've seen in the last couple of years that I am pretty passionate about is I have followed some stuff through the state house about bupenefruin oh my gosh sorry legalization and also getting like safe needle zones in the area and just like helping with that because we've seen how hard Vermont has been hit by the opioid epidemic. I think there's been a lot of really interesting dialogue in local politics regarding race and race relations in Burlington and that's something I've been following and just trying to stay up on but also I think a big thing in Burlington politics is like people feeling excluded or like the ability to like engage and become a part of it so that's something I've also been kind of following. Yeah that's a lot of stuff. I actually I know how hard obviously Burlington has been hit with the opioid epidemic and you know knowing that people are interested in doing something about that is you know for some reason I don't hear too much about activism surrounding that you know these days so knowing that there is stuff going on you know to support that is obviously really reassuring I'm good to know so when it comes to the coverage of political issues via news outlets what's more important in your opinion factually reliable coverage or coverage that resonates with one's individual ideologies so should it be super accurate or should it be kind of more tending to what they think the audience wants to hear? I mean yeah I think it should be like as factually accurate as possible and I think that's hard because every news source is going to have or every writer is going to have some bias when they're covering something and it's also hard because people are going to search out coverage of an issue that they agree with like we're always going to kind of find something that confirms your own implicit bias but I think it's more important to have accurate stuff and stuff that aligns with your own ideology. Right I think it's interesting to think about how you know naturally you're going to you know resonate more with and you know seek out more news sources that align with your political you know personal ideologies you know for example the difference between like Fox News and CNN like you know if you're more conservative and you're looking for news that resonates more along the conservative lines like you're probably going to go to Fox News instead of CNN and vice versa you know right so there's like an interesting line there I think of you know searching for something that resonates with you while maintaining the accuracy. Yeah exactly like our confirmation bias is so deeply ingrained that you don't necessarily realize that you're doing it. I took a course through the political science department looking at the political effects of entertainment media and it's kind of along the same things with news media and entertainment media we're going to continue to find things and tend to like things that are going to confirm that. Yeah so there's yeah really interesting stuff. It's really yeah the science behind it. Yeah so my next question is what are some strategies that news outlets can use in order to reduce their own political biases. I mean I think it's just important to look at the facts as they're presented when researching or reporting on something so just you know even if you maybe disagree with what you're reporting on you know still giving it a fair look at that and also just I think being so aware of your own bias when reporting on something and like taking that into account is really important to make sure that maybe it's not so biased. Right yeah um so sorry I have my questions written out here. You're so fine.  Um I mean I think you would if there's a lot of criticism I feel like that politicians get from the public just being um like feeling like they disagree with policies that happen and I think if voter turnout was higher you would see maybe less criticism you would see more I think you they still get criticized but I think people would maybe have a better understanding or feel like more trust within those that are elected because they're engaged in the process um and voter turnout I think obviously would change who gets elected um you know in many different ways yeah. Is there a specific demographic that you would you know like to see as someone who is politically involved politically active that you would like to see turn out more when it comes to voting? I mean I I think it's interesting in Burlington just you know having worked in like the student awards on campus and during our campaigns that I've been involved in that turnout fluctuates so much like in general but you know the student vote is obviously important to get into increase because they their voice still matters and I think that there's been a lot happening to engage students in the last couple years just overall I think there's a lot of people that um aren't engaged in the political process that could be you know it's just all all the demographics I think should just engage more but yeah it is really interesting that um you know when I was talking with Margo last week I don't know if you saw the interview that I had with her it was something like very similar to this um she was saying that you know people in the Burlington area like the students in the Burlington area like even if they're you know not necessarily like from Vermont they're still a part of the community and they're you know whatever they vote for or don't vote for affects them directly as well so yeah you know interesting that you know maybe students don't automatically think that they're you know going to be super impacted by the local politics and policies and everything that's going on in the town that they go to school in because it's not they're you know where they're born and raised and grown up or whatever but you know it's still obviously really important for the college demographic definitely right and it's hard the hardest thing I think with that