Hey guys, I want to be real brief. Some people have asked why is Israel so important and do we focus too much on Israel? Well, the reason why Israel is important is not so much about Israel. As a matter of fact, it's not about Israel at all. It's not even about us. However, we are actors in this. So too is Israel. So too really is the rest of the world. But really, what's more important or should I say who's more important is God and his word. God makes promises not just to us, but he's made promises to the nation of Israel. More specifically, not so much to the nation of Israel, but to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob. Remember, God has given a covenant. The covenant that was given was an unconditional covenant. It was not predicated upon Abraham or anyone else doing anything. This is God making a covenant. God makes the covenant. He's the person that's responsible for keeping the covenant and to making sure the covenant comes to fruition. And so if the covenant does not come about, then that means that God cannot be trusted. And what does the covenant say? Well, we see it ratified in Genesis 15 where the two with animals are cut in half and then the smoking oven, the fire comes through and walks through. And Abraham is to the side sleep. But we see some of the tenets of the covenant being spoken up in Genesis 12, 13. I'm sorry, 12, two and three. And he says that he will bless him. He will be a great nation and meaning also his descendants. But in verse three, he says that through him, all the families of the world will be blessed. Now, this is God making a statement. It's not, he's not doing so because Israel's a great nation. He wants to give them promises. Israel wasn't even a nation at the point at that time. And so God is making a promise. And the question is, is God going to fulfill his promise? Now, it's interesting to note that all of the promises that he's given to Israel specifically have never been fulfilled, have never come to fruition yet, meaning they've never enjoyed all of the land that was promised and to have peace. And for the people there to have a heart for God that has never in the history of the world been the case. And so did God miss that? Well, surely he didn't miss that. And so if God is going to make a promise, it's important for us to know that he is going to carry out that promise.  We don't have a God at all. However, I'm here to say that we do have a God worth listening to. We do have a God worth worshiping. We do have a God that will keep his word. Keeping his word for Israel is important for us. Why? Because he gave us his word also. It is vitally important that we can trust God's word. Remember, he's not a man like us who would lie. And so when he makes the statement of what he's going to do with Israel, he means that he's the one that tells Israel he's going to take them out of the land.  And after he does so, he's going to start working on their heart, but not completely. He tells us that he's not going to completely change all of Israel heart, all of all of their hearts. There's going to be a spirit of stupor, a partial hardening on Israel's heart, which we see that. But then he says though, and Paul lets us know that God is not finished with Israel. The promise that he's made with him, he's going to fulfill them. And it's not as though God has decided, you know what? Israel, Jews, I'm moving you to the side. I'm going to fulfill my promises and bring someone else in to take your place. No, because he could have did that with the Amalekites, with the Hittites, to the Jebusites. Could you imagine if God would have said, you know what? Israel, you're out. The Canaanites are in. You're out. Israel, the Philistines are in. He could have done so. They were no less wicked than us as Gentiles are. And so God made plans. He made a promise specifically for them. But sometimes we feel as though because God made promises to Israel that he didn't love us. Well, no, because they have a promise that means that we don't have a promise. And our promise is that he won. The Bible tells us that those that are in him were in him before the foundation of the world that God chose us to be in him. And I'm using the exact verbiage correctly because according to the grammar, he did so. He chose us to be in him before the foundation of the world and his promise is that we will have eternal life. The reason why Israel is important is because God's promises are important. The reason why God's promises are important because he's made promises to us as well, that those of us that are in him, we shall never, ever see or taste death.  His promises can be trusted. We could, if we can trust his word that he's given to Israel, then how can we trust that he won't go back on his word in relation to our salvation? That if we place our faith in him, then he is faithful. Remember the Bible says that if we confess our sins, then he is faithful and just to cleanse us and to forgive us. And so if we can't trust that, that he said then that we can't trust what he says over here pertaining to us. That's why Israel is important. And remember, the promises aren't through. God is not through with us and he's not through with Israel. Israel as a nation will come to her Messiah when we don't know. Obviously we see all this chaos is happening, but they will. Rest assured, no matter what they've gone through, and there's going to be a time, according to the Bible, where it's going to get a lot worse. Imagine that. How bad we're seeing it now, how bad we saw during the Holocaust. It's going to get worse for Israel, but this is what God is going to do to bring them to bring her to her knees. Remember, God promised, if you don't remove these people from the land, then they're going to be a problem. And then he states that I'm going to leave them there for you. So this is going to be something that's going to happen and continue to happen, but he's doing so to show his love for them. I know it's hard to see. Sometimes you can't see what God is doing, but sometimes you don't need to just trust his word. Same for us. And we can see, many of us, if we've trusted in him, can see how he has carried, shown himself to be trustworthy and has brought us through. And at the same time, while we struggled, we grew from it. And so the importance of what's happening with Israel, both now, the past and in the future, can be something that we can see for ourselves.  He's not a man that he should lie. He's a God of his word. And so we can trust what he said about Israel. Every single prophecy that he's given has come true, except those of a second coming, which means everything that he said about us, we can also take to the bank as well. And so that's why Israel is important, not because of Israel's sake, but because of his own word sake. And so we can trust him and rest assured in his word and his promises. Amen.


