I think that most of my viewers know that critical race theory isn't actually a real issue. This is a culture war issue that was manufactured by Republican Party operatives to distract you from the real issues facing society. And being a GOP operative funded by GOP donors himself, Charlie Kirk has been going on what he calls a critical racism tour where essentially he says, critical race theory bad. So that's the context. Now individuals, they can show up, they can hear him speak and other people speak, and they can also ask questions to Charlie Kirk. And one individual asked him a question that I think caught him off guard and Charlie Kirk got to see firsthand how insane his base of support is when this person asks a very disturbing thing. You ready? Yeah. You're brave. You're brave for what you say and the fact that you've seen up there and say, and I appreciate it. I think we all appreciate it actually because there's not a lot of people that have the balls to do it. But I want to ask you something a little bit out of the ordinary. So prepare yourself. At this point, we're living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns? No, and I'm not, and I'm not, that's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line?   Now I'm going to denounce that and tell you why. Because you're playing into all their plans and they're trying to make you do this. That's okay. Just hear me out. You started with the compliments, so at least give me a little bit. They are trying to provoke you and everyone here. They are trying to make you do something that will be violent, that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen. We are close to have, hold on, we are close to have momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us. So to answer your question, and I just think it's, you know, overly blunt, we have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side. They fear, let me say this very clearly, they fear us holding the line with self-control and discipline, taking over school board meetings. They're the ones that are willing to use federal force against us. And I know that people get fired up. We are living under fascism. We are living under this tyranny. But if you think for a second that they're not wanting you to all of a sudden get that next level, where they're going to say, OK, we need Patriot Act 2.0. If you think that, you know, Waco is bad, what do you see what they want to do next? What I'm saying is that we have a very fragile balance right now at our current time where we must exhaust every single peaceful mean possible. Yikes. Now, I have to give a credit to Charlie Kirk for explicitly denouncing that. If somebody is proposing violence and you have a really large platform, I think it's incumbent on you to unequivocally condemn the prospect of violence. So I actually give Charlie Kirk credit for handling that in the best way that he as a right-winger could, you know, he framed it in a way that was appealing to right-wingers. You know, don't buy into this liberal narrative. They want you to do violence. But nonetheless, he denounced violence and he does get credit for that. I think that that is important to point out.  Because if you're saying that democracy no longer is a meaningful way to affect political change, of course, people are going to resort to undemocratic ways of expressing or trying to affect change. Now, one thing that that guy said, which shows that right-wingers don't really understand their own worldview, is that, you know, at this point, we're living under corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. Now, I'm assuming that this person is against socialism. I'm assuming this person votes Republican. So why would you as a capitalist who votes for Republican capitalists be angry about corporate control? I mean, this is your ideology. This is what Republicans very deliberately try to do when they institute their neoliberal worldview and Democrats do it as well. But Republicans crank it up to the highest level possible. So why would you complain about corporate control of American politics, but still vote for these dumbass politicians and listen to people like Charlie Kirk who say capitalism good? It doesn't make sense to me. He also talks about medical fascism, and I'm assuming he's referencing vaccine mandates. But I mean, have we just switched from non-medical fascism to fascism in twenty twenty one when the Biden administration instituted vaccine mandates through OSHA?  George Washington supported vaccine mandates. If you wanted to send your children to public schools in most states, they had to be vaccinated and show proof of vaccination. So for him to just all of a sudden be angered at medical fascism, and all of a sudden we have to take up arms right now and kill these people. It just shows you how irrational these people are. And the rhetoric espoused by far right individuals like Charlie Kirk, it's not helping because people like this, they need to be fact checked, right? They need to be educated because their views, which are incorrect, are leading them to the conclusion that violence might be good. Maybe the guns that we've been collecting for years should be used against politicians that we don't like. But let me explain this to you as frustrated as you may be with the political environment on the left or the right. You don't want to live in a political environment where politicians are regularly killed. Talk to people in developing countries about this. Talk to people in newly democratized regimes like Tunisia, for example.  You don't want that. So this is why you have to inject some sanity into the conversation. So I appreciate that Charlie Kirk tried to bring down the temperature and said, look, violence is not the answer. We should do what we want to do peacefully.  He works people into a frenzy. So even if he is not explicitly advocating for violence, he is part of the problem. So in a now deleted tweet, he boasted about how his organization sent over 80 buses to the capital on January 6th. Why would you fund this, Charlie Kirk? Unless you wanted them to protest democracy itself. And he did this after he told people that the election was stolen. So if you tell people that democracy has been killed by the Democratic Party, who cheated and you send 80 plus buses so they can protest democracy based on a lie, you're kind of whipping them into this frenzy. And they're going to logically at some point deduce that violence isn't just inevitable, but maybe it's necessary to get what we want since democracy was taken away from us. But the big lie isn't the only misinformation that he spread, even though he peddled that quite a bit and hard, as the Guardian explains. Further, Kirk served before January 6th as an Arizona point person for the Stop the Steel, the group led by Ali Alexander, which was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the House Select Committee investigating the capital insurrection and Trump's efforts to overturn the election results. On the 6th of November, Kirk helped lead a Stop the Steel Rally in Phoenix that was one of numerous such events hosted by Trump allies. That day, protesting Biden's win and spreading falsehoods about fraud as the Center for Media and Democracy first reported. On another disinformation front, Kirk's groups have been busy this year promoting falsehoods on campuses and in social media about vaccine mandates, efforts that the groups have used to raise funds and which have sparked criticism from health experts. Kirk wrote false text messages charging that Biden has sent goons door to door to make you take a COVID-19 vaccine as the Washington Post first reported. Further, a Kirk nonprofit ran alarmist and erroneous Facebook ads, which were seen millions of times stating that the government has no right to force you to inject yourself with an experimental vaccine and warning that in response to advice about shots, lock your doors, kids. So, I mean, we have to be a little bit nuanced here while I commend him for unequivocally denouncing the prospect of violence and discouraging violence when it's brought up. I mean, you kind of do bear some blame for encouraging this in the first place. People can come to the conclusion that violence is something that they should do. If you tell them implicitly, it doesn't have to be explicit. And so again, when you tell people that, you know, the big government is coming to vaccinate you and Democrats are now stealing elections, it's not a surprise when they realize, wait a second, if all of this is true, if all of this that you're telling me is true, then why aren't we killing these people? Why aren't we taking up arms and doing a Civil War 2.0? So I mean, it's one thing to denounce violence, which Charlie Kirk did do and should always do. But another thing is making sure that you tone down the rhetoric and stop lying to people, stop spreading lies and misinformation about the 2020 election. It wasn't stolen. Stop fear mongering about vaccines and vaccine mandates. It is a medical miracle that we have an effective vaccine this quickly. And you're taking what is a positive thing and you're spinning it as a negative because that suits your agenda and that helps you fundraise for the Republican Party and for your organizations. It's incredibly nefarious. I feel like Charlie Kirk is smart enough to know what he's doing. He has to know that his rhetoric is leading to this, right? So I mean, Republican ideologues like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, if they genuinely believe that violence is not the answer, great. But it's time to educate the people who follow them and respect them. They're not going to listen to me. They're going to listen to people like you because they trust you.  Maybe we were wrong about the 2020 election being stolen. Maybe we were wrong about vaccines. They listen to you, at least most would. So, you know, on one hand, good for Charlie Kirk because you should denounce violence. But on another hand, shame on Charlie Kirk for being one of the main individuals who is a large influence on the Republican Party base and whipping them into a frenzy to want to do violence in the first place. You could support the Humanist Report at patreon.com slash humanist report. But trust me, I'd have way more supporters at Patreon if that was my podcast said.