is convincing students that does impact them because a lot of times I'll have conversations with friends or with potential voters and we'll be talking about it like but it doesn't impact me it's like no but it does explain that to them is always a interesting conversation um yeah especially when things like oh well I'm only here for like eight months I'm like well the other four months in here at home how does that have a bigger impact on you yeah it's true yeah it's true it's like as students we spent we're spending the majority of our time like here you know so we think that like I've lived here now for four years and it's like yeah it's become absolutely a part like whatever happens in the town affects me you know even if I don't realize it yeah absolutely yeah so um what are the disadvantages of the media like on the projects that you've been working on the campaigns that you've worked on um you know anything like I think it's hard because like any cover you know they say like any coverage is good coverage and like you want to get exposure on different things um in terms of like disadvantages of the media I mean sometimes it can be really hard because you know you know one side of an issue or a topic because you're involved in it and then the media only knows maybe a different side and that if that's what gets published or put out there that can be really frustrating because you don't want to be like well that's wrong you know yeah sometimes knowing when you're involved in politics and like knowing that more nuances or backstory to situations can be frustrating with the media at times but I don't know I just think it's important to maintain positive relationships with the media and just stay involved in that way yeah definitely so um I'm just thinking what what media sources have you know provided you or the campaigns that you've worked on with like you know some positive advantages you know throughout your campaigning process yeah I think um the various campaigns I've been involved in have had really good relationships with like vt digger and just like some of the local papers seven days and stuff and um you know reaching out on both sides um you know reaching out to them and them to the campaigns and just staying engaged and what yeah nice so um these are the questions that like you know you didn't get originally um so do you have any plans for a future like are you going to be staying in Burlington are you going to continue working getting involved in the community yeah um I am as of right now unsure exactly what I'll be doing after graduation so kind of figuring all of that out but long term I am studying for the LSAT with um in terms of going to law school so definitely still staying involved in some aspect of politics and you know I'll always I'll always be involved on some level because I thought it's important yeah yeah that's awesome have you heard of CCTV throughout your yeah sorry things are popping up yeah I have heard of um yeah yeah so from your opinion how do you think CCTV benefits the community town meeting tv like you know how do you think it benefits the community or the work that you're doing yeah I mean I think anything that makes access to local politics easier is a huge benefit and especially you know doing things like this and having um coverage that's accessible to students is really important um because it's you're not gonna have students that are always going to like go down and like watch city council meetings or log into um like uh broadcasts of it so having things that are more accessible is definitely important yeah that's what we're gonna try to be doing because on the on the youtube channel the CCTV youtube channel there they do lives kind of like how they would do on instagram like they do live or the meetings and so we were gonna try to take the content from the youtube like download it and post it onto the instagram that way people have you know like one resource yeah it will watch it because it's not you're not always going to be able to tune in and also a lot of college kids don't have like you know cable like that so right hard to you know be exposed to that at a certain point so that's what we're trying to do here is just make it more accessible and interesting for college kids definitely well i really appreciate you talking with me you have obviously so much going on and i know that you've done you know so much for the town of burlington we'll continue to do that you know well into your years after you graduate and good luck with everything that you're doing good luck with law school the else thank you yeah i really did it and it's cool with you if i save this live to the yeah of course okay right everyone give a give a great thank you to grace for being here so thank you so much for having me yeah thank you again for being here we really appreciate it


Break into, and working in the modelling industry can be extremely difficult work. The constant pressures related to models' looks and lifestyles are overwhelming in many cases. The business is highly competitive and getting noticed often requires a great deal of resources, both monetary and personal. While beauty can be defined differently, the razor side of beauty that is often left out and Mary Mukami, the co-founder of Rare Beauty Movement, is out to change the view of beauty, while she explores beauty from different communities and encourages self-love and self-worth. We started it last year at around June. We met with Saudat Ayuen events. So I organized a lot of events and that's where we met with Saudat. And it was persons with disability events and we got to do a lot of activities that involved sort of like the world of persons with disability. And for me that really touched me and I felt like this should reach out to the world. So Saudat and I partnered and we started the movement and our aim was to impact the beauty and the fashion industry. Our main goal is to make sure that the persons with