Hello, everyone. I'd like to welcome you today to the 10th annual undergraduate economics debate presented by the Department of Economics and the Undergraduate Economics Club. I'm Zach Bares, a junior political science and economics major, and I will be your moderator today. I hope you find the debate engaging and the evidence convincing and informative. This afternoon, these students will be debating the motion. Intellectual property is necessary to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. In support of the motion is the team of Mel Abdul Mutalib, Class of 2017, Aaron Cooper, Class of 2015, Victor Padachak, Class of 2014, and Stephanie Staudenmeier, Class of 2015. Against the motion is the team of Martin Gall, Class of 2016, Jonathan Lab, Class of 2015, Keith Malott, Class of 2015, and Andrew Randall, Class of 2016. I'd also like to introduce our judges. We have returning Bill Troy, Class of 1976, Lisa Deforge, Class of 1987, James Santucci, Class of 2013, and James Keller, Class of 1985. The rules of the debate are as follows. First, the team in support of the motion arguing in favor of intellectual property protection will have 15 minutes to present their argument followed by the team in opposition. This time is divided equally among the three members of the team. We will have a five-minute period of deliberation for each team followed by rebuttals. During the rebuttals, the team in opposition will send up members first, three members for three minutes each, followed by the team in support. Then the judges will be able to ask questions. For each question, the teams will have two to three minutes to deliberate, and then a member of the team in support will give a two-minute answer followed by the team in opposition, reversing the order for each question. The judges will then have five minutes to deliberate, followed by the announcement of the winner and closing remarks. Without further ado, we can begin with the team in support. Good afternoon to the judges and fellow audience. For today's debate, under the motion of intellectual property, the protection of intellectual property is necessary to promote the progress of science and useful arts. We in the affirmative argue in the advocacy of the motion under three premises, which is number one, reasoning under Pralani's perspective, number two, economic impact of intellectual property, and number three, the practicality of intellectual property. Before we move on to my first point, which is reasoning under intellectual property, I would like to define the motion word by word. And the two terms that I feel needs to be stressed on in this debate is intellectual property and science and useful arts. We define intellectual property as a work or invention that is the result of creativity, such as manuscript or design, to which one has rights and may apply for a patent, a trademark, copyright or trade secrets. Essentially, it is the ownership of ideas and control over tangible or visual representation of the aforementioned ideas. And science and useful arts, we believe as a 19th century term, and we acknowledge its constitutional origins. For this, we follow the Supreme Court's definition of science and useful arts, of which under Golan Russell Holder, we have defined it as a form of knowledge or learning and manufactured craft. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, as whole, we define this motion as a legal or any form with one measure with intention of preserving any creative work of which one has applied for copyright, trademark, trade secrets, or patents to help support and encourage a continued qualitative improvement of knowledge and manufacturing craft. Now, beloved audience, I believe we should move on to my point, which is reasoning under Kalpalani's perspective. As the basis for my argument, I believe change under Kalpalani's perspective is initiated under the state to produce a competitive capitalist economy. This implies economically, fictitious commodities such as land, labor and money will subordinate the subsistence and substance of the economy into the market. This therefore establishes a market society, which occurs when society decides to maximize their own utility as well as when price is adjusted according to the market. Kalpalani believes that this creates unsustainability as the market society causes dislocations in the market. Under the double movement where the economy tries to separate from society, we see social protectionism to be necessary in the state society. Therefore, historically, since we know that this industrial revolution has shown downsides where the poor have been transgressed in terms of their health, their financial stature and their abilities, we know historically that social protectionism is necessary as the capitalist economy and the free economy will cause others without protectionism to be marginalized. Now similarly, since intellectual property is seen as a fictitious commodity and is highly regarded as a fictitious commodity, which can be defined as any non-labor produced goods that are bought and sold similar to any other commodities, we believe intellectual property is necessary in this theory of embeddedness, which we could see that the economy is not separate from political institutions and any other institution. We know intellectual property must be protected to avoid repercussions of the industrial revolution for two factors, morality and utility. And under this, we could see the John Lockean assertion that morality is important to help us in providing and promoting the science and useful in promoting science and useful arts, which will at the end of the day help us in our progress. On top of that, protection is necessary for the basis of utility as people will be more satisfied with the production of goods. We understand that intellectual property as the pattern of office, as the U.S. pattern and trademark office has shown us allows for greater production. And without intellectual property, we understand that there will be under production of goods. For this, we believe that monetarily and socially intellectual property is important to be protected. Thank you. My predecessor had spoken of. I will be talking about how the intellectual property rights are necessary for the growth and sustainability of mankind. Over the past two centuries, according to Wolf, world population has grown sixfold since before that. During this time, world GDP has also grown almost 50 fold and GDP per head has grown almost 10 times. In these two centuries alone, we have had growth that has been exponential and it's been faster than any other growth that we have ever seen in human kind. In numbers, as you can see here, in 1800 years, world GDP only increased several hundred billion dollars from year one BCE to 1800. However, in the past two centuries, world GDP has increased from 175 billion to well over 70 trillion in today's dollars. So the question that we're left with here is how is this growth to be accounted for? How is it possible that in two centuries, we are able to produce so much capital and have so much so many gains? And the answer is one simple world, capitalism. The introduction of Enlightenment era thinking during the 1700s served as the moral basis under which capitalism was able to be constructed as an economic system. This basis also prompted the introduction and the growth of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution helped to bring a world production to an alarming speed, hitherto unseen anywhere. And through this, it helped raise the standard of living by providing new jobs and new forms of income for people throughout the entirety of the world. In these past two centuries, humankind has made more scientific, technological and intellectual breakthroughs than ever before. Capitalism and the underlying idea of intellectual property rights on which capitalism is based serve as the primary causes for all of the growth that we have experienced. Capitalism is a system that rewards people via profit. You are able to market the ideas that you come up with, and you have the potential to turn them into money. People are incentivized to produce because of this profit motive. People work for their own benefit. This incentive that is given to people under this capitalist system is only protected because of intellectual property rights. People are inherently rationally selfish, and they will seek to do work that is of greatest utility to them. Whatever maximizes their own utility and their own happiness is the work that they will engage in. And if they cannot work for their own benefit, they will not work. Under intellectual property rights, people are able to come up with ideas and use them and claim them as their own and then make the and retain the highest utility possible from these ideas. It is the protection of these rights that guarantees that the ideas that a person is able to come up with is theirs, and that they can use it to make a profit. Without intellectual property rights, there is no profit motive to be had. And without profit motive, that means that the entirety of the capitalistic system is doomed to failure. And the lack of a capitalistic system essentially calls for a vastly de-accelerated process and motion of human advancement. So in summary, intellectual property rights have brought wealth and prosperity to all of mankind at different rates, but nonetheless, the prosperity is undeniable. And the rate at which we have increased prosperity levels over these past two centuries have been far greater than any other rate that we have ever seen in the entirety of human history. Without intellectual property rights, none of this could have been possible. And if intellectual property rights were to be taken away, the growth of human progress would be lost entirely. Thank you. Welcome again. My name is Stephanie. Now that my partners have clearly demonstrated and performed the, now that my partners have clearly demonstrated the usefulness and importance of IP for growth in our American economy, I would like to get right into the statistics and IP's placement in this US economy. So recently, a study was published by the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Economic and Statistics Administration that resulted in some really interesting facts about US relationship with IP. What they discovered was that in 2010, 40 million jobs were reliant on IP protection. These IP intensive industries made up 25% of the US workforce. These people, oh, I'm sorry, these jobs actually accounted for 35% of that year's total GDP, I mean total GDP for a domestic product. Now, what is the difference between a non IP intensive worker and an IP intensive worker? IP intensive workers make on average $300 more a week than the IP, the non IP intensive worker. Now this statistic comes because these people are blossoming in innovation. The, as Obama himself put it, IP is representative of the leading edge of the US economy and the ingenuity of the American people. It is creating something instead of just copycatting. I'd like to talk about one of the most important IP intensive industries, US e-commerce. e-commerce touched over $230 billion this past years with a 15% growth rate. Now, the internet is a business war hog. Without nowadays and stuff, the consumer is not restrained to the store. We can Google and compare. Location doesn't matter anymore. This is an incredible force for