They took their time, but eventually most global fast-food chains have made it to India. There are more on the wish list, but they will have to be prepared for a certain alteration to their menu. One product that brings all these brands to their knees when they enter India is Paneel. And the Paneel lobby seems to be infiltrating its way through the food chain.  That is understandable though as the style of cooking originated in the Indian subcontinent as did Paneel. But here is a list of food that was never originally visioned with it in between or on top, but they just have to include it when they enter India. And why? Well, who better than Seema Arora Nambiar of McDonald's India to answer that? We do know that a large part of our country is vegetarian. Paneel actually adds a premiumness to the whole vegetarian repertoire that every menu really has. On the other side, from a culinary standpoint, I think it's a fantastic protein to work with. It's actually the non-vegetarian replacement in a lot of means and which is why it became critical for our menu to be able to have something to do with paneel, still be global in flavor and taste. Right, but why did a chain like yours that was never started with the intention of serving paneer burgers do so? The original burger was always meat. Right, so I think there are a couple points. So one, I mean, if I talk about it from a pure marketing standpoint, I think it is, it's very clearly the premium most vegetarian item that you can ever get. You know, because even when you see a lot of the international guys come in, some of their questions, a lot of them actually come to India and only eat the paneer burger when they come to visit us because they don't get it anywhere else. Well, let's put it another way. How badly will business be affected if you were to stop paneel items all together? From a business perspective, I think it completes the menu. It would be a very, very incomplete vegetarian menu if you didn't have the paneer side of it because paneer is really the premium part of the vegetarian menu just as you would probably have a whole muscle chicken breast which would be the part of the non-vegetarian menu. And as a result of it, from a consumer standpoint, I think the expectation very clearly is they do expect to see that premiumness when I want to indulge. One of the reasons most customers give us for going out is celebration and with family. At that point, if you do not have that completeness with the vegetarian menu, it will be hard for customers to come to you because finally, otherwise, you're pretty much left, you know, between a potato and maybe a few lentils that you can use. Since it is highly unlikely that paneer will ever be banned, it might be a smart idea to start developing a taste for it if you haven't already as that may just be all you're left with if the current state of food policing continues.


What's going on here everyone? Sam here with late sports cards, ripping 21-22, Penina Mosaic, basketball, choice and fast break, 10 box break number 4, random team style. Here's a look again at your random results. As always, you can find these on the website under the results tab as well as the link in the chat. Dude, there's so many good names in that. That is a crazy, crazy class. Yeah, Kobe of course is gonna have on-card stuff. Um, God Bradley Beals another one that comes to mind. Um, dude, if we pull something big like an Anthony Davis or a Dame or something, God that'd be awesome. Kawhi, Kawhi would be so cool to pull. Michael Kidd Gilchrist and Kemba will probably be in there, I doubt if you can imagine. Isaac Coroblew to 85 for the Cavs. For us, I was talking to Donnie about this while the video was starting. Is it true that, you might know this, Penini didn't make Deon Waiters, oh God. Since Penini didn't make cards in 2011, at least they didn't make, I don't think they made IMAX, so I think that's everybody from 11 got their rookies that year too. Demacia Sabonis, Josh Giddy, John and Kamega, or else that's mainly just gonna be like Beal and what's his name. Um, few other guys too. Kyle Lowry. Pink, Dearon Sharp, Rookie for the Nets to 20. Believe so, yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think they made IMAX that year, so all the 2011 guys will be in there. So that's like Kawhi, which is big. Kawhi is I'd say probably the biggest chase out of 11. Who was the first overall pick in 11? I don't remember. I'll top my head. Clint Capella, how do I not remember that? 285. Oh, it's Kyrie. Kyrie. Evan Mobley. Mitchell and Io DeSumo. So I think that'll have Kyrie's RPAs in there, I think. Yeah, Kyrie, Clay, Kawhi, like Dreymont Green will probably be in there. There's a few other names, Scotty Barnes from 11 that are pretty big. Yeah, Lillard's actually 2012, which is good. So like Lillard and Beal and a few other guys. Jimmy Butler, all NVA. Pismac Piumbo. Oh, hold the phone if we're pulling Pismac Piumbo. How about Brandon