Hey traders, this is T Bradley 90 from the my investing club chat I'm one of the top mentors and moderators in chat as a special gift to our viewers on YouTube We have created a free two-hour course to help teach you how to start a consistently profitable trading business and identify high-paying setups in just 30 days There will be limited seating every week so register for the course and reserve your spot now Using the link in the description as a special bonus for everyone that watches the entire video We will give you the link to a free 10-hour additional mini course that has never been released to the public Register now before all slots completely fill up This week we have a very special video for you guys as one of our consistently profitable Members wanted to give back to the community by creating a free Options course for our members and while this is just a preview of the full link video If you want to watch the full length or any of our exclusive content to become a member of MIC Hello, this is John aka wildlife in MIC chat back for episode number three of option basics Just a quick review what we discussed in the first two episodes. We talked about What options are and how are they used predominantly for insurance? purposes on stocks positions Some people use a speculation so they buy or sell puts or calls generate income on positions that they have and Also stock acquisition. We talked about the two types of Options calls inputs. We just discussed option strings That which is an example you see right here for the S&P 500 ticker is SPY So there's an option string the naming convention Which is which would be the string of characters that had the one that we went over was the SPY So the SPY and then the next two digits would be the year next to after that would be the month The day it expires this caller put would be a C or P and then the last Part of it would be the strike price So in every successful business has some sort of edge that gives them a long-term advantage over someone else or in the marketplace, so how does the company generate revenue or Acquire customers so in this case as traders We want to know what the edges and what the probabilities are of that successful outcome on that trade So as option traders our edge is in implied volatility So a lot of people ask well why why is it in the implied volatility? So the textbook definition Is you can be found you can find a pretty good example at tasty trade comm I kind of put the link, but it talks about what implied volatility or commonly referred to as IV Implied volatility or IV is probably one of the most important metrics to understand and be aware as option traders However in the simplest terms IV is determined by the current price of option contracts on a particular stock or future So that's important because a lot of people believe that implied volatility dictates price And that's that's not true implied volatility is Determined by the current price of option contracts and the current price is dictated by market participants So just like when we talk about a low-float stock that has a low As far as low Availability the more participants the more buyers there drives at the price So there's as their supply is low if their supply low then the price goes up It's this if the demand Excuse me the demand demand is high price goes up is supply is high Price goes down in this case as more people are buying options They drive up the price because generally They are doing that because of some unknown or uncertainty in the market So Going back to implied volatility. It's a represent. It's represented as a percentage that indicates the annual idix Expected one standard deviation deviation range of a stock based on option pricing And we'll talk what standard deviation is down below the loads continue with an example So if we have an iv of 25 on a $200 stock It represents that one standard deviation range of $50 and here's the calculation point two five times 200 equals $50 which would be the expectation over that year So in the example of this $200 the stock and the stock of iv of 25 would mean that there is an implied 68% probability that the stock would settle or trade between 150 and 250 over the next year so Coming full circle into talking a little bit more about standard deviation It's comes out of our statistic class. So for those of you that have had some exposure in statistics You know what one standard deviation means but essentially all we're talking about is that? 68.2% of the time It is one standard deviation the outcomes or whatever your the outcomes would be would fall in that range So when talking about iv one standard deviation essentially means that there's a Approximately a 68% chance or probability that the stock will settle within that range of prices as Determined by option pricing in this case. That's the range that we gave right here So it is a 68% chance that this $200 stock will trade in between 150 250 Sometime in the next year Hey traders, this is Tosh I go by T Bradley 90 in the my investing club chat Just wanted to reach out and say if you have any questions about M. I see joining M. I see maybe you're a member already You have three ways to contact myself personally and through M. I see you can hit our social media You can hit me through pms in chat or you can contact us through my email at Tosh at my investing club comm That's Tosh at my investing club comm I will get back to you in a timely manner and I'm saying this because I'm here to help and I don't want anybody to be afraid To reach out and ask any question that they have we are here for you guys. All right. See you guys


City centre businesses are pleading with people to get back to the office, but the latest data shows there's still a lockdown effect in some areas. I think the face-to-face economy is going to become super, super premium, and it will only be when it's very, very high value will it work. Thousands of meetings didn't have to require a 40-minute journey to get there for an hour's conversation. What becomes of cities? What happens to buildings? It's the real estate people who are beginning to ask that question. You're looking at a face. You're not seeing how people respond to other people. You don't have the opportunity for a quick sidebar conversation with somebody except through chat. Virtually never have I randomly spoken to a stranger in a coffee shop, a pub or a street, and that turned into a meaningful relationship. How many times on Twitter have I tweeted something and ended up having a follow-up conversation with someone, and it turned into material reality? That's it. More knowledge workers will be choosing to work from home or work virtually, meaning that they have these trends of shorter tenure. This concept of a fourth dimension for offices, and the fourth dimension really being you have place, you have technology, you have work processes, and then there's this ideal that you can work anywhere, anytime. So somebody who goes to the office to connect with other people, say, will have the same sort of interaction with others in a hybrid organization as those that are working from their home or from some other space. Technology doesn't exist for a hybrid meeting that puts an incredible disparity between the people who are in the room and the people who are outside of the room. When it comes to corporations, and it's very hard to say, the duration of the pandemic is only roughly a year, and I'm saying only because when it comes to change and cultural change, you actually need much more disruption. For me, it seems a little bit like that, and all of that thinking in digital age will foster and will challenge us more in having more flexibility in our decision making. What changed with the pandemic was that we were able to see a mindset shift where we were beginning to get back to the level of productivity and of trust and of relationship building in a virtual setting. The large cities will still be very attractive, but you will have little clusters of mini cities now. There will be an enormous premium for a minute. The big change will be in the geography of work. I'm very nervous about these divides across the span of demographic, gender, race and class issues, widening exponentially and astronomically as we come out of this crisis. London, New York, Berlin have survived far worse than this. Generic places, smaller places will be a lot harder than people think. Cities, you know, albeit rarely, have come and gone. Power has backs and waned. Places have been in the center of the world and not been in the center of the world. And I think there's no inherent right to exist. Now, if we step back and we consider this discussion in the context of what urbanists and geographers have been speculating about for a long time, we are, of course, reminded of the late 1980s and early 1990s with predictions about the death of distance or the end of geography. And a lot of people that care about cities, that work in cities and that research cities have been pretty much reassured over the last 20 to 30 years that digital technology does not replace physical connectivity. So is it that we are just, once again, overemphasizing what may happen due to technology in the short term and under appreciating how dramatic changes may be in the future? Or are we really seeing on this occasion a very constant determinant of human development around physicality? The vibrancy of the city center is a social good. It's something that is valuable. It's something that people think is worth having. People are willing to pay higher rents in order to be near to it. Landlords have to rethink the value of restaurants, bars, and amenities. And right now, the landlord's view of all of those is they are profit centers and their ways to make money. And I think they have to look at them much more like these are lost leaders to make people come downtown. The city, the workplace, needs to become even more compelling. A worker might choose to work around four days a week or one day a week. The delta between those two things is going to depend on how much the worker wants to be somewhere and feels like it's fun and creative and has value. What is much more difficult for people as they become isolated or independent is the development path for people for young graduates who join the organization and their mentoring and capability development is much, much more difficult and needs to be much more carefully matched. You know, there'll be 66% of the workforce that falls further and further behind. And without real strategic and intentional action, those divides are going to widen. The real question is how can we redefine what that mixed development looks like? How does it operate and who does it serve? So I think we're in a very interesting moment where in some ways we're caught in this plot twist. I am hoping that if and how the workplace transforms, some of those benefits get to spill out to the larger context. You know, we need to remove the elitism of location if we want to be more inclusive. And these technologies do provide a way for us to do that.