competition. But even Google would not be, even Google would not exist without IP protection. Because internet based businesses, if you try to create a website and make an internet based business, what is protected under IP? Well, your web content, your name, your logo, everything. So without IP, what would happen to this giant economy? Well, we would have a million people ripping each other's content consistently. And this would result in a lack of organic filter for Google search engines or anything like that. So what you have then is that a million people are copying each other's websites. And then this will result in a horrible difference between the barriers to competition with the rich and the poor. Because if you think about it, then without an organic filter, trying to create an internet business, competitively, you would only have the amount of money you put in the sponsors. This is incredibly detrimental for the poor in this economy. Now, many argue for, many argue against IP, because they say that without IP, it would be a free market. But I'd like to reiterate this fact. Logically, this doesn't make sense. And for example, many of the people use as an example against IP, the fashion industry. This is an ever-changing industry. But if you think about it, how hard is it to become a stylist because this is ever changing? Leading named brands are taking these stylist ideas and running with it. So we have these crazy things like game shows like Project Runway and all this other stuff to become a stylist. It's a barrier to competition that is that you can't get over if you are not a named brand. So what would happen to each of these economies that are based off IP, this 35% of global domestic product? Without IP, what would happen to it? Well, I would say that there are many mistakes with IP, many examples of misuse and all of that. But the majority is protected under it. And it protects the majority of the businesses. And I'm not really sure if there's a better option. I'm not as tall. I'm Keith and today our team is going to be arguing the side of the opposition. When the founding fathers crafted our country's constitution, one of their goals was to set the foundation for an economy that would be both innovative and dominant. One of the ways they set out to achieve this goal was Article 1, Section A, Clause 8. It gives Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by granting authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective works for a limited period of time. The intentions of the men who signed the constitution and therefore approved this clause were honorable. They wanted to ensure that inventors would have a period of time to monetize their original ideas. The thinking was that if inventors were not granted this right, other people could simply take their ideas and reap the benefits of their use without incurring the cost of their creation. This would reduce the incentive to invent and therefore less people would do so. As a result, the rate of innovation would lower, productivity would be dampened and the country's full potential for economic growth would not be realized. This was the thinking of the crafters of our constitution and it was the basic outline, argument outlined by the opposition today. Today, we must look at the patent paradox. Is this system that is great at rewarding individuals simultaneously helping add to the entirety of our human intelligence? Is the notion that granting somebody exclusive rights to knowledge warranted by its supposed benefits? We argue that it is not. I would first like to demonstrate that intellectual property rights are not only unnecessary to promote progress, but that sometimes by willfully declining the legal protections patents guarantee you, innovation can actually be driven. Sometimes patent holders voluntarily share their ideas as a form of market research, an interesting trend that is being employed by large American shoe manufacturers. Designs for shoe models are being deliberately released into the black market. If Reeboks and Adidas are being pirated and Nike's new model is not, they know that it requires further development before they release it into the legal marketplace. Now this benefits both the company and consumers and drives innovation in the footwear industry. And it may seem trivial to discover consumer preferences towards sneakers, but it is not outlandish to imagine the same strategy being used in industries with more of a scientific focus. If this is the case, intellectual property rights are not only unnecessary to promote scientific innovation, but their absence can actually encourage it. The American patent system as we know it today has repeatedly created economic inequalities and inefficiencies. Intellectual property rights incentivize rent seeking, which is the process of manipulating political situations and regulatory institutions to increase one share of already existing wealth without actually creating any new wealth. This is inefficient because it entails devoting resources to an outcome that does not increase the overall size of our country's economy. One example of this is patent trolling, which is the process of purchasing patents at low cost and either selling them for high prices or using them to launch legal claims against infringing firms. Institutions that participate in trolling do not develop technology or sell products, but instead they derive most of their revenue from filing legal claims. The reality is that patent trolling happens all the time. Over the past few years, the number of patent trolling cases has increased in both absolute terms and as a percentage of total patent cases filed. Since 2012, litigation with patent trolls has accounted for over half of the total patent cases. When there is rampant patent trolling, it both undermines the purpose of intellectual property rights and creates economic inefficiency. Based on research conducted by professors at the Boston University School of Law, in 2011, American businesses incurred $29 billion in direct costs from patent trolling litigation. To put this into perspective, American businesses spend about $250 billion annually on research and development. This means that the cost of defending against patent trolls is equal to over 10 percent of annual investments in R&D. There's a huge opportunity cost here. The money that is being devoted to these frivolous lawsuits can instead be spent in ways that actually add value to a business, such as product creation and improvement, bettering customer experiences and building new factories or more efficient machinery. In today's business world, patents have become coveted financial assets. Corporations participate in bidding wars on key patents that will drive revenue growth and increase profitability. Small companies do not have the resources to make attractive offers to patent trolls, so all of the most valuable patents end up under the control of companies such as IBM and Apple. This is creating monopoly situations, as the biggest companies are the only ones who have the patents they need to make the best products. The reward is the right to block out competitors, lower output, and overcharge consumers. The downfalls of the current patent system were not unforeseen by the men who created the infrastructure for it. Thomas Jefferson warned that grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar cases only, if at all. The danger of being very great that the good resulting from the operation of the monopoly will be overbalanced by the evil effect of the precedent, and it being not impossible that the monopoly itself in its original operation may produce more evil than good. It seems as if the fears harbored by our founding fathers have become a reality. Good afternoon. My name is Andrew Randall. Forgive me if this gets a little loud. Today the United States is in the think of an era of patent extremism. With this extremism comes an increasing trend toward longer lasting patents, protection of abstract ideas, and an increasing effort by corporate conglomerates to keep small innovators out of competition. As there is no substantial evidence that increasing intellectual property rights proves direct causation to increased innovation, we must come to the realization that intellectual property rights are not necessary. Rather they have facilitated a system so robust and nebulous that patents have surpassed their threshold of effectiveness and have entered a downward slower trend toward a failed system. Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania elaborate on this idea explaining that there is a point where positive and phenomenon reach inflection points that watch their effects turn negative. What Schwartz and Grant discovered is that every beneficial input or resource or advantage, whether it be money, happiness, justice, or protection of intellectual property eventually becomes problematic and ineffective. Schwartz and Grant simplify this idea to the elementary statement entitled their work too much of a good thing. This is precisely with the protection of intellectual property rights has become too much of a good thing. Throughout this debate is imperative that we understand that my partners and I are here today to articulate the fact that the status quo is not a be all end all solution to promoting the sciences and useful arts. Rather patents have become the bane of the United States economic advancement. Derek Conner Forbes elaborated stating Madison omnously warned that all monopolies including copyright must be guarded with strictness angst abuse. Abuse is precisely what we have seen. The estimated total number of defendants sued by patent trolls more than tripled from 834 in 2007 to 3401 in 2011. Furthermore, according to a study by the United States Government Accountability Office regarding infringement lawsuits, the overall number of defendants increased from 2007 to 2011 by an astonishing 129%. Look no further than Silicon Valley to see patent extremism at its finest. According to William F. Miller of the Silicon Valley Edge, during the 1990s, the portion of the Valley's workforce in the research and design was 10%, a full two and a half times the national average. Logically, with the future of job creation resting many of these startup companies, the United States ought to uphold the system to protect these companies. Ironically, the system that we've created has done the opposite. The intellectual property rights that we put in place to promote innovation for small companies has shown little success. In fact, increased intellectual property loss have not spurred a surge in innovation or research and design. Rather, many large firms have decided to harvest patents as a defensive strategy. An empirical study of patenting in the U.S. semiconductor industry showed that many firms use patents more as a horizontal strategy rather than to gain market value from rival firms and assist them in obtaining favorable terms in cross licensing negotiations. Lester C. Thurlow, Harvard Business Law Review, explains why this is problematic for software-related companies, many of which reside in Silicon Valley. He writes, companies such as Intel have big legal budgets to defend what they think is their property, but they also are accused of aggressively attacking what others think is theirs in order to create uncertainties, time delays, and high startup costs for their competitors. The end