Knight? You guys want Brandon Knight RPAs? That's what I want. Greg Monroe. Colin Slow, Greg Monroe. There's Isaiah Stewart. We've got a Jerry Lucas for the Warriors on a fast break signature. It's a nice one there. Yeah, Butch for Philly. That's true. That's true. Oh, Michael Kidd Gilchrist, dude. If I don't pull the Michael Kidd Gilchrist Logo Man RPA, Marcus Smart, Jared Jackson. I failed you all as a breaker if I don't pull a Michael Kidd Gilchrist. I gotta find it. I have a Michael Kidd Gilchrist shirt, Jersey. It's like the most random one I own. There's Luca Garza, Disco. I do kind of low key want to get a Michael Kidd Gilchrist Bobcats shirt. I think that'd go kind of hard. There's Obi-Top and Disco. I do. Yep. I have the teal one from the Hornets. The teal ones from the Hornets, I do. I do. The most broken jump shot in NBA history. Yeah, the six person Logo Man, dude. Those are awesome. Miles McBride. There's Jalen Suggs, Disco variation. A lot of times, Franz Wagner, Cam Thomas, and Scotty Barnes. A lot of times they'll all be from the same college too. It's like, I know there's a guy who's a big Kentucky fan. He has the six person Kentucky Logo Man. There's some names on that one. It's like AD. God, it's so funny. It's AD, Brandon Knight, Michael Kidd Gilchrist, and it's like Doran Lamb, Marcus Teague, and one other guy too. I think there's Logo Man books in that too, I think. That might have been a different year, but I think. Oh, Jimmy Butler, obviously. Jordan Poole to 85. There's LeBron James. Yeah, they've got ones that are six different guys on Logo Man, which is kind of wild. Jalen Green rookie, Harshon Brooks, Davion Mitchell, and that's a legend. Norris Cole, the Cole train for the Heat. Bro, how'd we miss Norris Cole? Anthony Davis, 13 of 85. The Morris Twins, oh God. There's Cade Cunningham, Cam Thomas, Corey Kisbert, Marcus and Markief. Disco MPJ, Disco Auto, Kristaps Porzingis. Nice one there for the wizards. Nice KP. Going to Washington, that is the Ragey. There you go, Rhett. Yeah, Valentinus, Jimmer. Jimmer Ferdat is in there, that's right. Clint Capella. Purple Dennis Schroeder for the Rockets to 50. Scoop chest. Good lord, dude. There's Quintin Grimes, Rowan Thailand, John Morant. What's it called? How about Bernard James? How old was I when Jimmer was relevant? That's Kevin Durant. Bless you. Marvin Bagley. That's true. That is, what's his name? Cade Cunningham. Franz Wagner. Chris Middleton, too. That's a solid one. How old was I when Jimmer was relevant? When was Jimmer super relevant, like 2010, 2011? Eric Gordon. So I was in middle school. Jalen Green. So yeah, I was, that Jimmer was very relevant and it was very annoying because everybody would just shoot paper in the basket and yell Jimmer. There was multiple people that I knew with Jimmer Ferdat. There's Moses Moody, Variation, Bones Highland, Shanghai Sharks, legend Jimmer Ferdat. Yeah, so I was probably like 10 or 11 or maybe 12.  Will Barton to 20, 18 of 20.  Josh Giddy. It was like 40 points a game, dude. That was insane. Then he got Sacramento King, Scotty Barnes, Austin Rivers, Infornier, Tramon, Grape Crowder. Yeah, true. There's Lou Dort, Purple to 50, 38 to 50 for the Thunder. Franz Wagner. Trey Murphy. Chris Dorthe. Disco, OG Anubi. What's up, Jess? There's a Trey Mann, Rookie Otto for the Thunder. Nice one there on the fast break. Rookie Otto. Cam Thomas, Rookie. Scotty Barnes, debut. Chris Ball. Let's go, Mellow. Blue Shack. Shaktis, 12 of 85. Little Lakers. Jalen Green and Evan Mobley on that one. Let's go. Evan Mobley, debut. Josh Giddy. Kaminga and Curry. National Pride. 37.3. Oh my god. That's insane, dude. That's so insane. Granted, he wasn't in a very good conference. There wasn't a lot of like competition, but still. Roy Hachimura. Probably the Shanghai Sharks, gotcha. There's Mike Conley, Mosaic. Anthony Simons, Disco. Greg Brown is at Saad. White Howard's better in Taiwan. Yeah, that's true. White Howard's scary in Taiwan. Bowen Thailand, Rookie. Variation is King. Cunningham. Nice one there for the business. It's not a bad one, H3. It's definitely not a bad product. We had a really good case of inception the last time we did it. Really good case. I think he plays in Taiwan illegal. Pretty sure he still plays in Taiwan right now. Blue Josh Giddy. Nice one there to 85. Seven of 85 for the Thunder. Shramer. Highway Knees basketball legend. White Howard. Bill and Brooks Disco. Otto Keldon Johnson for the Spurs. Nice one there, Spurs on the combo spot going to Alexandros. One of their main pieces right now. Bones. There's a Mowgli debut. Blue McCall Bridges, 285. Did he really, Joshua? That's cool, Russel. I didn't know you lived over that. That's awesome. Rough to watch. Just go Bradley Beal, Joshua Primo, Frans Rookie, Cam Thomas, Scotty Barnes on that run. Just go Jay Chantate. Imagine we pulled the Nebula show angles. That'll be literally the ultimate jingle. That'll be the legitimate ultimate jingle. Patrick Beverly. There's P.J. Tucker. 