disability are embraced in the entertainment, in the events and in the advertisement industry because most of the times when you go to fashion events you'll never see a person with disability yet they wear clothes and shoes and they attend events. And most of the events are not persons with disability friendly like you'll not find someone who can, you know, like there are no ramps, there are no people to help out and everything which is very sad. Yet there are a majority in our country and in the world. So for me I wanted to change that norm and have events that are basically majority for persons with disability. If it's the runway it's just for persons with disability to showcase the product, to showcase their beauty and, you know, just to change that realm of beauty and everything. The real beauty models are differently able models ranging from persons with duafism, vitiligo and many other forms of disability.  Mostly ladies, that's who we are dealing with for now. Basically because especially for ladies we have a lot of judgement out there. You know there's always judgement of can you do this, can you do that, can you talk like this. So for me I felt like they are not really appreciated well in my view and if you look at some of the ladies that we have they are extremely talented, they are very beautiful. We have ladies who work in banks, they play basketball, they do swimming and they do like competition. They are picked by very big advertisement companies and most of now you see these are just one one people so we want the whole community to be embraced and this to be the new norm. So that when you see a persons with albinism you are not staring and wondering what how is she like that. It should be the norm. We are all one people, we are all one colour so they shouldn't be that separation of all you have vitiligo, why and you know. Most of the times when we even share stories on our pages we shared stories about the journey of our ladies and most of them really have very heartbreaking stories like someone will just meet you up and be like what is wrong with your skin and you're like okay I really can't explain it you know. So we want that stigma to end and have them being embraced everywhere in the world. In order to recruit models to her movement Mary uses social media as a platform to make her cause known to the public. We advertise and we also go to like their special schools as well so we go and we do auditions and we also have like people introduce their friends so if you know a friend you know a friend we come we do auditions for them as long as you're between around 20 to 30 there because that's when you have some free time to do the activities that we have because we have quite a number of activities so we just want someone who's able to be proactive. Once recruited the models go through various trainings such as confidence building, skills equipping and so on. We actually do train them but our training is a bit different so our training is on skills we train on skills, we train on confidence building we train on how to handle yourself in front of people when you go to companies how you're going to carry out yourself so this is basically how we train them because we can't train them on walking or you know the runway normal thing so what we do is just train them on the confidence building and how they're going to approach companies out there as they're looking for jobs and advertisements and all that mostly the trainers are persons that they're also persons with disability as well and Sauda is also one of them my partner she's a very good trainer she's been in the fashion industry she's been in the modeling industry she's actually done a couple of advertisements which are on billboards so she's very qualified for training to our models some of the activities that the models indulging include mostly we do concentrate on events like the recent one that we had for valentines so we do such events where we just have our models go through the runway we invite speakers we invite the speakers and we also have them showcase their talent so basically those are the activities that we have and we also have advertising them advertising products so we go to a company and then they give us the products that they have and then we have our models advertise those products so when you look at our page we have a variety of the products that they've been advertising so what we do we get your talent so what talent do you have if your talent is to make jewelry they be dead jewelry that's what you make and then we advertise on our page and in every event we get you to advertise your products so people are able to buy and that's how you're able to build your career path if you're good at DJ we have a DJ in the team we get you a DJ who's like a professional DJ and then they walk with you that journey so you're able to learn this is how you do it this is how you get people to attend your events like that if you're good at tailoring like making clothes you design your clothes and then in one of the runways the models wear your clothes so it's part of the mentioning and that's how you advertise your clothes Passion and motivation are created once as Maria tests I firstly want to thank God for creating me and giving me that life and giving me that passion to have service for humanity because if it wasn't a thing that I was born with a struggle sometimes you see people do things for the camera just so that they can be seen they have done something so I thank God that it's something which is in me I also thank my parents who have really taken me through that journey especially my mum is a giver she just give, give and give so I think for me I have really learnt a lot from her to give and be kind to people the girls that we interact with are very kindhearted people and they are people who we have the same goals service to humanity and you'd find me out there planting trees, taking care of animals doing volunteer work that's