goal of companies like Intel is to keep disruptive innovation out, and they do so by abusing intellectual property rights and using law as an instrument of destruction for startup companies. The GEO explains that the cost of defending one patent infringement lawsuit, which excludes any damages awarded, was from $650,000 to $5 million in 2011. PMEs are more willing to bring lawsuits based on broad interpretation of their patent claims because they cannot be countersued for patent infringement since they do not produce a product. Essentially, intellectual property rights have become a win-win for large corporations who work with PMEs and a Berlin wall for small companies. A company named V-Lingo epitomizes this story. Mr. Phillips, the head of V-Lingo, worked for three decades to program a speech recognition software similar to what we've seen with Apple's Siri feature. Unfortunately, Mr. Phillips was brought to court and he won. Yet, regardless, according to the New York Times, the suit had cost $3 million and the financial damage was done. Mr. Phillips' small company was crushed by this and, as he explains, we are on the brink of changing the world and before we go stuck in this legal muck. If we look to the GEO's analysis of where the most patent infringement claims are filed, we see that most cases occur on the west coast of California, more specifically Silicon Valley. Mr. Phillips' story is not anomaly. The same story is happening for all sorts of startups across the country. Disruptive innovation is the touchstone of economic advancement in regards to today's economy. Unfortunately, due to intellectual property rights, companies similar to Mr. Phillips are being crushed by patent protections from PMEs and the glomerates that work with them. Our focus on intellectual property rights has become so rooted in protecting everything under the sun that it has manifested itself into a broken system that keeps the powerful on top and the innovators out of the question. So much so that startups companies typically stay as far away from patents as possible. Michael J. and New York's fans are saying just 24% of patent startups, 24% of venture-backed startups had any patents within five years of receiving financial. Judges, today we must look at the overarching goal of this resolution. Please make a vote today for future V-lingos and more importantly, the future of America's economy. Thank you. Good afternoon. Today we are grappling with the idea of intellectual property rights and whether the purpose is still relevant in modern society. Some may say we have touched upon the most conceivable outcomes of a world with such laws, but I offer that we have yet to truly ask ourselves the largest and most fundamental question that is the keystone to this entire discussion. The question is what type of civilization do we want to become? Are we merely profiteers who are blinded by our own ambitions or are we a group of beings who together can build a truly wonderful world? I argue that we strive to be the latter, but through action we are the former. The pharmaceutical industry is a strong example of this particular reality. The pharmaceutical industry is understandably tied to the discussion about intellectual property rights. Patents have traditionally been a way to incentivize companies to find research and development. However, intellectual property protection in the pharmaceutical industry has repeatedly created negative outcomes for the people who are supposed to be beneficiaries of medical research. Pharmaceutical companies regularly report huge profit margins regardless of their claims that patents are absolutely necessary to ensure their survival. What intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry have brought about is a monopolistic market that effectively prevents financially strained individuals from receiving the care that they deserve. In April of 2013, the Supreme Court heard a case brought against the molecular diagnostic company Myriad Genetics. The association molecular pathology filed suit challenging the validity of Myriad's patenting of two genes they had isolated.  Information contained within these genes can be used to improve breast cancer detection prevention techniques. Since Myriad had patented the genes, other companies cannot test their patents or patients for them. Before the case was brought to the Supreme Court intellectual property rights created a situation that prioritized corporate profits over the health of our country's citizens. Myriad ended up losing the case and numerous medical providers now offer the genetic test. Sometimes though, the negative outcomes brought about by intellectual property rights have a longer lasting effect. In 1980, the court case Diamond versus Chakrabarty ruled that genetically modified organisms could be patented. Shortly thereafter, a Harvard University biologist was granted a patent for a mouse that had been genetically modified to be susceptible to breast cancer. The mouse proved to be a useful way to examine the effects of breast cancer and test different treatment options. Any other private researcher who wants to use the genetically modified mouse of his or her own research must first pay large royalties to Harvard. These royalties are often in the millions of dollars. Even though these patents were issued in the late 80s, Harvard continues to garner payments from researchers who wish to improve the quality of breast care cancer patients receive. This is undoubtedly stymying the progress of medical research. Pharmaceutical companies downplay the negative externalities that are brought about by their intellectual property rights while at the same time overstating the importance of patents as assets. Is it so far-fetched to imagine a world in which medical research is driven not by promises of executive compensation, but by working towards the goal of bettering the lives of our fellow human beings? Research funded by the National Institute of Health has led to huge advancements in the fight against cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses. NIH-funded research has led to nearly 100 Nobel Prizes. This type of scientific research was not incentivized by promises of executive rights over their findings. In fact, the incentive was just the opposite. The men and women who have made these advances in the field of medicine hope that their ideas are not proprietary. They hope that their ideas are copied as much as possible so that their positive effects can be far-reaching. Time and time again, the legal protection of intellectual property rights has created economic inequalities and inefficiencies, dampening economic innovation. Is it possible that the concepts on which the edifice of intellectual property rights was built need to be reconsidered? Based on the repetitive failures of the current system, it is evident that the intellectual property rights are not necessary to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Thank you. Hi again. At this point, both teams will have five minutes to deliberate and then the team in opposition will send up three members for three minutes each for rebuttals. And the team in opposition will have nine minutes to rebutt. Thank you. Okay. The first thing I'd like to address is when you put up a chart of GDP growth in America over time and there was an exponential growth at one point. And


Circle theorems are like little puzzles. You use your new knowledge to solve interesting geometrical problems using logical thinking as you go. Or we can look at the theorems. There is some key terminology that we need to master first. Which parts of the circle can you label? Pause the video and have a think. How did you get on? I find it quite tricky to remember the difference between a sector and a segment. But just think of it as a sector or slight. Orange segments are definitions match up with which parts of the circle did you get on? Because we have to use those key words when describing the theorems.


Hey, she'll cancel my two o'clock golf meeting. I'm gonna do this conference call instead. I'm pitching a new movie Thanks for joining me. I'm Jonathan cross and I've got a doozy for you today Perhaps you've heard about the hit sensation going around everywhere these days called Pokemon Go. It's time for a movie I have the director.  He's leading the charge think explosions think saturated colors think cameras spinning around Pokemon looking up at American jets as they're flying overhead American flags bald eagles the whole works half of it's gonna be filmed in China for the tax breaks and just to oversee appeal We're gonna have one Chinese person in the film to make them feel right at home as well Now I want to get to the cast right out of the bank Ash Ketchum. This role has to be absolutely crushed And I think there's nobody better than do it nobody that's shony has stained power and presence like Andrew Garfield Fiery redhead misty. I think she's red-haired.  It doesn't matter We can change your hair color. We can make her black It doesn't matter, but we're not going to because we want to sell tickets So who are we gonna bring in? We're bringing in the big guns J-Law her no-nonsense Crasstalking attitude of I don't need a man to help me out is perfect for the role J-Law will kill this film Brock is one of my favorites from the show and I love the guy I got for him Dwayne the rock Johnson playing the ladies man Brock or or so he thinks he's gonna be more badass than Brock was We're gonna make this Brock a little bit more grown-up.  Oh Jesse and James aka team rocketer in the picture. They're gonna be the bad guys giving Ash a hard time Why don't they just let the kid be all he wants to do is catch them all Train a bunch of random animals and captivity fight to the death bloodsport sort of situation I don't really see the problem with the whole thing, but I have the solution Daniel Radcliffe Emma Watson Jesse and James come on the Harry Potter kids me out. He's gonna be fully CGI'd Mew he is gonna be in the film as an Easter egg You'll be floating in the background somewhere teasing for an upcoming movie where we eventually do the mew-two thing and that hold nonsense This one's just really gonna be about Ash wanting to be the very best. I know whatever was we're gonna have the theme song Redone by fallout boy.  I don't care We're just having them on here because we want to have that cross synergy promotion They sell some albums.  He's the one that gets the pokeballs delivered He's the one that teaches Ash his vast knowledge of Pokemon such as throw the ball to catch the Pokemon and Beat the living shit out of you know strange animals to the point where they can barely breathe and then capture them for your own They claim them as your own pet He's gonna be played by Samuel L. Jackson get a little color into the film Have his wise cracking no nonsense personality in there. We might keep the eye patch even. I don't know.   She was in a ditch somewhere for a while.  He dusted her off. He said you can be in my produced teenage mutant Ninja Turtles movie We're gonna do the same thing for shy who's gone off the goddamn deep end Michael Bay is gonna come back to shy He's gonna say you want to be a star again. Here's your movie Pokemon go recap time bullet points Michael Bay director 250 to 300 million dollar project Another 200 in marketing. We are gonna have Pokemon go trading cards. We're gonna have sippy cups We're gonna have napkins. We're gonna have everything under the sun an amiibo for the Nintendo Wii They'll that that's not a thing anymore for the net and X or whatever they're gonna call that as for the Pokemon themselves I already mentioned they're gonna be CGI'd Pikachu's of course gonna be front and center Maybe I'll have Howie Mandel voice all of them or something. It doesn't matter Nicki Minaj cameo is jinx Everybody's gonna be looking for it might as well be there. There you go billion dollar idea again late right at your front door By Jonathan Cross we have a movie Yeah, we have a movie. Hey, you know what I can make that gulf meat after all this didn't take as long as I thought