37 of 50. Josh Giddy Rookie. Forrest, we need to put a bounty on the Joe Ingalls Nebula so you can totally jingle all our friends. Kai Jones Rookie. Disco, another Kate Cunningham. Very nice. $25. There's campaign. Disco RJ Barrett. One more box of fast break. It'll be about 10 minutes behind or so. Purple Miles McBride, 41 of 50. Cade debut. I'm going to tell you a really funny story when we're out in the break room at some point. Scotty Barnes, Disco Rookie. I think you'll actually find it really funny because it's pretty funny. Scotty Barnes. Remind me to tell you a story out in the break room. They're like in-between videos. Okay. It's funny. I think you'll enjoy it. Disco Jalen Green. Pink. Nikhil Alexander Walker to 20. 13 of 20 for the Jazz. Jalen Green. KD Disco. Nice one there for the Nets. Ben Sennens Blue. 74 of 85 for the Nets again. Marcus Smart. Fast Break Auto Dwayne Washington Jr. again. Let's go into the Pacers. Nice one there. Indiana. Evan Mobley Rookie. Donovan Mitchell and Io Disunemu. Davion Mitchell Disco, National Pride. Greg Brown. Disco, Richie Jackson for the Clippers. Silver, Jared Allen for the Cabs. Disco, Kevin Love for the Cabs. Where do you end up signing the Heat, right? I feel like it's the Heat. Yeah. Scotty Barnes. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. No, he did. Oh, he did. Because they played like the other night. Oh, gotcha. Nice. James Booknett. Disco, Cam Thomas on the variation. Evan Mobley. Josh Giddy and Shaq. They played the Bucks like last night, right? Last night. He made like, uh, he just checked in. Yeah. Nice. I think you're starting there. Was he really? Wow. I thought I'd seen him on the court of tip-offs. Choice. Donnie is an NBA savant. For greens. Expert. I was going to guess by context, but that's not true. Jeremiah Robinson Earl and Josh Giddy on your choice exclusives. You've got Harrison Barnes, Silver, Evika Zubak on the mosaic. Otto is going to be Rookie, Jaden Springer going to the, um, uh, what's it called? Sixers. Donnie basketball. Oh, yeah. To 88, Denny of Dia. Wizards. Jimmy Butler to 88 for the Heat. And Zion to 88 for the Pelicans. Nice couple of exclusive cards there. Second box of choice. Second box, oh, choice. Io De Soonmu. And Moses Moody. There's Marvin Bagley, Luca Garza. Nice. We've got a Bradley Beale on the autos, going to the Wizards. Two Beale autos and two breaks. Very nice. Congrats Washington. Washington actually did really well. Ray, congrats, man. Uh, to 88 is Trey Mann for the Thunder, Rookie. Deandre Hunter for the Hawks. And Stephen Adams for the Grizzlies. Davion Mitchell. And Cade, exclusives. We've got Jokic, Tim Hardaway. And a problem, Ray. Bones Highland. Nice one there. Going to the Nuggets. Hot Bad Ray. KP and a Beale. It's pretty solid for the wizard spot. That's awesome. Congrats, man. Nice Bones Highland. Going to the Nuggets. We've got a Clay Thompson, Black Gold. Six of eight. Nice one there for the Warriors. Grats on that. And McKeel, Alexander Walker. And a Black Gold Lamar... No, not a Black Gold Lamar, just a regular Lamar. Going to the Nets, to 88. Two more choice. Davion Mitchell and Jaden Springer. Oh, that's nasty. Tyler Hero and Jordan DeWara. How about going to Minsu K. Allen Iverson. On the choice, exclusive auto. Congrats on that one, Minsu. That's sick. AI, the answer. The answer. Love it, man. That's fire. Clay Thompson to 88. Jordan Clarkson to 88. And Paul George all NBA to 88. Another fake out. Oh, boy. We literally talking about AI too. That was awesome. Hey, what's up, Minsu? Congrats, buddy. Nice AI for you. Peacock to end it. Very nice. Kai Jones and Trey Murphy. Isaiah Jackson and Kelden Johnson. Silver and Mosaic. There's a Quinton Grimes. Nice one there on the Rookie Auto for the Knicks. It's one here to 88. Cam Thomas for the Nets. To 88. McCall Bridges, think, right? No, seven of eight Black Gold. Nice. McCall Bridges for the Suns. Congrats, Suns. And going to the Rockets. Peacock, John Wall. Nice one there. Got to start hitting the John Wall after that one. All right, guys. That'll do it for the break. Do a quick recap here. We had Allen Iverson. It's one there for the Sixers. Bones Highland. Bradley Beal, Jaden Springer. Hey, Quinton Grimes. Dwayne Washington. Kelden Johnson. Trey Mann. Kristoff Porzingis. And Jerry Lucas. That'll do it for the break, guys. Thanks again for the fill. Next up, we've got my neck.