from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Conga Connect West 2018, brought to you by Conga. Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here at theCUBE. We're at the Conga Connect West event at the Thirsty Bear. It's Salesforce Dreamforce downtown San Francisco. Mark Benioff, he said it, 171,000 people. I don't know where they all fit. Please don't bring your car, but we're here.  There's no lines at the bar, no lines at the food. This is a place to be, so we're happy to be here. Have our next guest from Conga. We've got Sawyer Martin, he's the director of product management from Conga. Say your name. Say your name, I'm sorry. Say you're good to see you. And also Mason White, the director of product strategy. Mason, great to see you. Nice to meet you, Jeff. Absolutely, so Sayer, you came in on an acquisition. We were looking almost exactly six months ago. That's right, orchestrate. So what is orchestrate and how's it been so far? Yeah, it's been really good. So orchestrate started as really a wealth management tool for process orchestration, so inside of Salesforce. So managing end-to-end processes for wealth management firms inside of Salesforce, that's a combination of human and automated work that are happening, tasks being generated, what type of tasks and stuff. So a task to tell someone, so a task in Salesforce is essentially an instruction to have someone do something. Right, but I'm curious, could you say very specifically it was for financial management? Yeah, so financial management, there's moving money, generating investment policy statements for clients. All kinds of different things that you might do, review meetings for clients. And how did you pick that vertical to get started? Well, we came out of, so the company was actually spun out of a wealth management firm. And that wealth management firm was on Salesforce, couldn't find a way to automate their business basically. Wanted to take those processes that they were living every day or that were in someone's head and put it down in a system that they could then use to train people as they grew. And so it was born out of that wealth management firm and knowing that industry, we thought as a small company let's establish a beachhead in that market and then move elsewhere. The tool was built generically, so it applies to any industry really, but we knew that industry the best. Did you spin out of the, or no, you weren't, you spin out of the wealth management company or did those people who founded it left to figure if these guys need it, there's probably a few more to do as well? Yeah, so it was a former, spun out of the wealth management firm and then took it as this independent entity, not doing wealth management at all, but doing technology exclusively. Right, right, and doing process flow and task management, those types of things. That's right. All right, so Mason, how does this fit in your portfolio strategy? That's a great question. And actually, Sayer and I met at Dreamforce 17 last year. What, in terms of orchestrate, what we've done is really, certainly we're keeping the existing customer base, but we're bringing that type of workflow capability into other areas of Conga. So as you look at the Conga suite of products, that workflow and approval process is really something that is vital for things like contract life cycle management. Who needs to be involved in reviewing and approving a contract depends greatly on the size of the contract, the level of complexity, the types of changes that are being asked for. So we're in the process of bringing orchestrate capabilities into various of our product lines. First one that we're showing to customers is how we've brought it into Conga contracts through Salesforce. We'll be bringing it into other elements really through a suite type of play. We're calling it a platform internally and as we mature that, it'll be come available to other members of the Conga product suite. So you guys have this interesting collection of products that I assume all started as silos, but they've all got this kind of interplay between the process flow, the contracts, the document creation, the contract kind of management. They're all very, very kind of different tranches of the same tree. Yeah, very much so. In fact, I'd throw in our recent acquisition of Councilytics with the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities related to contract analysis. There's a fairly consistent thesis in a lot of our recent, whether it's been product launches or product acquisitions around building out capabilities related to contract life cycle management. It's not the only place where those things come into play, but it's certainly the one that is exciting people as we go to market. Right, right. So Sarah, you've been with them for six months now. How's been the absorption? It's been really good. We didn't fully understand when we were required that sort of what the plan was. And we didn't get a lot of direction when we first came aboard, but we knew that contract life cycle management is a powerful piece of the business. It's a growing piece and it's one that's increasingly important to customers. And so we looked at that from a process perspective and we've really been focused on finding the gaps there and taking what was, as you said, the silo going from the contract management piece, generating the documents, doing the negotiations and ultimately signing the documents and tying it all together with the process engine we'd already built. Right, yeah. So is orchestrate, let's go to market today still as a single product or are you just getting completely embedded in all the other ones? I think to Mason's point, it becomes obvious to use more than one conga product. When you buy one, at least one other one will make sense for you and orchestrate included. Right, because orchestration is kind of like AI and I'm sure where and how you guys are going to apply AI in all these various applications and I don't want to buy a bucket of AI, I want all my other applications to work better, work faster, auto fill, auto select, take more and more of those manual steps out of the process. That's right, augment the human mind in many ways. Come in at those points in the process where it can add value or give you insights that you wouldn't have otherwise had. Right, right. So Mason, I'm just curious from a product strategy point of view, you guys have made a lot of acquisitions. Got some new money in the war chest and a really solid team of senior execs that have worked together a lot. The band is back together as a big theme that I've seen all day today. So when you're looking at kind of buy versus build decisions, what are some of the things you're thinking about as you kind of continue to build out this suite of kind of cross-functional capability? We're always looking at things worth in the buy, build or license. So there are things that as we're looking at them right now and I'm not going to mention them, the decision is between buy, build or license in certain types of capabilities. Really depends on what's the maturity of the technology out there. Is it something that we need, that others have right now and they've got strong, could be a strong OEM business model or could be something that is a rapidly growing area that we need to get in on, own it and tune it for our needs specifically? Right, well great story and I'm sure you're going to see that orchestrate stuff all over the place. That's what we hope, as we're working towards. All right, so say your Mason, thanks for taking a few minutes to tell your story and inviting us here to Conga Connect West. Great, nice to talk to you, Jeff. Oh, my pleasure. All right, you're watching theCUBE. Like I said, we're at Conga Connect West at Salesforce Dreamforce. Thanks for watching, see you next time.