It's time for tonight's Epic Western Spotlight, and we're going to introduce you to the Titans Sports Performance staff. Used to be known as Strength and Conditioning, but it goes a little further than that now with how these players get ready with the help of this group, which includes a young lady who joined the staff this summer, as a matter of fact, enjoy this week's Epic Western Spotlight. Frank Perino always has a plan. The Titans' fifth year director of sports performance isn't the only one. It's the same for Brian Bell, the assistant director of sports performance who's now in his sixth year. Tyler Rouse, who's in his second season, and Hailey Roberts, an intern who was promoted to full-time during this past training camp. Perino, Bell, Rouse, and Roberts, with the help of several other staffers, have an individual plan for every single Titans player. Individual planning really is a waterfall or trickle-down effect where we start with body types. Line men are one body type, mids are one body type, skills are one body type. Then we can split it up from there, offensive and defensive line men, linebackers, tight ends. So then it becomes positional. But some work is team-wide, like pushing the sleds. Everyone on the Titans 2023 roster, no matter the position, was asked to do sled work this off-season. Perino loved it because he felt there was tremendous carryover to football. Conditioning, it's pretty similar to the energy systems used for football, and there's total body strength involved in it. There's teamwork involved in it, and we split our players out of the sleds by position. We intermingle offense with defensive guys on the sleds, so it just is, you know, it was really Coach Rable's idea that it's really evolved into something great. Members of the sports performance staff may have areas of expertise, but none in the group focuses on any one area, and with good reason. Collaborative approach, like there's not just one person doing one thing all the time, like I've helped break down some of the GPS stuff. Whenever we're out of practice, or the team's out of practice, we'll be in here with the injured guys, and we'll rotate who has which injured guy just so we can all have a relationship with that specific athlete. One Titans athlete does get more attention than the rest when it comes to his training. Derek Henry, he loves training, and he does it rigorously. So is it harder or easier to make a personal training plan for number 22? Easier in the sense that he's a very hard worker. He's obviously, you know, been doing it for a long time. He trusts us when he's in here to help him, which obviously makes things easier. You know what I mean? But at the end of the day, he works very hard, and you know, the whole saying hard work pays off, I think, you know, we see it. The players have a respect and a trust for their sports performance staff. Because I know they want the best for me, and they know they're gonna help me push me to my potential as possible, and just going there and work and get work done, and it'll pay off once you get to the field. It's a staff with a lot of stability and a lot of know-how. Yeah, I think it's great diversity in there. All different backgrounds and knowledge, and you know, I love how they work and they rotate. Frank coordinates that with me and Todd, and you know, it is about the players. It always comes down to making sure. We talked about Derek there, and he's got a zone plan, and Derek doesn't practice every single day, and so, you know, they've gotta keep him conditioned, but also, you know, try to take care of him for a long season.


omments or recommendations, please send them via email to zbaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the Zoning Board of Appeals website. And to conclude tonight's meeting, I would ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved to Mr. Chairman. Second. That comes to the point. Vote of the board to adjourn. Mr. DuBont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Holley. Aye. Mr. Rickidelli. Aye. Softman. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. And the chair votes. Aye. Thank you all very much. A lot of work tonight. Good job getting through it all. And look forward to seeing you in two weeks. Good night, everybody. Good night, everyone. Good night. Thanks, everybody.


This study aims to investigate the effects of paired associative stimulation, PAS, on sensorimotor integration, SMI, in individuals with chronic stroke. POW is a technique that uses electrical stimulation to enhance cortical activity and improve sensorimotor functioning. The study will assess changes in cortically derived muscle responses following PAS, as well as their relationship to sensorimotor function and walking ability. The results of this study may help to inform future intervention strategies for improving sensorimotor functioning after stroke. This article was authored by Jasmine Cash, John Kindred and Mark Bowden.


And on Entertainment News, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced the Afrabid's pioneer Fela and Nicola Pacuti as one of its 2022 nominees, revealing the 17 acts eligible for induction into the Rock Heels Class of 2022. And this will be the second time Fela will be nominated, having missed out on being inducted after being nominated last year. Other nominees include Indy Atobek, Rock Heatmaker Pat Benata, Atroca Kate Bush, New Wave Oddballs Devo, and New Wave Chat Toppers Duran Duran, Hip-Hop Heavyweight Eminem, Synth Pop, Duo, Eurythmics, Heavy Metal Fixtures Judas Priest, Political Rock Outfit, MC5, and Protopunks New York Dolls, Country Legend Dolly Patton, Rap Metal Outfit Rage Against, The Machine, R&B Hitmaker Lionel Richie, Pop Songwriter Kali Simon, and Hip-Hop Icons.


What's up y'all. So, the other day I came across this video from the channel with the Parys. After I watched it, I kind of had thoughts. I wanted to review the video with you guys. If you don't know the Parys are a Christian couple. They are evangelists, I think it would be their technical term. And I think they started through poetry. But they're mostly known for the wife was a reformed member of the LGBTQ community. And she talks about her testimony changing her life through God. But they've established an audience and they in this video talk about how it's been pressing on their hearts to address men more directly. And ironically, the tour that the two brothers are on is called We Need to Talk. Obviously. I love the name. So I think I might be able to add some context to some of the things that they discussed during this video. We have Ezekiel and Preston here because one they're going on tour together. What's the name of the tour? What y'all doing? Do we need to talk tour? Yeah. Okay. What's that about? What y'all talking about? Because men don't usually talk. So what do we talk about? That's exactly it. I think the tour basically was curated to address a lot of the stuff floating around in our culture about relationships, about one men and women relationships, but a myriad of topics. But I think ultimately what we want to see is that I believe and we believe that it is a huge attack on men and women relationship. I just want to talk through just masculinity, fatherhood, manhood, Kevin Samuels, whoever. RRP. Piece is debatable. But yo. So first and foremost, I want to commend Jackie Hill Perry for taking the posture that she took with this interview as being the interviewer, as opposed to attempting to overly assert herself, at least starting out. I think the whole slogan that we need to talk is listen then speak. And I think men need to do a better job at listening to the grievances and the nuances of the female experience. And I definitely think women need to do a better job at listening to the grievances and the nuances of male experiences. I think the mistake that we make a lot of times is we project our ideals on the other. So men project their ideals of femininity on women. Women project their ideals of masculinity on men. However, I think one of the big differences is that men are the pursuers for the majority of romantic situations. So with that being the case, we have to gain a working understanding of female psychology in order to be able to at best understand her, at worst manipulate her. But it doesn't seem like that energy is reciprocated on the macro. A lot of women have never actually had to understand men, have never actually had to listen to men because it's easy to get our attention. It's not as easy to keep our attention, but that's another conversation. At the end of this particular clip, her husband said, R.I.P. Kevin Samuels, they mentioned Kevin Samuels, and she said peace is questionable. Which is interesting. Generally, Kevin Samuels represented a fire starter. That's why one of our main series is called Kevin Samuels started this conversation and not because he actually started the conversation, but he in a lot of ways mainstreamed the dialogue and mainstreamed men speaking up for themselves. Was they speaking up always done eloquently? No. Were his points always succinct, accurate? No. However, it would be unwise of us to scoff at or to dismiss the fact that so many grown men resonated with the things that he said and the principles that he espoused. So I think women need to take the Kevin Samuels phenomenon a bit more seriously and not be as dismissive and definitely not celebrate the man's untimely passing because what it says to black men at large, even the black men who disagreed with him is like, damn, we can't even disagree respectfully. When we have a difference in opinion, you wish death on us, we are saying or we're making the false equivalents that this man hurting people's feelings that called into a show. And for the most part, we're disrespectful to him initially is equivalent to violence against women. And it's not the case. And unfortunately, the other piece too is a lot of people in general women in particular are not used to men speaking their minds freely in a way that is not flattering to women, because a lot of us as men are taught to cater to women's feelings and conform our dialogue or even the presentation of our thoughts in a way that's going to be palatable to women. We're taught that from our moms to our sisters to girlfriends, because a lot of the truth that we get growing up is that nobody cares how you really feel. They only care how you make them feel. And if we don't actively pour in to men in these in this particular pivotal season, I think that we're being grossly negligent and irresponsible with what God has given us. Yeah, yeah, I agree. A lot of what you'll hear in I guess the more intellectual corners of the hemisphere is the idea that for most of American history, black men in particular have not really had a voice at scale.  