In this video I wanna present a technique so we can simplify limits of difference quotients that involve reciprocal or rational functions. Now you'll notice in this setting here we have the limit as h approaches zero of one over x plus h squared minus one over x squared all over h. If you were just to plug in h equals zero in this setting because that's a very smart thing to do when you have a limit, just plug it in and see what happens. You can end up with a one over, since h is going to zero, you're gonna get one over x squared minus one over x squared all over zero. Now division by zero is usually a red flag. That's why I'm writing this in blood right now. And division by zero is a bad thing, but you'll notice in the numerator you also get zero. And so zero divided by zero isn't actually so bad. This is what we call an indeterminate form because with the information we have right now we cannot determine whether the limit exists or not. And if it does exist, is it an infinite number or is it a finite number? We don't know, we have to investigate it a little bit further. And in fact, because we get zero over zero, it means that there's probably some type of algebraic simplification we can do to the function in order to calculate its limit. So let's try to do that. So when you have our function, let me just write it down here again. You're gonna have an h in the denominator. You're gonna have a one over x plus h squared in the numerator minus a one over x squared, like so. So this right here is what I often refer to as a compounded fraction. Some people call them nested fractions. Some people call them complex fractions. I don't really care for the term complex fractions because that sometimes implies this has something to do with complex numbers and it's like, no, we really just need to have fractions inside of fractions. So a compounded fraction or a nested fraction is a better term in there. So we have fractions inside of fractions.  So this is the big fraction bar, that green fraction bar we're not gonna make go away. But the little fractions, the baby fractions, we can take them out of the problem here. And to do that, we wanna identify what is the least common denominator of all babies? So if you look at the first baby, its denominator is x plus h squared. So in terms of our least common denominator, the least common denominator is gonna need to have an x plus h squared in it because the first fraction has that. And then the second baby fraction, one over x squared, it also has its denominator as x squared. That's not, there's nothing alike, no common divisors of x squared and x plus h squared in general. So we have to add that also to our least common denominator. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna times the top of the mother fraction by the LCD and times the bottom also by that LCD to keep things proportional. So I'm gonna times the numerator by x squared times x squared, x plus h squared. And we have to do that in the denominator as well. Okay, now in the numerator because the numerator of the original fraction is a difference, we can distribute this onto both terms. That's really what we want to happen. So we're gonna get the limit as h goes to zero. We're gonna get x squared over x plus h squared all over x plus h squared. Subtract from that x squared times x plus h squared over x squared. Now in the denominator of the mother fraction of h times x squared times x plus h squared. Let me give you a tip. When it comes to a denominator of a fraction, leave it factored. We do not multiply out denominators. It is a fool's errand. It doesn't provide you any benefit. It just adds extra workload that you're gonna have to undo anyways and then we have to factor it. So we're gonna leave the denominator factored. h times x squared times x plus h quantity squared. So how can we simplify things? When you look at the first baby fraction, you'll notice it has an x plus h squared over an x plus h squared, those cancel out. And that'll leave behind just an x squared in that numerator as h is going to zero right here. When you look at the second baby fraction, it has an x squared on top and x squared on bottom that cancels out and we get an x plus h quantity squared. And then because we made a blood oath not to multiply out denominators, we still have an h times x squared times x plus h squared. So we must fight the temptation to multiply out the denominator there. On the other hand, the numerator we should expand, expand as much as we can in order to simplify it. So notice you have that x plus h quantity squared. You can foil that out.  Be careful that the negative sign attached to the x plus h squared will distribute onto all these pieces. Actually, write it out, distribute it if you needed to in case you forget. And so you'll notice now there's an x squared over here. There's a negative x squared right here. Those terms are gonna cancel each other out. And so who's left in the numerator? You're gonna have this negative two x h, remember I just drew that negative sign. You're gonna have a negative h squared and this sits above h x squared and x plus h squared. Like so as h goes to zero. Now our whole goal, and when it comes to these difference quotients, your goal is you wanna get rid of the h in the denominator. H stands in this case for hate. We hate the h in the denominator and so we must get rid of it.  