something that I really love I also got people who they have the same goal and that's how we push each other because there's nothing as bad as you having this goal and the people that you are with having a very different goal you will not go on the same path so because the people that we have in the members have the same goal it's very easy for us to push each other to strengthen each other beauty they say is in the eyes of the beholder but personal beauty that comes from within is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference from my perspective beauty is sometimes we look at the outer and basically we just judge a book by its cover but for me I find that there is so much to beauty than just what you see there is how you interact with someone how that person is there are they kind to you are they nice to you what are their thoughts about so much are they impacting the community that to me is what is beauty since individuals, businesses and government entities all need funding to operate how does she acquire hers as of now we are partnering with different organizations it's actually because of the corona that things have laid down but we had partnered with different organizations so for every activity that is done if it's advertising a product or the runway we pay them so we pay them that's one and two we get the mentors so each and every person has a mentor to take them through the journey of the industry definitely especially for events we do have sponsors who come in and they just sponsor the event basically that's and partners as well mostly organizations for persons with disability or organizations who have products for persons with disability most of the times actually we have like tailors who specifically tailor make clothes for persons with disability so they sponsor us so that they can advertise their clothes and make up we have special make up but we have brands that have very good make up for persons with albinism and vitiligo so they also sponsor us and also like shoes we also have shoes for persons with disability and stylish ones Mary finds great satisfaction in what she does especially when she sees her models live a successful life I'll start with when they attend events most people are usually shocked because they come with the mentality of what can we do but when they come they see a different type of people who are confident beautiful, who are dressing up who are very dependent so that's sort of shaping their view on persons with disability and just introducing a different perspective because they get to interact so you get most people are very ignorant and they don't interact with persons with disability so which makes them just judge people so when they come to our event they just get to see a very very different view of people and that's what we are bringing to the table we have Maureen Maureen Awino she's a member of Rare Beauty and she's also a persons with disability she is a very proud mum now her story has been very deep she used to consume drugs she actually never liked herself and attempted suicide a couple of times and it was a very very hurting story because most of it was because of her surrounding most people didn't talk to her didn't like her or treated her different and for her she just felt like the world does not have any meaning so in terms of when we and her clicked we were able to give her that self confidence we worked with her that journey we helped her to change her life she's not a different person she has confidence she can be able to approach a company and that's how she landed her job because she never was confident yet she has studied but she never thought that she'd be picked of her previous job she had a job where people in the organization never treated her well they never liked her they were never good to her and so she felt like I can't even get a good job for myself and she was actually laid down because they thought she was limiting but then we encouraged her we boost her confidence when we were able to help her reach out to a better job she's doing so well she's a proud mum she has a stable job and she's actually enjoying her life just what are some of her greatest achievements? one of our achievements was being able to hold fashion events I think for us that has been a very very big achievement and even having people attend because most of the times the fashion industry usually looked at as this world of different people so we really came in and changed that perspective because we were able to host a couple of fashion events and have sponsors, have partners and have people attend the event so for us that has been really like a big thing for us like a really step forward and then also the number of partners that we've acquired and the number of in terms of partners our girls have been able to get advertisement jobs with our movement so to us that's a really big thing the sale is not always smooth as Mary suggests mostly I'd say access to like different places because most of the times when we are going to do fashion shoots or just shoots the places are not accessible so there's one time we went to this building and the partner wasn't sensitive enough to know that the building doesn't have ramps so it was very sad because we ended up not doing the event I mean the shoot because some members couldn't go into the building some the places were too small I mean it wasn't a good thing so for us that's usually a big challenge to find buildings that are accessible and also to I'd say maybe like to have people not stare so much sometimes when we are out there doing photo shoots we are like what you know like it's just like sort of like a very crazy thing doing you know it becomes very strange like oh my god people exist you know so that to us has been a really really crazy challenge so yeah I think that and also I'd also say that confidence has also been a very big challenge some of the members are still not yet confident and we still are