So she cannot even see him as a man, and he cannot even see himself as a man. And I think what the Manisphere represents for a lot of men is the first time where black men have been able to publicly, bombastically air their grievances and speak their truths without having to cater to the feelings of political correctness or women. And, you know, I've been critical of that. It's not polished. It's not always clean. It's barbershop talk. However, I think we can't wholesale dismiss what's happening. I think this is the infancy stage, and we need to have a bit of grace, right, and encouragement for it to actually mature and for it to refine itself, to get to the core of some of these issues that men really have. Men are falling behind, boys are falling behind in education, homelessness, self-deletion. These are real issues. And some of them are rooted in the fact that a lot of our boys are being raised in single-parent households. So, you know, we cannot continue to simply blame men without discussing some of the nuances and the context that puts black men in these situations, because a lot of us grow up in environments that place the full weight of toxic masculinity on us as black men while we enjoy none of the benefits, right, where we're assumed to have the benefits of masculinity without the additional context of white masculinity and how our masculinity threatens white masculinity and how everything that's been done strategically over time has been done to put our woman above us and to make our woman disrespectful of us and to make our woman think that she doesn't need us. And from her perspective, she's absolutely right. But the reason why these conversations are so important to Ezekiel's point is that, you know, it's important that we have both sides of the argument. It's important that men and boys are encouraged to speak up and share their truths and not simply be lambasted and critiqued and picked apart as to all the ways that they can be better and all the ways why they allowed X, Y and Z to happen to them. Because as black men, a lot of what we are suffering from was not our doing and it was impossible for us to fight against it based on our circumstances. Yeah. And so I told Jackie I had an event in DC last week and every single guy that walked up to me was either trying out for discipleship. One guy came to me and literally said, I asked five people to disciple me and they all said no. And then he started crying. I think what's important to understand about the Kevin Samuels phenomenon again, a lot of women have used a lot of detractors have used this as an insult, you know, saying that, you know, Kevin Samuels represented a lot of men's daddies, right? A lot of men didn't have fathers growing up. And that's why they gravitated to such a problematic man because, you know, digitally he was their dad. And, you know, his nickname was the Godfather. I think to trivialize that to scoff at that to minimize that is, in my opinion, shameful, you know, because the reality is, yes, a lot of our boys are not growing up with fathers. And the blame for that rests on whoever their father, their actual father, is that neglected them that abandoned them. However, some of that blame also rests on the mother. The mother chose that man. She chose to procreate with that man. She chose to not vet that man properly. And I think that's a often neglected aspect of this conversation because we, as boys, are taught to frame our mothers as benevolent, frame the women in our lives as benevolent, these, you know, helpless victims of their circumstance. They were just doing the best they could with what they had. And we never actually acknowledged some of the resentment that is rightfully in boys towards their mothers and some of the yearning that is rightfully in boys to male authority. I remember Charleston White, problematic brother, but he's a shock jockey, but he talked about how he didn't like black men growing up because he associated black men in black authority with abandonment. And he said he wanted the black men who try to be authorities in his life to go home with him as a kid. He wanted a father. And I think for us to continuously frame that as a joke, as opposed to the reality of a lot of black men and boys are yearning for, they call it discipleship or mentorship, yearning for direction, yearning for principles, yearning for some kind of blueprint, some kind of framework and whether imperfectly Kevin Samuels represented that for a lot of men. And that's not something to be scoffed at. Back in the day in the 1940s in your neighborhood, if you saw a beautiful woman, that would be the one beautiful woman you saw for six months.  Wow. This right here is such a fantastic point because I think a lot of times we only acknowledge the crippling effects of social media when it comes to women. And you know, like body dysmorphia and women comparing themselves to only fans models and women with BBLs. But we often don't talk about how that affects men. Um, the physical comparisons, you know, this guy is muscular. This guy has a six pack. This guy is six foot five. This guy has a bone structure. He has a chisel jawline. But also this guy has wealth. This guy has this car. This guy has this girl. This guy has this family. This guy has this lifestyle. We often do not talk about how that affects boys and men. Comparison is a thief of joy. And it's so true. And I think especially in our community, because so many of us come from less than ideal circumstances, it is easy to live in the fantasy worlds that social media that video games create for us. And in a lot of ways it stops us from addressing the realities that we face. And it stops us from actually improving our real tangible circumstances because we're stuck in that comparison. We're stuck in that green envy of must be nice. And again, very often we're not having these conversations as men. And I'm not even saying that's women's fault. I'm saying we need to do a better job of having these conversations and acknowledging these things as men. And then I think our sisters need to do a better job at giving us grace, giving us the grace of consideration, that even though we might not be saying these things overtly, that some of these things absolutely affect us as well and absolutely affect our self-esteem, our body image. I hate when people would take one thing that a man does and not make them a real man, as if you can define who they are by one action. God defines us as men like one. I'm working on a project called Christian by default. And it's called that because that's how I identify. I am in a, I guess, tricky place with my relationship with God. Because to be honest, a lot of things don't make sense. But a lot of the principles that are taught in Christianity and theology I absolutely agree with. And this is one of them. I do not think, because we see a lot these days that everybody has a say in what makes a man, what makes a good man. And I absolutely do not think that non-men can define men. And, you know, I don't want to hear any LGBTQ talk. Non-men cannot define men. It is incumbent upon men to come up with a criteria for manhood. I think there should be some checks and balances with, you know, the female delegation to include their input and help us become better. But this idea that women know better, it is an idea that I'm seeing circulate a lot. And it's an idea that is absolutely rubbish. And I hope that through active listening to men and deference to men actually being able to express their real experiences without you projecting your assumptions of what it should be like, or what you would do if you were a man. I think we can move closer to a place where women have an appreciation for manhood, men have an appreciation for womanhood, as opposed to us just projecting our ideals, our uneducated ideals on the other. They feel like that the culture and society is trying to over-feminize men. They feel like, I don't know if you remember the conversation we had with the guys the other week, but they were just like, you know, one, I think there has been an emphasis of therapy of men sharing their, you know, their personal feelings. And that is a fantastic point. And it goes back to what I was saying about the projection of femininity upon masculinity. And it's like masculinity is inherently toxic. And an un-toxic man is in touch with his feminine side, his therapies and all this good stuff without the consideration as to why some of these things don't necessarily appeal to men in mass. Right. And part of the reason I know last year we saw the therapist go viral for saying that she works with black men and they are just the worst clients. We saw another therapist recently say she no longer wants to work with black men. And then ironically, a website called Therapy for Black Men took her off their website and then she complained about it. Right. And it goes back to that ego. It goes back to that condescension. It goes back to, you know, Dr. T. S. Johnson talks about the baked in contempt that a lot of our women and girls have been socialized to have for black men. This idea that black men are squandering their advantages without the additional context as to, okay, how do men see this particular situation? And the thing with therapy is like for the most part, and I'm not even saying this is necessarily black women's fault, but for the most part, that's what you have to choose from. Another black woman who is going to tell you why it's all your fault. Another black woman who might lack the self-awareness to even remove herself from her assessment of you. Another black woman who might actually need more therapy than you do. And is looking at this as an opportunity, another opportunity to be over and lured over and be in charge of black men. And the reality is the emotional needs for women are different than the emotional needs for men. Men in my experience don't need catharsis the same way women do. And talk therapy is mostly catharsis. And I think it has its place, but I think for us to simply just say, oh, you need therapy without considering the nuances of how do men think about and respond to this? And should we just be wholesale pushing it on them and wholesale, you know, almost talking down to them if they're not enthusiastic about it? Without considering, okay, maybe men need a different thing. Maybe men need time with their boys. Maybe that pickup game is equivalent for him to 30 minutes to an hour of talk therapy for you. But this idea that our emotionalism and our catharsis has to look the same as it does for women, in my opinion, is idiotic. And in my opinion, it really dismisses men as people and men as individual, nuanced, different people who need individual, nuanced, different things. And to be fair, I think men, we need to do a better job at articulating those things, generally, and more specifically to the to the women in our lives. And I think, you know, imperfectly, that's what the man is fear is attempting to do, or the good parts of it. The reason why, you know, the whole Red Pill community and these men voices have been so popular is because it catered to hurt misunderstood men who felt like the culture in society was stripping their voice away. Right. And they was able to disciple these dudes in a lot of toxic ways to be quite frank. And to be fair, he is absolutely right. And I don't think this is unique to the church. I think most industries cater to women, primarily because women are the largest consumer base. Right. There's there's the intersection that we fail to address a lot of times. And that's the intersection of not just culture, but economics. Right. And as a business, as a business entity, your number one purpose is to maximize profitability. So you want to target the people who are actually either spending the money or influencing the money spenders. And the reality is, even when you work in real estate, even if the man is the breadwinner and the man is the one making all the monies a doctor, he's a surgeon, he's an engineer, a lawyer, you have to convince the woman to fall in love with that house because she pulls the strings of that massive financial investment. Ultimately, it's going to be the man say, but she is the influencer. And that's what I've kind of been preaching to women that that's that that is where their power is the power to influence the power to seduce the power to persuade not the power to force. Unfortunately, a lot of our women are assuming that masculine role of force and domination, but that is not their ministry and pun intended. You know, that's not where their power lies.  