We have to do it algebraically. And so in order to cancel the factor of h in the denominator, we need a factor of h numerator, which now, once I've looked at everything that's canceled, I'm now left with a negative two x h minus an h squared. Everyone in the numerator is divisible by h. We can factor it out to get h times negative two minus h sitting above our denominator h x squared times x plus h squared as h goes to zero. Notice now the factor of h cancels on top and bottom. And so now our difference quotient is simplified. I want you to be aware that as we've gone through this process, everything we've done thus far has been purely algebraic. No calculus has actually been involved in this process other than what the heck does a limit mean. All right, this is purely just an algebraic simplification. This is something you see often in calculus that when it comes to a calculus problem, there's probably only like one, maybe two lines of work that's genuinely calculus. Everything else is pre-calculus. It's for this reason why we need to be excellent at pre-calculus in order to do these calculus problems. Without pre-calculus, we cannot do calculus. The calculus part's not the hard part. It's the pre-calculus, frankly speaking. Now in this setting, you'll notice that if we set h equal to zero now, there'll be no longer division by zero. And so now we're ready to compute the limit. Setting h equal to zero, we get negative two x minus zero above x squared, because we're setting h to zero. We're not doing anything with the x. x squared times x plus zero squared. So if we simplify this, the numerator becomes a negative two x, the denominator becomes an x squared times an x squared, which that would become a negative two x over x to the fourth. We can cancel the x on top with one of the x's on the bottom, and we see that this limit will simplify to be negative two over x cubed, like so. For which the original expression depended on the variables h and x, and so as h goes to zero, we see that the expression will become negative two over x cubed.


The Marines are out here in Korea working with the Air Force and the Rock to ensure complete and total mission capability to get training with both the maintainers and the pilots and practice something new. KFT-23 is a training opportunity to practice large-scale fighting between the fighter jets. Lateral training is important to allow the pilots the opportunity to get the chance to work with different military branches so that if the time ever does come and we have to go to war the pilots can just step right in and do what needs to happen as smoothly as possible.


I'm looking forward to getting to know a lot of different people from different countries and to expand my network and of course to get some insight into the business of the year. I think the European Central Bank is a really interesting place to work for engineers especially if you're interested in the financial parts of it and I wanted to discover more of what it is in it for me. We are to start a very nice day for the second time the so-called Female Talent Day at the ECB and I'm very happy to see so many of you here. Gender is one of the elements of diversity at the ECB because we foster diversity and inclusion. At the ECB we actually strive for diversity at all levels and across the organization and specifically in the technical areas I think we stuff a little bit in the pipeline of female talent. So it appears natural that we want to reach out for example to universities where we know that this female talent is to attract them to see the ECB as a potential employer to let them know what working here looks like to make them aware of our recruitment processes of what's important and that they also have the opportunity to ask us questions and to find out what kind of employer we are and also we learn from them. From the panel discussion it was quite interesting to see where everyone came from and how they somehow made their way here whether it was straight planned this way or zigzagging and eventually ending up here. The takeaway from the panel for me was to be very bold as a woman to dream big and to strive for the sky. Never shy away from uniting one field of expertise with something which may appear unrelated. Don't let anyone telling you what you are good at like really just focus on getting the skills that are necessary to be where you want to be. Don't be discouraged everybody starts from scratch. You seek tasks that you cannot really do but it's the only way to learn how to do them. So if you see a challenge and say okay but I'm not ready for this just do it. After today after hearing everyone speaking about the environment here and different people from all around Europe yeah it would be nice working with them. I discovered today that the ACB offers all opportunities to students of mathematics and I didn't expect this. If you want to be part as a technical person, as a female you can be part, you can create the future of the institution you can create the future of the European society as a whole.