really trying to build that confidence who is also an environmentalist and events planner believes in service to humanity and also participates in charity work she shares with us some of the activities that she does in her free time love for nature started when I was young I'd really go out and plant flowers even if they are not real just go and poke a flower so I felt like loving nature loving animals I am obsessed with taking care of animals I'm that one person who I can't watch Nat Geo because I see one lion eating a carb or something and I'm just crying so for me I really really take care of the environment when I go out and I find someone has thrown something I'd definitely be the one to pick and you know go through it so I really want to encourage people to take care of the environment because if we don't who will live in it and we have our children who we want to live in this world so and also service for humanity I think for me that has also been a passion and I find myself mostly like the weekends I go to children's homes and homes for elderly people and help out as much as I can if it's cooking, cleaning doing anything that I can I really just love helping out I can't help it I love really helping out and for me that's something that is in me and which I'd want to share with so many people I'd want to reach out to people to help them be able to understand that we should take care of each other we should take care of our environment and that we were actually created I'm a Christian so we were created to take care of our environment and something that's in bond there's an organization called Mi Forest which I was working with and their sole purpose is just to plant trees all over Kenya and they do plant whether people know or people don't know people are finding out or not they just plant trees and their goal is to make sure that they are able to at least attend the 10% tree cover so for me being part of that organization I've really learnt to do stuff whether people are watching or not her greatest desire is to find more sponsors to support her great initiative when asked what the future looks like this is what she has to say we are really looking for to have one of the biggest fashion shows in Kenya for purely persons with disability that is our main goal doing small small events just to see how it goes to see how people are embracing it and then boom we just have this very very big fashion event with all the sponsors the big big sponsors and we have our target is a thousand people to attend and we really look for to that so we are in plans of that we are doing as much training as possible as much sourcing for sponsors as possible we really want to impact and change the norm with the events industry you can't change the direction of the wind but you can always adjust yourself to reach your destination let the world know that we should really strive to be there for each other especially just at a time like this you can imagine most people are staying at home by themselves and we should really reach out to as many people as possible and when you have that heart of reaching out helping you'll find yourself not seeing color or difference or status or anything everyone will be equal in your eyes and you'll be able to you know to embrace everyone


Hi, I'm Stephanie Happley, and I'm the Deputy Director of Academic and Student Programs as well as a senior fellow with the HIKE program. Hello, my name is Yulia Yatsushina, and I am a Program Manager with Academic and Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Hey, my name is Jessica Cargis, and I am a Program Manager with the Academic and Student Program team at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. So we have several total fellowship programs here at the Mercatus Center. All of them have a goal of introducing students to new thinkers and ideas in political economy and public policy. For all of our fellowship programs, there is no monetary cost to participate. Our most intensive fellowship programs with the most monetary support are our two George Mason specific fellowship programs. These are the PhD fellowship and the MA fellowship program. The PhD fellowship is for students at George Mason University getting a PhD in economics, and it's for students interested in going into a career in academia. And then our MA fellowship program is for students at George Mason University getting a master's degree in economics who are interested in going into a career in public policy. Our broadest fellowship program is the Don LaVoy Fellowship. This is for any advanced undergraduate students, students who have graduated from undergrad but are interested in going into graduate school but aren't there yet, so that in between students and early career graduate students. You can be attending any university from across the globe, and you can be in any discipline or major. This is a completely virtual fellowship, and it's a semester long program. It's a really great introduction to a lot of the thinkers and ideas that we regularly engage with, and an introduction to our other graduate fellowship programs. We have the Frederick Basiat fellowship, the Adam Smith fellowship, and the Oscar Morgenstern fellowship. For each of these programs, you can be attending any school globally, and you can be in any major or discipline to qualify, but you have to be in a graduate degree. The distinction is that if you are in a master's degree or a law degree program, you only qualify for the Frederick Basiat fellowship. If you are in a PhD program, you qualify for all three. So the Basiat fellowship is for any master's degree student, law student, or a PhD student who's interested in learning more about public policy and ideas and thinkers that can be applied to learning more about public policy. Our Adam Smith fellowship program is for PhD students in any discipline attending any university, and it's for students interested in going into academia. Our Oscar