So it makes sense. Right. It makes sense that you're going to see a movie about female warriors who are bodying grown 200 pound men because that's how women want to see themselves. And if women are the ones spending money on movies, I am a filmmaker. I'm a film studio. I'm going to make what they want to see. I'm going to make Captain Marvel. Right. I'm not going to make a movie about some black king. I'm not going to make another shock Azulu because the men are not going to the box office. So in our critique of the culture and our critique of even women, we have to own some of that responsibility as men. If we want to see more deference to catering to us, we have to spend that money deliberately, whether supporting content creators that we believe in, supporting films that we believe in, whether it's emancipation with Will Smith, where he's, you know, a black, he's representing a black man who actually took ownership against all odds of his life and his destiny, whether it's Nate Parker and his version of Birth of a Nation, where he's killing white people on camera during antebellum slavery. Like we need to support what we want to see more of. And I think one of the unfortunate consequences of the fact that a lot of us as men have been feminized is we stay in a place of complaint and catharsis as opposed to movement and action. And movement and action in this case is not about complaining about the church catering to women or complaining about movies and Hollywood and culture and Oprah catering to women. It's about funneling and consolidating our resources so those same industries can cater to us. Those same industries can speak for us. Money talks. If I go into a space and everybody celebrates the pastor, they listen to the pastor, I come in and I can disappear. I could die and nobody would know. And so I'm not needed here. In fact, the reverence and respect only goes to one place. That is a very often dismissed aspect of masculinity. A lot of, for millennia, a lot of what masculinity was. And I say this in a kind of crass way was how well can you die? And what I mean by that is how well can you die in service of us? And us might be your family, us might be the state, us might be the kingdom. And dying might be whatever you would rather do for whatever needs to be done. Whether that meant marching into a battlefield, knowing you're not going to make it home. Or whether that meant marching into a coal mine knowing that you might not make it out. And it was necessary for us to build the world that we enjoy today. But there is still that covert expectation that men are background. Men are fodder. Men are guard dogs. And men aren't necessarily people. Men exist to serve. And I think in a modern context where those same expectations aren't necessarily as overt, men are trying to work out a new identity. And I think that's why you're seeing the rates of suicidality so high. Because in trying to work that out, and in that being encoded in our DNA, we lose sight of who we are, who we're supposed to be. And some men choose to not be anybody. And that means either literally dying or figuratively dying and just becoming basement trolls or online trolls. And it's something that I think we don't do a good enough job at acknowledging. So it's not that men are not people. It's that for so long we've spent more time encouraging and rewarding men for being the opposite of a person, for being calloused. And then now we want to complain that men's feet are rough without Biblical reference. Volunteering to help wash and help manicure men's feet, men's proverbial feet, obviously. What has the nation of Islam, Hebrew, Israelism, and what is it? Red pill community? Is that what it's called? Yeah. What are they doing right that the church isn't? That's a fantastic question. And again, I'm a Christian by default. The red pill community, I think it's speaking to the nuanced challenges of masculinity. It's speaking to, you know what, you're not always the problem, man. It's speaking to why did women ask us to become this and now penalize us for who we are? It's speaking to why do women say one thing but really mean another? Why do women say one thing and reward another? Why do women claim to bring it to the church, to want a man of God, to want a man of integrity, to want a man of discipline, to want a man that's well thought of in his community but their vaginas get wet for the thug, the bad boy, the player, the Casanova, and a lot of these boys growing up without fathers, nobody actually explains these nuances to them.  And for a lot of boys that happens through a traumatic experience, the church doesn't do a good enough job at acknowledging that or even telling men some of boys, more specifically some of those harsh truths about the world. It's just believe in God and do what God says and your reward will be, your reward will be. And I have this same critique when it comes to the church's relationship with blackness. I remember somebody said, black people are the only ones who are convinced that heaven only exists after death. White people came into Africa, told us to get on our knees and close our eyes while they robbed us blind. And again, the church does not do a good enough job at acknowledging or even dialoguing with some of these harsh topics. Most pastors avoid the odyssey. Most pastors use Job, the story of Job, to just say that God is sovereign and he can do whatever he wants. And that should be our expectation in life. Women can do whatever they want, but it's still in the great. It's for the greater good and it's in the larger plan. And your ability to endure and your ability to have long suffering is equivalent to the measure of man that you are. You know, God gives his strongest warriors the toughest battles. And I think a lot of people in general, but men in particular, are saying, you know what, that's bullshit. And the church isn't even willing to provide any clarity. It's, Hey, don't blaspheme. Don't ask those questions. So yeah, people are going to gravitate to people who are or places that are willing to dialogue with that, tackle those tough, rough truths of reality and the human experience and psychology and the pathology of women as it differs from the pathology of men. And I believe that the church did a better job at being human. It could better disciple to men and boys because the reality is, whereas women in some ways deal with the world as they wish it was, men have to deal with the world as it is. And we prioritize that. So if the church continues to be a bubble from the secular world without acknowledging the fact that, Hey, my sister's in the church probably wouldn't have looked at me twice. Probably still don't look at me twice because I got a button up shirt and I have a good job and actually like want to treat her well because she's not used to that. And there's a psychological basis for her not being used to that or even liking that. The church has technologies things and tell these boys the truth. That's what's going to set the boys. And I think the church free.  Like why do you feel rejected? Why don't you feel hurt? And so I feel like this tour is going to do a good job of getting to that.  And part of the reason why a lot of men are no longer listening, whether to the church, whether to a lot of public discourses, because a lot of men are tired of owning all the blame. And it's like, you know, I understand as the leader, you should assume responsibility. As the leader, you should assume blame, right? You know, you should default to okay, it's me. I dropped the ball. I could have done X, Y and Z better. However, we can no longer continue to like address all the nuances of why black women are the way that they are.  And how that's affected the psychology of black men and black boys throughout the centuries. And it's not to say it's black women's fault. That's never been the point. At least that's not ever been my point. But it's to say that black women owe us the same grace that we're expected to have for them. And the reason why a lot of men are checking out is because they have failed to receive that from their mothers, from the churches, from their communities, from their friends, from their colleagues, and from random interactions with black people, and particularly black women, in their daily lives. And we need to acknowledge that if we claim to care about and see value in the participation in the presence of black men, we can no longer behave as if black men and boys are inconsequential. So Kevin Samuels, when he popped out, I feel like he kind of, and I could be wrong, but it feels like he opened the door for a lot of podcasts, a lot of content that feels hypermasculine. And by I mean hypermasculine, I mean inordinately unbiblical kind of this establishing of leadership in a way that feels like you're superior or dominant in a way that doesn't look like Jesus. And I can, I think, listen to y'all, I can see how that is appealing because it's a way to reestablish dignity and leadership that may not actually include gentleness and humility, right? So I guess my question would be, can y'all define for us what masculine leadership actually is? I wasn't a fan of Kevin Samuels, but I had an appreciation for him.  