Dreaming stream is coming out. I mean Florida man was disappointed. You're from New York. Yeah Yeah, my one of my main goals in life is to not be a fark story. I Think I will I'm capable of never becoming a fark story I want to only be a fark story if it's the right kind true like cuz there is the hero tag That's what I'm saying. You can get the hero tag, but the majority of the tags you can get are not hero. I Don't want to get asinine. I don't want to get obvious. I definitely don't want to get scary or sick Man buys house in HOA murders board of HOA jury acquits that hero That would get the hero tag All right, I think the stream is going everything looks good. We'll just go It's Tuesday, November 20th 2018. I'm rim. I'm Scott and this is geek nights tonight We are hype for packs unplugged. It's coming up and it's the second one ever So one of the things I have to do in the course of my job because I'm like a business manager owner type these days Like a product manager is I got to like go to team dinners like take a bunch of people out to stuff and like hang out with all You know the people who actually build because I don't build anything I just decide what to build and how to build it and when to build it the easy part to it It's surprising how hard that part is sometimes But so I'm at one of these things and I got a team that's pretty cool They're all like really gamer II so we're talking about like game stuff and it's fun And then at one point someone's like one of my one of my like senior engineers who's real good says something like yeah I really love classic console gaming. Uh-huh. Is he gonna say some PlayStation game PlayStation 2? I picked up used a game cube So already like I'm already feeling old like you can see like rims feeling of age escalates rapidly at this point And I got the original Smash Brothers for it Yeah, that was the first one right there couldn't have been one before that Yeah, this conversation just made me feel Incredibly old so on the internet today. So in these in the Nintendo switch subreddit Everyone's of course like Metroid Prime 4. When's it coming? When's it coming? But people have basically been based on no information whatsoever, right?   Yeah, the Nintendo survey the problem is Nintendo is incapable of like working In anything other than the Nintendo silo. Yeah is the problem like they have they're set in their ways Nothing will ever fix that. It's just But I'm increasingly like I've gone to board game nights with like my engineers and coworkers And the thing is these people are not that much younger than me like they're in their late 20s And yet the gulf of like knowledge of the history of games among people who are deeply invested in games It's terrifying to me partly because no, we got to when we got to our IT I grew up with the NES and slightly Atari 26 I grew up with Atari 2600 7800 all 16 television and then even into the you know the end of high school There was the n64 and such right and then the PlayStation 2 came out while we were in college. So then Even though I was only in school for you know already in the second third year of our IT People that were only one or two years younger came in and they grew up with PlayStation. They somehow did not see How did they skip? I would or I saw some Atari 2600 How did someone two years younger than me miss ten years plus of games now?  They don't know yep But what bothers me I guess what bothers me isn't so much that like people younger than me don't know the things I know cuz that's expected like that's how the world works time advances what I didn't expect is how rapidly the memory hole Like devours these things because I know a lot about gaming from before the era I played games and yet most people I encounter Literally know nothing about the era before they started gaming even if they are deeply invested in the hobby Well, I think the thing is even people who even just current knowledge, right? There seems to be this huge gap between people who read the internet and People who just do a thing. Well, it's weird There are people who will go to the store. They'll go to GameStop. They'll buy games They'll take them home and play them and they'll play a lot of games and spend all day playing games and never read a single video game website or magazine and thus they know nothing and whereas I grew up reading Video game magazines, which were basically just ads for video games And then video game websites So I knew things as I seek out information about things But the internetty people I meet who are a little younger than us They seek out information about new things, but they have never like looked into the shroud of the past like They were I overheard some co-workers last week Debating what the first Final Fantasy game was because they weren't sure I don't fantasy one They weren't but they weren't sure because like when you know they there can they just Google What was the first Final Fantasy game because that's like what happens to me is I don't spend time like let me go learn about the past I just if I happen to have a question. Yeah, I Google it and slowly over time I remember where to Google to get a thing and also the old one when I remember the actual information I just remember where I saw the info me when I Google something like that the generally There's one of two results either there's an answer and now I know or there isn't a clear answer in which case I just found something amazing that I want to like track down and figure out Did you go set the Final Fantasy people street? Yeah, I I literally like stepped into the conference room I was like, hi, none of you know me the first Final Fantasy was Final Fantasy 1 and it came out on the Nintendo Entertainment system in the Famicom and I walked away before they could react And I just left them in the room Why'd you be like I grew up playing that game? I sold it back to Funko No, no what I actually said the words I said were like, hey, you guys don't know me But what I said was in my professional expertise And I started to just explain to them the history of Final Fantasy and then I left and it was pretty funny But yeah, there is some interesting news So most of you don't seem to follow the world chess championships. No because chess is hella boring I would rather watch many sports that I hate and call boring than watch chess Which I respect chess players more than some of the athletes Fucking curling right and I respect people who play chess more than I respect people who curl I I would rather watch the curling.  I so I don't watch the chess live because I don't care that much But I had I do follow chess because I like to look at the results of games and Step back through because you get up this stuff like there's a million chess websites We can look and see like what the fuck happened in this game with commentary I don't I pay attention to the developments in the chess world Slightly about as much as I pay attention to developments in the go world or the counter strike for home Yep, right where it's like ah, there's a there's a thing happening, but like I don't follow it So I'm gonna set the stage here the thing that's been happening for the last decade or more is that and we did the funny thing Is the reason I'm bringing this up is that I've been saying this in lectures and Publicly and professionally for like a goddamn decade and I I am being proven right and I'm very happy about this But happens to me all the time. Yeah, and I'm this one is interesting though because math people are backing up my like I Like I didn't know the math and I just made a lot of assumptions about the math and the math is backing me up But basically you know, it's like guessing about peepers and yeah So here's the deal chess Humans are not competitive in chess and haven't been for a long time No, even shitty AIs are better than any human can possibly be at chess Usually when people commentate chess like I was the one chess I did watch a few years ago the last time I paid slightly more attention the Commentators were basically the computer would figure out the move and while they were the best move and while they were waiting for Then they would have the computer generate like other possible moves that would also be good Yeah And like top five moves from the computer and then while the person is still thinking on their turn and then they would use the computer's best moves as You know aid in discussing what move the person was going to make yep So basically humans like cannot compete in chess against even shitty AIs so Human chess as in terms of strategy has diverged a lot from what the AIs do because that space is still going It's AI versus AI and the chess that they play is fucking weird as shit Right, but the a lot of people I think at one. I don't know This is a while ago years ago that I read that this was happening But that people were basically learning from the AI that's part two intentionally trying to play like them as much So humans who are trying to be good at chess are studying what the AIs are doing, but that's your it's many year old news Yeah, so the predicted outcome of this is that like the attractors in chess? Like if you play randomly, what is going to be the result of your actions over time and like skilled players and all this? but chess probably devolves into a draw in long and play and My evidence for that is not the current math because I don't know it like I'm not a mathematician that ship sailed But because as I studied chess to write Geek Nights panels and just my own amusement It seems like most of the rules changes to chess in modern history have been to handle increasingly complex situations that ended draws Like draws are the end result right of chess games The only way to fix this is to change the rules of chess itself so that a draw cannot happen and the problem Because that would be nothing like chess it really looks like Players can force a draw pretty much if they want to which is the end game of checkers Checkers is proven chess. It's not proven