Hello in this lecture we will define last and first out. According to fundamental accounting principles while 22nd edition the definition of last and first out is method for assigning cost to inventory that assumes costs for the most recent items purchased are sold first and charged to cost of goods sold. So we are talking about a method of inventory assumption. We're not talking about specific identification where we would be specifically identifying the inventory that's sold and know exactly what we purchased that unit for but some kind of cost flow assumption method. Last and first out is similar to first and first out or an average method in that those are going to be the types of assumption methods. Last and first out usually being a method that's more counterintuitive to most of our thoughts when we try to think of the physical flow of inventory. We would generally think that we would want the physical flow of the inventory to be that the first unit that we purchase would be the first unit that we sell but if we're not talking about specific identification we could assume the opposite. We could assume that the units that are being sold are the last units we purchased. You can imagine it if we're going to stack the shelves that we just put the new stuff in front of the old stuff so we're always selling the new stuff. Again it's just a cost flow assumption it doesn't really match what actually happens the actual flow but if you think about the flow that's kind of the way the flow would be assumed to work. If we take a look at an example we can say that we have inventory we're selling these coffee mugs and we're going to sell these 420 mugs at $85 are really expensive but that $85 is the sales price not the cost. If we want to know the cost we have to go to our worksheet over here and we see that we purchased 100 units at $50 for 5,000 of the ending inventory and we purchased another 400 units at $55 for 22,000 of the ending inventory. If we sold 420 of these question is what's the cost of those 420 units is it the $50 or the $55? In last and first out we're going to take the last ones we purchased the 400 first those will be the first units we sold therefore we're going to wipe out this category we're going to say we sold 400 of those at the higher cost the $55 for the 22,000 then we need another 20 in order to get up to the 420 that we sold we're going to assume that we sold those from this batch the $50 to bring it up to 1,000. What does that leave us with at the end leaves us with zero of these 400 units at $55 those are gone it leaves us with 100 minus the 20 or 80 of these $50 units at 50 and that's the 4,000 units so we have 4,000 left over in dollars in ending inventory and the cost of goods sold for this sale is the 23,000 in a last and first out method.


It was a beautiful Monday morning when a scientist or I should say a biologist was walking down the street just to reach his office or his lab and Suddenly he saw a spaceship in the sky and to his surprise it landed just in front of him He was so confused and scared But in no time a friendly alien got down from the spaceship He seemed very harmless and he had just one question for this human. He saw for the first time How many different lifeforms are there on this planet as I landed I could see some on the ground I could see some flying. I could see some walking. So how many different lifeforms are there on the earth and The biologist had no answer Well for a biologist it was kind of embarrassing, right? Because this is the most basic question anyone could ask about life But again, it's not that they are not trying Because considering the total land area and the total lifeforms that's present on our planet earth Counting all of them is not a child's play, right? Because just imagine life exists right from top of the mountain ranges to the bottom of the deepest of sea and Even in places where human survival is not possible So counting all of those is definitely a difficult task to do at least we can all agree on that, right? So this helpless embarrassed scientist Just for the sake of answering the alien thought of telling him about IUCN So the scientists told the alien that hey look we are human beings and we have brains and we are the most intelligent creatures on this planet earth and We have created something called IUCN International Union for a conservation of nature that releases a book called a red data book and in 2004 The book said that we have till now Successfully discovered and documented a little more than 1.5 million different species Okay with this answer from the scientist the alien flew back to his own planet All right now coming back to the data of IUCN from 2004 This is a data that talks about the known and discovered species now We have no clue how many there are in the wild that are yet to be discovered that call this earth their home so researchers all over the world started coming up with their own estimates and The wild part was the estimates would range somewhere from 20 million to 50 million So the estimates were all over the place Until Robert May came into the picture Robert May was a leading mathematical ecologist And was known for his extraordinarily quick and elitical brain And he based on the recorded data of species at that time made an estimate that there could be somewhere around seven million species on this planet and As his way of estimation seemed convincing to a lot of scientists most of them agreed with this seven million estimate But if Robert May was true with a seven million number Then looking at the IUCN data, which is just 1.5 million. We have not yet traveled half the road, right? But there are some good news with the increase of internet usage in the past 20 25 years Scientists are now able to communicate easily. They are able to share the refindings and research really quick and More and more number of species are being discovered each year Now just out of curiosity. I looked up for species that I discovered this year till August 2022 And I found out that the world's largest lily was discovered only this year and it was discovered in Bolivia Then a new species of millipede was discovered in USA and it was named after Taylor Swift It is named as Nineria Swifty and then a frog was discovered this year called