And I'm always a fan of black male audacity because that's what the status quo is afraid of. And what we're seeing with some aspects of the red pill, the pseudo masculinity that we're seeing happen, the domineering masculinity we're seeing come out of it is an overcorrection, if we're being honest. It's an attempt to write the pendulum by swinging it as far right, pun intended, as it can because for so long the attempt has been to swing it far left. The attempt has been to pedestalize castrated masculinity. The attempt has been to idealize deference to female perspective, female leadership, female authority. And I think a response is, and we see the same with politics, right? The response is to try to, it's going to go to this extreme. I'm a fan of it coming back to the middle and coming back to a place where it works for both of us. And maybe not even coming back to, but let's strive for that. One of the things that he was critiqued for was the fact that he wasn't married. He was married, I think, two or three times during his life. They didn't work out. And most men's pushback has been that the same dismissiveness that we see shown towards Kevin Samuels for not being married is not shown towards certain female authority figures. As long as they say something that we agree with, there's no need for us to critique whether or not they're qualified to or they have the experience to say it. And then I think the other thing too is for a lot of men and boys, they've noticed that some of the most out of touch men that we come across are men who are married. For a lot of men, marriage represents emasculation. It represents a castrated state where you defer to your wife. And to a lot of men, that doesn't look like leadership. Now, it could be. And maybe those men aren't doing a good enough job explaining some of the nuances of it. And I encourage men who are married to do that. But the idea that a married man is more of a leader or a proven leader than a man who might be currently single is nonsense. But I think the main person to look at is Jesus. And Jesus wasn't married, but he was a son of God. So he was married to us, his church. All right, so let me go on a Christian by default tangent real quick. I've said this to people that I've had conversations with them in confidence. But the idea espoused by the church is that Jesus represented perfection. And Jesus was God's opportunity to experience the human condition so that he can better relate with us, which to me is problematic primarily because if you are an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, omnipresent being, there is nothing that you need to learn. You should already know it. There was no additional insight information perspective that you need that is not already within you.  However, I think it's an opportunity for us to consider our humanity juxtaposed against Jesus's humanity. And I've heard some conspiracy theories that said that the church changed the story of Jesus to make him essentially a monk, but in reality, Jesus had children. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who the church then turned into a prostitute. I don't know if any of that is true. However, I think that would be a better story for me personally. A Jesus that actually lived. A Jesus that was in the world. We're supposed to be in the world, not of the world. A Jesus that was in the world. The current story of Jesus that we have was not a person who was in the world. It's a person who was operating on a completely different plane. And obviously he's God, but that's always been my struggle with the concept of Jesus. Jesus does not know what it's like to be jealous, what it's like to be heartbroken by a woman, what it's like to have sex. And that's why in my opinion, Jesus was not... I'll put it like this. Jesus was not a quintessential human. He was an ideal human. And I'm guessing the ideal is from a God's perspective. But that's the odyssey. And that gets complicated. But if somebody in the comments wants to have that conversation, comment below your thoughts. And he modeled Christ's like sacrificial love, even when the church rejected him. And so I think what Christ's like masculinity looks like is it is both lion and lamb. And again, to use Jesus as the benchmark for masculinity. Love your wife like Christ loved the church. The church killed Christ. The church didn't dialogue with Christ. The church saw Christ as a threat. Christ wasn't even necessarily communicative to the church. He came in flipping tables. Because again, he was operating on a different level that the church wasn't aware of. Now, how does that translate to male-female relationships and dynamics in a world that now champions clear, concise, therapeutic like communication. Where women are asking us to be more vulnerable than Christ was to the church. And more communicative. And more clear, more concise. And again, it goes back to the expectations that are placed on men are superhuman. How can you be the lion and the lamb? You're either a lion or a lamb. Now, extra dimensional being can conceptualize that, but to place that responsibility in human men just because we have penises, it's not fair. And I think that's why so many women are dismissive of men's grievances and men's sufferings and men's experiences. Because again, men are just supposed to be able to bear it and figure out a way to navigate it and have all the answers and be strong, but soft when I want you to be. And hard when I want you to be. And the idea is we're supposed to get a woman who multiplies what we give her. And she's a helped me in the whole nine. Even though some men's experiences have been doing all that and the woman being a liability. And we don't address that. At the very least, what we'll say is he should have picked a better woman. When the reality is that wasn't the agreement. The agreement was it didn't matter the woman that I picked. She was my helped meat. She would conform to my leadership. She would conform and appreciate my self-sacrificial posture. But that's not true. So to expect regular men to be Christ without enjoying any of the benefits of being a omnipotent being and benevolent being and all that good stuff like is unfair. And I think again, men should aspire to be better. Men should aspire to cover, but it should be a covenant. I do this for you. You do this for me. These are the responsibilities and the privileges that are associated with said responsibility. But also these are the responsibilities. This is what I expect for you. And I think most men would be okay with that arrangement. But what we asked to do is just give no matter what, kind of blindly and don't expect anything in return and be thankful if you get something decent. She wasn't a bad woman. You just weren't man enough. You just didn't have the authority that she could follow. So it still falls on you even when it's not your fault. One of the things that has risen in this whole red peel understanding is finding women that are easier to manipulate, to control. Yes. A lot of men are being pushed. They call them passport bros. If you guys know I'm introducing all type of stuff. Y'all know I'm not a fan of passport bros at one point. We even had a U2 beef. Well, let's passport bros and more SYSBM. I'm not a fan of Save Yourself Black Man. Passport bros is nuanced to me. However, that was a gross mischaracterization of passport bros in particular.  Because the reality that we have to acknowledge and this brother knows this as a Nigerian. I don't know if he's first or second generation. Specifically as an Igbo man, American women are not taught to compete for men. The rest of the world is. So as the world becomes more accessible, as travel becomes more accessible, you have brothers who are working in tech and they can literally work anywhere. When he experiences a woman who doesn't think that he owes her the moon and the stars, but instead thinks that in as much as he needs to prove his value to me, I have to prove my value to him. And he compares that to American women. He's going to go that way 10 times out of 10. And it's time we start being honest about that as opposed to framing. There's almost a narcissism in that framing.  When the reality is a lot of these women are bilingual. A lot of these women are educated. Now, obviously, the economies of the countries that they live in are not to the extent of the economies of the United States. And that's why I tell passport bros to be careful and not get caught just like dating a girl in the hood, right? You might just be a way out. But to not acknowledge the fact that on the macro, American women are, their brand is not the best compared to foreign women, but instead branded around men seeking control in the whole nine is dishonest. Because if we're being completely honest, comparing American men, I'm Nigerian, he's Nigerian, comparing American men to most of the men around the world. American men are some of the most accommodating men in the world.  So certain things that would be mandatory for a man in another country to demand and expect from his woman, American men are a bit more flexible with that.  And I think it's the responsibility of us to tell the full story instead of just framing it as oh, these men are predators. No, some of these passport bros are in their 20s, they're good-looking guys, they get women here. But when they spend a week in Atlanta versus spending a week in Colombia, there's really no competition and we have to tell the full truth.  How can you do that?  And the reality is we have to address it. There is a modicum of truth to these rumors. We have to address it. And again, I'm not just talking about men's experiences and romantic relationships with Western women. I'm talking about just your experiences at restaurants with a female waiter at a hotel with a female clerk at a store with a female cashier. Like we have to address that. We cannot just continue to gaslight men and say, no, it's the women you're choosing have attitudes and the women that you're choosing are belligerent and disagreeable. We have to address it because at the end of the day, the world is just going to become more and more accessible. Men are going to become less and less willing to even engage in these dialogues. And they're going to make those decisions and a lot of women are going to turn around and be like, we're all the good men. They're in Colombia. They're in Japan. They're in Kenya. If I had it my way, they'd be in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa. So if we don't want that to be the case, we have to stop gaslighting men and acting like men are making these things up. The reality is Black women, especially Black women in the West, have a certain brand. And it's sad to me that whenever I or other men encounter a Black woman in the West who doesn't fit that mold, it's mind blowing, but we have to address it. Similarly, Western men, we have a certain brand too. And we can't act oblivious to it as to why the woman is hesitant to come back to our place or hesitant to devolve certain information and all that kind of stuff. But it seems like the grace isn't reciprocated. The understanding isn't reciprocated. But again, I think it goes back to women don't feel the need to have to learn the perspectives and the struggles and the nuances of the male experience. So it's easy to gaslight and say, oh, Western women are going to divorce you. Who told you that? Where are you meeting these women? None of my friends are like that. The reality is, yeah, they are statistically yes. And so when you look for a yes woman, what you're saying is I don't want to be like the son of God who came to love a difficult church. That's exactly what you're saying. Again, to hold men to a Christ-like standard is inhumane, literally and figuratively, in my opinion. There's a book by David Dieter. It's called Way of the Superior Man. And that was essentially the premise of the book. I think it was a good book for a lot of reasons. But basically the premise was the measure of man that you are, your level of superiority as a man, is directly correlated in your ability to navigate the inherent difficulties and sometimes contrarian aspects of femininity.   