seems likely so humans can study AIs But they can basically study what the AIs are doing to be able to take a game where they might lose and Guarantee that they'll draw the game to move on to the next game. I wonder right so so far checkers We've proven is a there's a soft proof. There's not a hard proof. They have not explored every game stage chess looks like it Yes, I wonder is are there any out there any perfect information games? That we've proven like oh, it's a win or a lot or anything like that. So that way there's a bunch Okay, otherwise they'd be like whoa, maybe all games like this Yeah, our draws and we could maybe make a higher level rule So I guess not go. I don't think has a draw state at the end Checkers definitely both players Way too far out. We probably won't live to see the problem with chess is that The end game can get into all these loops where the game will be a draw and there's like all the rules You move your dude back and forth. I move my king back and forth. La la la la So you can tell an elegant provision put in a rule for like oh, she uh, yeah So they did chess has a ton of rules like oh, she to ensure that loops don't happen Where a game that's entering a loop state is a guaranteed draw And I think the only thing human players will be able to do in the future Is if they're losing force of draw So the world chess championships that are going right now have had eight Crazy epic games that have all ended in draws And they can only have four more games that I will bet money will end in draws And after that they're going to go into sudden death Which will probably end in draws. So chess people are probably gonna be mad at me for this and it's probably hella wrong Right, but I want to say it anyway because that's how I do So I'm just going to admit that it's hella wrong to begin with right But usually in my experience my very weak experience playing chess, right? Which doesn't even rise to the level of high because I'm like I'm not even high school chess club level, right? It's lower level than that. It's nerd who knows how to play chess We should play a game of chess against each other. It's been a while. I won. Yeah, you did We should play one now and livestream it the point is is that at my level of I know how to play chess And that's about it Uh, most of the draw stalemate end states involve one player moving their king back and forth So it can't be killed and the other player moving an attacking piece back and forth into a like check You can't kill me check.  All right. That's the thing that I have seen personally the most common State if any now I do know that you probably didn't know all the rules for draws I have no idea what the rules are but that's more complex than you think I'm sure they are but I'm saying is that that's the most common state that I see and that's definitely a draw Right. Yep. And but in that situation It's like well the other player who's doing who's moving me say queen back and forth Also has their king like hiding out in the back somewhere, right? You know, otherwise they would have lost already, right?  Here's the problem because you're on defense Here's the simplest problem with that because I don't want to get it like this I don't want to make the show about this.  So no checkers is a force. I mean I'm at tic-tac-toe I said checkers my brain had a picture of tic-tac-toe.  Well, you know what?     I think the future will be The kind like the what as chess is a sport will probably die out in popular like even like chess circles in the long run But I think you're going to see a class of players of games who are the professional board like abstract board gamers That move from game to game to game and when they solve a game To the point that the ais are better than them and they have like draw state or whatever They move on to another game or they do like Triathlons of that's what I try that's what I try to do but I get no respect for it If I just if I play a boring game like chess then I get respect But if I play minority games get no respect.   We'll see who's equally good at making decisions given five seconds. It'll be funny. Here's the tiebreaker You just they go to another table. You got to play go against each other now. Good luck. Have fun I hope you know the rules chess chess boxing. Let's go The chess boxing is literally what was just suggested in the in the chat Chess boxing is a good sport I'm like chess so in some other news before we get into the bigger news about this about these kinds of games We're going to do a whole show on this game probably as soon as we play it some more So key for chess problem if you're not aware and the problem is You didn't talk about this like that's already I don't think so Okay, but really briefly they're unfortunately named decks And they're basically if you get an unfortunately named deck they filtered out all the bad words But there could still theoretically be combinations of normal perfectly normal words that result in bad words now, honestly 99 percent of the ones that I've seen that are designated bad Are in my opinion fucking hilarious. Oh, yeah, and I would pay extra for those decks Because they're not tournament legal What they're doing is if you have a deck that is bad, which you can find out by scanning it into the app Yep, because its name is bad. They will give you two decks.  I want like the the flying bonerman of a rectile Cove or whatever's going to come out I would much rather have that deck than the two you're going to send me with boring names Yep, and I'm sure there'll be a point in the future where unfortunately named decks will be worth above market price to collectors There's already some Stores who are opening the decks like the retailers are buying the game wholesale Opening the decks sort of guessing by looking at the deck list like how you know strong the deck is Competitively and then selling them at like an adjusted price that they just randomly decide Yep, like I think this deck is going to kick some fucking ass I'll try I'll see if I can sell it opened for like 70 bucks instead of the normal cover price If the name was funny enough like yeah, no, they're not doing it based on the name They're doing it based on the card list which faces outwards. Yeah, that I wouldn't care about But if the name were funny enough that alone would be enough for me to pay extra. Yeah, I think uh You know on the one hand it's like well, I guess you can do that But on the other hand it would be kind of awesome to see the publisher just be like well We're not selling any products to your store anymore.  Yeah, I I'm I'm ambivalent on that issue Yeah, it's sort of like whatever. Yeah, we'll see what they do because I'm I don't like game retailers or game Publisher but there's some news for the other game that we haven't talked about a lot yet on gig nights artifacts All right, so artifacts if you don't know is valves entry into the card game world is the first new valve game since Dota 2 and as we've said the game looks really fun Like everything about this game looks great. It is also designed by Richard Garfield just like keyforges And it is a competitive collectible card game and it's based on dota But actually that's kind of good because it's sort of like hey, there's like three boards. You're managing It's really complex. It looks like a really fun game It's got a little bit of kernel blotto going on Like I was really hyped to actually play this game until I found out how they were selling the cards We talked about this in geek nights before I'm pretty sure They're going to sell you you can get in on the game for 20 bucks Which gets you like a starter set full of stuff which like old magic when I was a kid Yeah, 20 bucks would get me like a starter deck and a couple boosters Right if you want to buy more cards cost two dollars a pack, which is slightly more than hardstone cards Yep The only other way to get more cards is to play the competitive like drafting mode Right But where you like have to use tickets to play in a draft And then if you do well in the draft you could then somehow earn more free drafts And also more free draft tickets and also some cards Right or you can buy cards on the secondary market because you can sell cards on the steam marketplace Like if you get so many copies of a card you can sell them for money That that already is and then people can buy cards for money specific cards that nonsense What is wrong with you? So basically I as soon as I saw this news about how the game we monetize I said nope not touching it all not even gonna bother playing it Nope, nope, nope because even hardstone is sort of like well you pay a few hundred dollars a year and you have all the hardstone cards Yeah, pretty much It's still a lot of money But it's and it's it's worse than say the netrunner model because the amount of money you have to pay to Guarantee getting all the cards is very artifact looks fun enough I'd pay a hundred bucks a year to just get like all the cards Well, I would pay like if it was if they could just say hey, you're gonna get all the cards I would pay the 20 dollars to get in and if I played it a lot and Kept playing it and got way into it and stop playing all their card games because I was playing artifact all the time Then I would I would pay a monthly fee like 10 15 bucks a month if I just had every artifact card ever And I could play all I wanted Chris rimer points out in the chat Which I was going to say in a little bit.  I can buy a bunch of decks and just play and I'm good to go Yeah, well, it's a card and you get cardboard for your money Yeah, right I guess we'll last you could play key forge forever even 100 years from now I mean your cardboard doesn't disintegrate There is a there is a world where I could praise val for trying to do a different monetization model But the reality is what they picked they picked the worst possible one I don't well they really wanted to use their marketplace.  