Morgenstern fellowship is for PhD students attending any university who are in a PhD program that is focused on quantitative methodology, but are also interested in going into a career in academia. Yes, recent graduates who are considering graduate school are eligible to apply to the Dong Voi fellowship. We think the program can be helpful in determining the next steps in your academic career path. Past fellows have done all sorts of research, and you can see some examples from selected alumni on our website, as well as a list of alumni who come from different disciplines and backgrounds that have participated in our fellowships. Some of our fellows get to go on and do research with high program scholars or Mercatus scholars that work in policy, including getting to work on edited volumes. So check those out to learn more. So why do you Mercatus fellowships instead of other opportunities? One, our intensive programs like the PhD and MA fellowship provide not only training in graduate school, but practical experience like an apprenticeship and going to academia or working in public policy. So it really prepares you for your career. And second, the supplemental programs that we offer provide a way to discuss important ideas and political economy and public policy that you might not get in your home institution and to meet a bunch of other fellows and scholars that are interested in these ideas as well. They're all supplemental so you can do them in addition to your programs and other fellowships that you might want to do as well. So yes, the Frederick Ross Dott fellowship will help you with that because it is a very applied program and it's geared towards students who want to learn more about public policy. However, in order to qualify for the fellowship program, you have to be a graduate student. So you have to be in a master's degree, a law degree or a PhD program in order to be able to qualify to apply for the fellowship. The Donald boy fellowship is oriented towards those who are considered graduate school. That said, we evaluate each individual based on accomplishments and the level of interest in learning about the key ideas in Austria and Virginia and Bloomington schools of political economy, as well as contemporary work in this tradition. Therefore, we encourage you to apply if you're interested and satisfy those eligibility requirements. Yes, the Donald boy fellowship is aimed at advanced undergraduates from any major so long as they have an interest in learning about the key ideas in Austria and Virginia and Bloomington schools of political economy, as well as contemporary works in this tradition. Unfortunately, we don't offer postdoctoral fellowships at the Mercata Center that we do have openings for researchers from time to time and you can check those out on our job opportunities section of the website. The Hike program does offer research support for scholars that are pursuing research that intersects with our ideas. We're always taking proposals and you can learn more on our website. Our PhD and MA fellowships do have GPA requirements for continuing in the program, but for our supplemental programs, there isn't a GPA requirement for being selected. We do ask about unofficial transcripts, as well as explanations of your career path which you're interested in and why you're interested in political economy and public policy in particular. Our fellowships are geared for graduate students at all levels of their career so you can apply at any time.


Well it draws thousands to Walker Bay every year and this year was no different. For this week's Northwoods Adventure, Clayton Castle gives us a look into the people of the Eelpout Festival. Eelpout? That shout-out only means one thing. The Eelpout Festival is back in full force over the weekend as thousands gathered at Walker Bay for the 39th edition of the annual event. Whether it was someone's first or 31st time at the festival, people are drawn in by the atmosphere and come back year after year to take part in the fun. This is such a fun event. It's so different than anything else you see in Minnesota. Just people getting together have a good time on the ice and building a whole city out of nothing, that's something to be seen. Yeah it's just a great experience to enjoy the Minnesota outdoors and be on a lake and the ice bars are pretty awesome inside too and just great community here. Some use the festival to celebrate a special occasion spending the day on the lake to honor the Eelpout. It's my birthday so we brought a bunch of people up, figured there's not much else to do in the end of February in Minnesota so why not spend it outside? Three! When asked what keeps bringing people back year after year, it doesn't take long for each person's unique take on the festival. The beer. The people watching. We've watched a lot of cars get stuck. Great people watching. A few of the attendees at this year's Eelpout Festival came for a very special reason, whether it was an honor or memory of a loved one. We got to give a shout out to Dylan. He's the guy who brought us here. He's at home battling cancer right now so yeah thanks Dylan. Yeah thanks Dylan. My brother passed away and I love him to death and this was his best friend and we come up here in honor of him and we miss him and we love him and he loved everything about this place, not just this place but Walker Bay. He was so into this place. David was the epitome of just enjoying life and enjoying a time like this so. And we miss him tremendously and we love you doggy. Yeah we love you brother. And it's the memory of Phil's brother that will bring them back in 2019. Reporting in Walker for this week's Northwood's adventure Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. I don't know that we actually saw Eelpout in that story but that's an ugly looking fish. It is. Yeah I guess it tastes from a front relatively good. I'll take your word on it. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.