Now, again, the question was asked earlier, why are men leaving the church? I think that's one of the reasons. When will the church acknowledge that, hey, women, stop being so freaking difficult and definitely stop being difficult for the sake of being difficult, for the sake of constantly G-checking and poking at the man that you've chosen. He should find peace in you, not difficulty. Yes, inherently they're going to be difficulties just because of the difference in our nature. However, this shouldn't be a deliberate game that you're playing. With how far can I push him to see what he's capable of enduring? She easily irritates you because you don't even like her. That's what I want to get to. Thank you for going there. Again, it goes back to the reason why I think not only are men gravitating away from institutions like the church, but also gravitating away from, quote, unquote, better leaders because they're married and they found themselves in long-term partnerships that a lot of us learn are really just a facade. But the reason is that to make the moot point that a woman who is more agreeable, more amenable, just easier to deal with is a maid, is being classified as a maid, and a woman who's difficult for the sake of being difficult is being classified as a friend. It begs the question, what kind of dynamics did you grow up with? And why is your paradigm of friend primarily challenged, primarily difficulty, primarily tumultuous? And we see a lot of these brothers, unfortunately, they're the ones who are married very early. And they think because my mom was difficult and constantly testing my dad that that's normal and that should be expected from my wife, my girlfriends. And I'm a man because I'm willing to tolerate and I'm willing to placate to that. And again, we have to project things out.  I'm not doing that.  But again, the idea is that these men are classified as the leadership we should follow when they're failing to acknowledge that some of these things are not normal, but they've been normalized. And that some of the onus falls on women. Some of the onus falls on the paradigms that were set for you to think that this is normal. It's not normal for women to just be difficult for the sake of being difficult. It's not normal for women to be belligerent. It's not normal for women to be argumentative. And again, we can address those things and put them in the proper white supremacist context, but to continue to grade men and, but by our ability to tolerate and navigate nonsense. To a certain degree, I subscribe to that, but to have that as a macro message without telling the full story is absolutely not sustainable, especially as we become more individualistic as a culture and as a society.   No, I'd rather just go overseas and get with a woman who actually likes me and that it's clear we have a symbiotic relationship. She brings me peace. She wants to cater to my needs just like I cater to hers. Instead of it being a one-sided proving ground 24-7, that it's never, I've never done enough to prove that I'm a good man to her.  And we have to be honest about these things. We have to stop gaslighting men and boys. It does seem like some men enjoy men more than they enjoy women, but they marry women because they're supposed to, but their affections, their time, their energy, their vulnerability is giving space for men. And what's, what's ironic about this is it's being framed in a way to shame men without acknowledging maybe those men find other men more pleasant to be around because the majority of women have assumed this posture of being perpetually inevitable challenges. And I don't find peace in being around my woman. Like, are we willing to engage in that conversation or are we just gonna try to assume these subtle homosexual jabs at men? The reality is, part of the reason some men enjoy being around, and I'm not even a man who enjoys being around most people, let alone men, but part of the reason why some men enjoy being around other men as opposed to women is because it's easier. The expectations aren't as high.  If you're spending time with your girl, but it seems like you are thinking about something else, she's gonna make a big deal out of it.  So again, we can also make that same argument for women. Some women enjoy women time more than male time, and that's why they'll project female expectations on the men in their life.  But again, to characterize it as this heterorheurotic thing is dishonest, it's disingenuous, and it's incomplete. I need to talk to a friend right now, if I cannot find that in my home, that's a very tragic situation. I agree to a point, I think your, especially your spouse should have an established friendship with you. However, I don't know if your spouse necessarily needs to be your best friend. Just like I would say, I don't think your co-founder, if you're starting a company, needs to be your best friend. I think marriage is a purpose driven relationship primarily, and you should prioritize your purpose with each other over if you guys do the same drugs, metaphorically speaking. But I would agree that I think that would be ideal if we were, appreciated the same kind of things, but I encourage men to look for their compliment. Same with women, and your compliment isn't necessarily gonna be somebody that you gravitate to initially, because they're going to fill in your blind spots. And in order to do that, they might not have the same appreciations that you have, the same hobbies that you have, the same things that otherwise would make two people great friends. But again, marriage, especially as an institution, was never established throughout history, has never been established based on friendship. It's been established primarily based on purpose. And I think in the modern sense, maybe it starts leaning towards a friendship-based situation, but I think that's also going to follow a higher divorce rate, or it's gonna follow, you know, maybe a different paradigm where it's not marriage, it's some other arrangements. But yeah, perfect world, I think he's right. Like if me and him have plans, and then Kianokal, I won't even get met. Like I know dudes, listen. And this is part of the reason I've, you know, often said men love more authentically than women. Because, you know, based on my observations, men tend to not project the same expectations, the same pseudo-human, let's call it that, pseudo-human expectations on their woman, as I see women project onto their men.  Like I have friends over here who fulfill this purpose. I have business partners over here who fulfill this purpose. I have gym buddies over here who fulfill this purpose. But you see the growing sentiment amongst women is I want to find one man to fulfill all the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental demands that used to be fulfilled by my village. And again, in an ideal world, I think that's a beautiful thing. But like, I don't think it's sustainable on the macro. Number one, number two, I don't think it's a fair expectation to place on one human being and then be perpetually disappointed when they don't live up to it. I want him to be high earning, but I want him to have all the time in the world to spend with me. And there's no grace given to the negotiation necessary for a man to fulfill all these expectations. And I think it again is part of the reason why men are drawn to rather spend time with other men or rather spend time at the bar or get home and sit in the car for 10, 20, 15 minutes an hour before you even go in the house. Because this Superman cape, you want me to wear 24 seven? It's just heavy. It's uncomfortable. Let me be a person. Let me not be a constant walking, talking disappointment in your eyes. And even if I can't articulate it, I feel it. If you want to see more of this, please click that like button. It helps tremendously and share. This is somebody you think would gain value from the message and hit that subscribe button as well. Peace out y'all.


Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast where we're covering the latest stories, trends, and innovations in the digital infrastructure industry. I'm Allison Whelan and joining me today is Jeff Barber from Bloom Energy. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Of course. Always my favorite part of any show. Of course. So we've seen Bloom popping up all over, events all over the world. But we're here in Data Center Alley in Virginia. Can you describe the current power infrastructure challenges that data centers in Data Center Alley and globally are facing and how these complexities are impacted by AI and the growing high density workloads? Is that the only question there? That's a small little. It's a quad for the form. No, let's let's go with the latter. We'll go backwards. Impact of machine learning and AI, obviously densification of racks, right? So we went in the industry from thinking, believing that 10, 15 kW per rack was fine. Now, if you're running GPUs, you're looking at 40, 50, 100 kilowatts per rack. So massive densification. That's not always available from your substation or from your utility. Right. So customers are coming to Bloom to supplement their existing power. Take the data hall from, say, 8 megawatts to 12 by implementing Bloom right alongside the substation. Right. So and the first part of your four part question there was the first part was regarding basically time to power issues. Right. So we're extremely busy because we're able to provide on site microgrid power in months versus many, many years now for the utility. There was a time when any developer believed that the utility would just show up. Right. I request 25 megawatts. I get 25 megawatts. Those days are gone. It looks like we're decades out with the aging infrastructure. And what role does alternative energy play in addressing data center alleys, challenges, power concerns, and how is Bloom ready to solve those? Yeah. Good question. If a single source of power is simply not available, as we see today, whether it's a transmission issue or a generation issue, it doesn't matter. The electrons are not at the building. So most are turning to, most developers are turning to multiple sources. Right. Where that's battery, wind and solar, which are intermittent. Bloom, in my opinion, obviously is the answer. We're 24 by seven consistent power, much cleaner than a typical utility. And again, you can have it in months versus many years on site. Right. And with sustainability being a critical hot topic here, around the world, what are your thoughts on how the industry can come together to fight climate change in turn to alternative power resources? That's a very big question. I would say incremental steps, right? There are things we can do today. Again, is Bloom a zero emissions box? Yes. From a pollutant perspective, we don't burn anything. We do produce a very pure form of CO2. But our emissions are 25, 30% less than any US based, not any, but the average US based utility. So incremental steps. I think also we need to have as developers, and I'm a vendor now, but it's a former developer, we need to start having conversations with the tenants. The tenants need to understand that we're overbuilding by 40 or 50% of power they're never going to use. Right. So how do we get the tenants to understand the impact of that? I think that communication needs to occur. Communication is key always. It was great talking to you, Jeff. Thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you at the next event. And viewers, thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, happy networking. Thank you very much.