Yeah, not even bother trying to make a newer interesting game Makes like Billy and the snake man too. Yeah, just make a game just like our son Just like magic just like all the other card games you put out dudes and they fight Just you know mix it up a tiny amount make it slightly unique And just do the business model of you pay a flat fee and have all the cards And that's the only difference between us and the competition Oh, wow, I just looked up Billy versus the snake man. Okay I guess it's still around. I don't know. All right. Anyway, I'm not going to follow that thread any further because it's time for Was my thing yours was the spin the really good spin prices, right? That's good Things of the day. What do you got? All right, so when I was a kid and I was stuck home from school for whatever reason at 11 a.m Eastern time would be the prices right and I would watch that shit No matter what because it was really great and it had this is right. It's like a fantastic game show lots of old people Commercials but really great show really entertaining worth your hour while you eat lunch still good too in between playing video games Uh, the current host drew carry not as good as bob barker.   You get a dollar I saw a lot of people get a dollar on this wheel. It's basically like a one out of what? 20 something I always got real excited. It's yeah, it's like it's like a one There's only like 20 something slots on there right 0 5 10 20 30 30 Yeah, it's like 20 one and 20 shot of getting a dollar on there And you know with two spins you can add up to a dollar and win that way also, right? So You got to get imagine this show has been played five times a week For how many decades yep, so the odds are every crazy thing you can think of eventually There's going to be a situation where all the contestants get a dollar Well, this was a special not only did that happen? Obviously everyone got a dollar This was a special Event for the show's anniversary Or drew carers anniversary or whatever some kind of special event where you could win even more money on the wheel And boy did they win even more money on the wheel in some You know crazy luck event Which was again guaranteed to happen because the show's on five days a week with two Wheel spinning events per day with six people spinning That's 30 times people get to play this wheel spinning game every week forever So it's going to happen eventually and it did so there you go. You can see it happen I still we were talking about before the show, but it's funny that it happened during the special extra prize time I just I've wanted my whole life to spin that goddamn. I just wanted to because it looks like it's kind of heavy Right like it has some heft to it But also that it has like, you know, it's a well lubricated wheel that keeps going once you get it going with some inertia I remember as a kid I watched an episode where this big dude pulls it down And it just kept spinning and spinning and spinning and the point is I just I just really I just don't I don't care about winning I don't need to be on the show even though that would be fun also, right?  Yeah, but I just want to feel what it feels like to spin the wheel You know, just let me have a spin just so I can get a feel for it They should bring the wheel to like a comic con Yeah, I don't care if like you give me money or I'll even give you like a dollar Just let me feel what it feels like to spin the wheel I love the fact that even to this day they basically have Drew Carey using a weird like long stick microphone Well, that's the style exactly that's what I'm saying the show doesn't change but doesn't need to So my thing of the day is uh, it's more of a sciencey thing But a lot of people have green laser pens or green lasers because green lasers are really cool And you know green is the best color. Yeah green is the best color But you all know one don't shine lasers in your eye Not even red ones and two green laser pens are known to be particularly dangerous for a lot Much higher frequency than red and blue. Well, not necessarily blue, but much higher frequency than red so uh A lot of people because independent of this you can buy a lot of stuff on amazon these days and ebay So you can just get well, you could buy like wood burning lasers You could buy just engraving lasers or all kinds of stuff So the problem here in this video does a really good job of explaining it And it's like really detailed and they show examples and everything but here's the deal Green laser pens aren't just dangerous because it's green and because it's higher power They're extra dangerous because the same way he's not ultraviolet Ultraviolet rays are way dangerous because they're high frequency But like low frequency infrared waves aren't gonna hurt you bootleg crapo green lasers Generate the green color in a way that also generates a ton of infrared radiation But infrared is just heat.  Yeah, but it won't but it won't cancer you like an ultraviolet or gamma ray or something But it'll basically it'll blind you way bad Yeah So even the red laser will blind you way bad if it's well made red lasers and blue lasers tend to not have This additional danger of the infrared laser is higher frequency than the green laser Wouldn't that burn your eye also, but they don't they don't have that infrared the problem Don't point any laser at any human's eye unless they're a nazi in which case hold them down Yeah point lasers at both eyes But the problem basically is that the apparent danger of green lasers is way less than the actual danger Because if you buy a cheap green laser the odds are it generates the laser in a way that also generates tons of Super dangerous infrared radiation And the the lens that would block that radiation is definitely bootleg and counterfeit And this video shows like how to test your green laser pen To see if it's actually outputting a shit ton of infrared radiation Wouldn't you just point it at your hand and if it feels warm it's not not enough Watch the video. It's pretty good. Okay every question you've had is answered by this video Then it's a good video the video is very good goes into great detail I was watching you know if you have questions while you're watching a video and the video then answers the questions That's how I was watching a cooking video today So I was making chila cuiles and I was like and I was like where's the egg and then he's like Oh, I'm gonna fry an egg and I'm like hello. I said in two seconds. I'm like, whoa, he still hasn't gotten any egg in there He's like, I gotta fry egg now So in the meta moment the booklet book is a space odyssey. We'll read it soon. We've been busy Yep Packs unplugged we'll talk about in a minute because our whole show is about packs unplugged But uh, suffice it to say we will be there live doing two events learn and win portorico And the 40 tabletop games you must play advanced mode So we'll be there doing two pretty good panels. Otherwise, we're just gonna be in tabletop playing games Going to panels doing stuff.  We Got our first pack south panel. I'm gonna do the official announcement like that was fast We had a magfest magfest is before pack south. Uh, yeah, we we're doing between four and six magfest panels too many Yeah, the thing is you gotta play games you can you only have to be on four at most I might be on more without you because I know you tend to not want to be on as many I want to get in and play free games and go to the arcade You will not have to do personally more than four panels.   There's still like the schedule's not live yet Obviously tvd, but we will be there, but it packs out. We are going to be doing at least a brand new panel Uh, not rare game mechanics at least not yet. That's not on the schedule yet That we were probably doing that one at magfest, but a new one we haven't talked about at all Nostalgia versus game design. Okay, you can uh, guess what that one's gonna be about and you're probably wrong We're gonna make a lot of fun of mobas along the way And we're gonna talk about how wind jammers isn't actually that good But anyway, wind jammers out on the switch now. Yeah, so wind jammers too We'll see how wind jammers too ends up being no, it's out. Go buy it. I haven't touched it I think is there is definitely a some wind jammers in the e shop. I haven't bought Yeah So, yeah Packs unplugged we feel deserve some hype because we've talked we've done gig nines for so long over a decade Is it sold out yet? No, no that can you are any days sold out? Nope We have done such a big convention center and we're using way more space than we did last year Yeah, but this is like in a major area here, right? How could you know the east and west are sold out, right? South sort of gets really close to sold out almost Yep, right, but we can we put it in Philly, which for all its awfulness Maybe people, you know realized awful Philly was but You know as a lot of people live in near it and it's like how this is a pack so you can just go Why aren't you going yep? So one we've talked a lot like if you want to find our advice I'm like how to go to a con how to go to pack like we've talked about that shit for 13 plus years But I feel like it's worth it because we haven't done that kind of stuff in a while We feel like we did it. I feel like it's worth it to hype up packs unplugged and to sort of approach it Like it's a new convention and talk about like it in that sense So let's dive right in first packs unplugged is a packs It has all the accoutrement of our regular packs like all of it compared to packs east or packs west The only thing that is not at packs unplugged are video games and video game companies. Yep. It has concert Megaton it's got acquisition incorporated. It has an expo hall It doesn't have concert. I think it does. Uh, so at least it has main events But generally instead of concerts so far the main events have been like at a regular packs in main theater You'll see like acquisitions incorporated or like the c-team like that kind of stuff That'll be the main event during the concert slot at packs unplugged It's got a keynote which this year so last year the keynote at packs unplugged was not very good It was like the CEO of watsi and like it was pretty lame apparently the CEO of watsi is like a marketing guy and he was not the greatest public speaker and Yeah, it was it was disappointing Especially CEO of watsi. Well, again, they went down to the watsi hole But this time it is Jeremy Crawford the lead rules designer Of dnd and the games managing editor So in effect the person who is the boss of dnd at the current time Game wise You know in terms of like, you know the actual Game rules and stuff in the game as opposed to say someone who's managing like, you know Marketing of dnd, right?  Why can't they go?  But yeah, it's like I wish they would get people from the smaller More indie table-tied community or someone who's like someone who's broadly famous At the very least you think they would have had the uh, what's his name? Who did the the thornwood game for them? Whatever thorn watch game or really we need to get like morden canan But it's like just get anyone who's from the you know the not watsi There's other you know, even another tabletop game company, right? Even a bad one Right, it's like there's a guy who run Rio grand games with that with the cowboy hat. What's his name?  Yep. I would recommend if you're going to packs unplugged I'm still going to this keynote. Yeah, I go to the keynote every packs. I will do this forever It's still the person who's in charge of dnd right now in general while the like a lot of the more recent keynotes haven't been that great The majority of the keynotes I've been to have been great It's just I've been going a lot of taxes Did you see the dnd just came out with a box set that is I assume it's three books Which I assume must be players handbook dm's guide monster manual I assume those are the three books. I don't know about the other choice They would be but for the new it's obviously for whatever the newest edition is fifth edition, right?  It's happening All right, so the next thing it packs some plug that needs hyping is the key forge Which you talked about a little bit, right? But basically they're going all out with this game There's going to be like non-stop tournament events. There's going to be people selling it people demoing it, right? Like they're going all in on this game, which is a game We are obviously somewhat excited for so we will definitely be making at least one stop over in the key forge zone To see what's up probably to just buy the damn game because I order an amazon to keep it delayed So I might cancel that order and just buy it unplugged I doubt I will engage in the tournament scene or serious. No, no by by go over there. I mean literally go Oh, yeah, but I'm going to like the long run like I feel like a bunch of us are going to play a lot of keyforge Casually I learned from my netrunner days. I am not going to competitively play any fantasy flight games game I am only going to just because this one particular game Have us be published by them, but is not designed by anyone there I'm going to buy one copy of it and play it with people. I know according to the rules We know are right Well having played like a little bit like having interacted interacted with the game at packs west I feel it scratches the itch That I has been on the scratch since I stopped playing magic in middle school Yep Like that itch has been itching like I'm not going to pretend I haven't been feeling that itch You should have scratched it with some netrunner. No, the netrunner didn't scratch it. All right It didn't I but I played that much much better game probably better game. Yeah It is an objectively better game, but it didn't scratch that itch. I'm still not a hundred percent sure why Hearthstone On the toilet it has to be cardboard or it doesn't scratch it. Okay, you can't scratch yourself with No Can use a little electric So I feel like that we're going to do that a lot also Uh The tournament scene like the general like table top tournament tournament scene at packs unplugged is way better than the table top tournament scene At regular packs is because it is a primary part of packs unplugged Right, so if you regular packs is there are table top tournaments and quite a few they're very substantial But it packs unplugged It's like it's not a part of the table top department. It's its own department the tournament department and it is big time Big jump and also a thing to be aware of There is a small number of events that packs unplugged that you have to sign up for in advance But they are almost entirely either games where you have to do prep in advance like make a character to bring Or make an army of miniatures and bring it Or they are tournaments that need a large number of players Where they cannot organize the tournament at con and they have these like mega tournaments What do they actually call them like the packs championship series or something like that? Yeah, it's like these giant enormous tournaments and in order to I don't know if you have to register for them in advance But you can register for them in advance And that is simply because they can't have all that they have tons and tons of seats for these tournaments And they could not possibly register everyone on you know on site Yep, so this it's it's a good thing like as much as I philosophically am opposed to any pre convention sign ups for anything There are Limited cases of table top where it actually makes perfect sense and I feel like unplugged doing it right So if you want to play like the game where you bring a giant army Check and see if that's something you can sign up for in advance But yeah most tournaments at packs the way it works is you show up The day of you don't can't go a day ahead of time right because most some people have one day badges It won't be fair to them and at 10 a.m When pack starts you go to the sign up area and you put your name on the sheet if it's not full And now you're in that tournament you show up at the time you play in the tournament You try to win if you win you get a packs medal. Congratulations. Some tournaments which uh, Are might be run by non packs. They might be run by vendors or something like that In which case there may be prizes or who knows what or there may be other entry fees But those are not run directly by enforcers the the main tournaments that are on the schedule unless otherwise noted on there Are run by enforcers and they don't cost anything to enter other than signing up on the piece of paper So the omega thon at packs is always like a big deal and it's fun Like if i'm free i will watch omega thon rounds because they're really entertaining Yeah, why not, but the omega thon at packs unplugged They're still like working out exactly what kinds of games They're still like figuring stuff out But i want to point out i wonder if they will use my tumbling dice suggestion tumbling dot a packs custom tumbling dice Would you see tumbling lit if you see tumbling dice in the fodder out of the omega thon You just know that was all me i suggested that one and it was heard by people who are unplugged But what i will say is that it is a full out omega thon just like any other packs It's worth seeing these rounds, but especially the omega thon finale We'll talk about that at the end of our little hype show But round four of the omega thon at packs unplugged On friday is blockus Blockus is a game of goddamn skill Blockus i'm really i might like go watch this round like this i am personally extremely good at blockus I too am extremely good at blockus scott and i have both studied A classic opening moves and opening strategies to blockus I usually beat you at blockus though. When was the last time we played blockus? I can remember the last time i played blockus. Was that a recent packs?  That's the guy's job game Game lawyer tim fowers the ceo of fowers games Patrick leader owner crater director i think i've met steven mccarthur Pretty sure i've met him the director of leader games, which is publishes like a root and all that biz Right and scott gaeta. Sorry if i mispronounce your name other scott The president and publisher of renegade game studios, which i've heard of but don't know which games they make But that panel looks hella interesting that is at saturday at 10 a.m. I'll probably be there And while rim talks about something i will scroll down until i see the next awesome panel So what's cool is that a lot of the panels that involve publishers in general i pack sunplug They lean a little more toward the kinds of panels i tend to go to at packs dev because the thing is packs dev is interesting in that uh Most of the people who want to go to pack like who want to engage in the industry stuff like this are tabletop So It's hard for people who are in the tabletop industry to get out to packs dev because it's real expensive A lot of the tabletop industries in the east coast So i'm seeing a lot of these kinds of panels that packs unplugged that i normally would see at a dev Like the ceo panel and i think that'll be really interesting In general i feel like the panels game at unplugged will be more Specialized to the attendance of packs unplugged because there's a lot more overlap between the people who play tabletop games and the people who make and publish them than there is in video games So saturday at one there is a Ffg key forge creating the world's first unique deck game panel But i'm even though i just talked about how hype we were for key forge. I'm kind of met on this panel Maybe i'll go maybe i won't because richard garfield the designer of key forge is not on the panel Probably not it packs on plug either and it's mostly ffg people And also it's probably mostly going to be marketing for their game and maybe not too much good info I don't know maybe i'll watch that one on twitch afterwards if it's on twitch Maybe We'll see that's that's a maybe panel So here's the here's how you handle this like to be in pike hype for packs Especially a lot of people go to packs unplugged because it's kind of infiliate and easy to get to never been to a Packs before here is the absolute best way to decide what panels to go to download the guidebook app on your smartphone or whatever And Thursday or wednesday like before you go to the con or maybe friday morning while you're waiting for the keynote to start Just go through the schedule start on friday scroll all the way down go through saturday go through sunday Click on any panel where the title looks even remotely interesting Oh, here's a panel saturday it's all the good panels on saturday saturday at six executive women in tabletop. They're six women Right heather o'neill elaine chase cat tov and julia. I'm not going to talk about all their jobs Because it's just going to take too long. It's a mouthful Uh, but it's like these are like six ceo's ceo's vp's of global brand strategy for game companies How come none of them is doing the keynote? Why are they on this panel? Instead, I mean well, they should be on this panel and also do the keynote, but hey go to that panel Yeah, very good. So here's one.  This is going to go all the way to dry brushing and inking I kind of want to go to how long is it two hours? You think you can get me to paint an amazing owl bear in two hours You will paint. I think you know what's going to happen. You're going to paint it's going to paint a bear Like uh, it's going to look like that was that famous one where the jesus looks all messed up You were going to paint the best possible owl bear you could paint That is what will happen. Maybe I should go to this to cost money. Uh, no I think there's going to be so last year you have to register for it on friday at 9 a.m Because it's going to fill up obviously it's owl bear panel But that's the kind of shit that happens in packs unplugged that cannot happen at any other pack So in every packs I've ever been to that I can remember reaper miniatures has had a little paint and take booth Right.   Yeah, I think so The problem is we go to so many packs is they literally all together It was it was packed south last year after all the years. I wanted to do it I finally did it and that made me so hype. I was like, oh man I totally want to like, you know, not play any minis miniature games like war hammer But like by a tiny amount of paint and a tiny amount of minis and paint a few when I'm bored So I bought the most basic starter set that's got like a skeleton in it because skeletons skeletons are real fun to paint It's all about inking like inking is what makes a skeleton look good and I have yet to open Mostly because I it's not that I haven't had a free weekend It's that I haven't I have to find like some sort of material to cover my very expensive tiny table So I don't get paint on it So but basically the way to handle this like I said look through the schedule Click on every panel where the title looks even like minimally interesting and read the description Look at the people and if you and think to yourself answer this one question If I had nothing better to do would I go see this the answer is yes Just add it to your scheduling guidebook. And then when you're at the con Don't worry about going to all those panels like you're gonna have your short list of like the three things You don't really want to go see but feel otherwise just like like everything at them all to your schedule Anytime you're bored just look at your guidebook and see hey What panel is on like next that I said I might want to go to And if you're bored and it's there just go to it That is like the best way to maximize your packs because anytime you get downtime You've got like a guaranteed backup thing to go do speaking of thorn watch guy, which I remembered his name mike selenker Right, uh, and I said he should do the keynote, but here he is doing a panel sunday at one called This sounds like a panel. I would do this is a puzzle.  They're good panels, but too I had a long conversation where he drunkenly explained this in detail to me It'll be a good panel. I'm sure I will be yeah, because we uh Think about this a lot of these panels are the kinds of things that you'll hear us arguing about in panels Just people smarter than us who are deeper in the industry Will argue about it with more information than we have Also, I just want to point out, you know, if you are the kind of person which is a lot of people Who really want to play some rpgs?  I see some star wars rpg If you want to get your rpg on the danger room lark by mystic realms, whatever the hell that is sound Maybe it's based on the x-men danger room. I don't know. I just want to point out I don't know. I've never heard of it Sunday morning. If you want to win a packs tournament guys There is a 16 player single elimination connect four tournament Oh, connect four is a solid fucking game If you go you can you can start right now go online and learn how to be perfect at connect four It won't take you very long practice it a few times against your friends Yep practice by playing it online against an ai learn the backups Learn the the guaranteed strat and learn the backup strat if you're the wrong player Right, and then basically you will probably face in the final someone else who did the same thing Yep, and then it'll come down to do you go first or second? Yep But anyway, that's that's an easy easy win of a packs medal. Yep But this this is a good schedule like there's good stuff in here I also want to point out again Also, if none of those rpgs are interesting to you or maybe they're not at a good time on your schedule RPGs games on demand is going to be there What this is if you don't know what they're at many packs is as well as other conventions is a little booth or an area You go there with your friends or maybe you meet up with some strangers there. Who knows and There's rpgs there. There are gms just waiting for players And as soon as I did this one year at packs west I gm'd like three or four rpgs in the games on demand area And you just wait you when I was a gm. I just went there.  They looked at the menu and they're like they wanted to play an rpg right then there and now As soon as there were enough people I brought them over to a table. I ran a one-shot rpg session I set them on their way and even though I thought only maybe one and a half of those sessions was good I got excellent feedback in all the sessions So if you want to play rpg Tell them you pack something plugged you can't you cannot miss this is your chance all those of you're like Oh man, I never get to play rpg. I watch rpg on twitch.     It's kind of a it's a cool thing. I'm glad they do it Uh the pin like all the packed stuff like the pin trading is just just there Table top is so big. There's like, oh, so if you haven't been to a packs recently There's a new thing in tabletop called first look Packs are started at last packs unplugged But it has reappeared at every packs all year and it's gonna be at every packs forever First look the deal if you don't know is it's not like regular tabletop where there's like an area where everyone plays carcazone At an area where you play whatever It's an area where there are games already set up with the rules sitting there And enforcers who have tried to spend as much time as they could learning the rules so that they could teach anyone who walks Up so you can go into this area see a game that is not out yet or not out in america We had expert enforcers go to s in bgg con and all these other board game events that are conveniently scheduled right before packs Unplugged to collect the newest and hottest board games that are unavailable still in the united states or hard to obtain Bring them here to teach them to you so you can have the first look at them It's really great and amazing to just sit down at some brand new game and have an enforcer Expertly teach you and a bunch of other people how to play it and then be available to answer questions While you play it and when you're done playing it walk away from the table And the game is set up for the next group of people The only thing I can tell you though is that the first look area at packs unplugged As hard as there's a line is very crowded because a lot of people so the real secret You got to go to the first look area at pack south and literally any other packs But pack south it is the least crowded.  I really want to play that that meeple circus That was in first look last year, right?   You don't want to go to New Jersey I could yo do you want to I could do that? I don't know that's I don't know I'll see if it's uh if it's possible see if it's possible Emily. We're going to like a film screening But that's in the morning. So it wouldn't really impact us. We have no plans This is uh, this is my like don't go anywhere for the holidays here. So I'm just I'm making no plans I'm just relaxing the thing is if you go to New Jersey We take the train there and then I don't know if a car will be big enough to put Everyone in to take us to yeah the the destination might just have to get me to Q gardens and I'll deal with the E I don't know. I can work from home on Friday. I'm working on Friday to save vacation day. So Oh, I am uh going back. Oh, it's another thing. You have to get home somehow. Yeah I'm because I'm just going to go back to Connecticut because I'm not working. I'm right Yeah, we'll figure it out worst case. We'll just stay home.  Yep small warehouse plus war the main the main strategy is you want to take after Take as few actions as possible, right? Like if I have to go mayor and then a bunch of nothing happens and then I have to go All right. Now I'll do build it, right? It's like, you know, if I well, I guess we build her then mayor It's like it was for the galaxy you want everyone you want to line it up So everyone else is taking the actions you need in the order you need so that on your turn You're like you're getting turns ahead of other people. Yep.   It's going to be amazing All right, I think we're good. We're done. I think the blab seal is down.  I want to watch this game