the Tepeir frog in Peru But this frog is very famous in social media as the chocolate frog from Harry Potter Interesting, right? Now you can always Google about new discoveries and just to boost your curiosity There are some even discovered from India this year So go Google up and find out what are those All right Now this interesting new discoveries are not important for exams on The flip side what's important is sadly not very interesting Well, the examiner expect us to remember certain data is given by the IUCN Okay, so talking about data out of all the species recorded by IUCN 70% are Animals and even among animals if we talk about invertebrates only The most species rich taxonomic group is the class insecta and it's probably not surprising, right? If I may ask you when was your last encounter with an insect? You would say probably a few minutes ago with a mosquito or something or maybe you have left your food uncovered So there were a lot of flies on top of it So literally you don't even have to step out of your home to encounter an insect It is so much in abundance everywhere. So next after insects the highest percentage is occupied by the mollusks popular for their slimy soft bodies and Here is a snail as an example Now after the mollusks, we have the crustaceans for example the lobsters or the crabs and The rest part is occupied by the other classes of invertebrates all right now let's move on to vertebrates and You will see that 50% of the vertebrates are fishes Now again, it's not surprising right because water covers the maximum area on our planet and Land is just 29% so having a great diversity in the water world is not surprising Now after fishes we have birds. There is a pigeon for example and reptiles. So here is a turtle Now it is said that birds and reptiles got almost the same duration to evolve and Therefore it can be possible that they have almost similar number of varieties Moving ahead. We have mammals and amphibians now talking about amphibians they are found near freshwater and we know that most of the world water cover is marine and therefore there The amphibians location is restricted only to few places Places that have very high rainfall So that that can be a reason that lower variety of amphibians are discovered till now And then we have mammals that also share similar percentage with amphibians on the pie chart So this was all about the discovered animals now. Let's talk about the discovered plants So out of the total discovered species plant Constituted 22% and under the plants the maximum Percentage is off fungi now in the latest system of classification fungi is not included under the plant kingdom But again, if we look back if we consider the two system of classification Their fungi was included in plants, right? So that is why maybe the IUCN decided to keep fungi here Now after fungi the highest percentage is of angiosperms That is the flowering plants and after angiosperm. We have the algae's Right after algae's the highest percentage on the pie chart is occupied by mosses and fawns and its allies and Last a very small portion on the pie chart is occupied by lichen Okay, now you may think hey, where is gymnosperm? We have read about gymnosperm and plant kingdom, but we can't see it on the spy chart Well, the reason could be the very less identified species of gymnosperm It is so low that it could not even secure its position into the spy chart On the other hand the diversity of fungi is so huge that it alone is more than the total vertebrate species diversity And apart from gymnosperm, if you have observed we have also not spoken about bacteria Our prokaryotes in general and this is because the current system of classification is not suitable for it And now that we are talking about bacteria's and microorganisms. Let me tell you a fun fact Do you know that we have more microorganisms inside our body than than human cells? Yes, microorganisms outnumber human cells by 10 to 1 So there is a wide variety already within a single human body and now we are talking about the diversity in the entire world So it's almost like counting sand on a beach on a windy day and also this microorganisms are bacteria's they differ from another species In a very slight manner Distinguishing them is also a difficult task and most of them are also difficult to culture in a lab So considering all that prokaryotes are omitted from this listing or estimation Okay, and the rest 8% of the discovered species are the ones which are not mentioned in the spy chart All right, so this was about the species diversity that is found in the entire world Okay, now it's time. We focus our discussion to a small piece of land in this entire world, which is India Now why is India so important? Well, this is because India is one of the 17 mega biodiverse countries in the world Wonderful, but what are the conditions that makes a country biodiverse? Well, there are so many but there are two basic conditions first among them is that The country should have at least five thousand species of endemic plants endemic as in the plants that are found only there And nowhere else in the world and the next is the country should have a good marine cover around its borders So let me write that it should have marine life abundant marine life around it and India has those Now if we talk about the total land area India constitute just 2.4% of the total land area of this earth and Despite its small land area whooping 8.1% of total global Species diversity called India their home Wonderful, right? Now. Let's talk about the discovered and documented species of India So when it comes to plants we have around 45,000 species discovered and described from India and when it comes to animals Our country has documented around 90,000 different species How wonderful is that? But wait if we agree on what Robert May's estimate was then this numbers for a country like India is just the tip of an iceberg If if we consider his estimates India is yet to discover another one lakh plant species and And around the three lakh animal species more So we have a long way to go, right? But considering the limited number of scientists in our world has do you think we can ever reach there? Well, many species will go extinct even before we discover and document them. That's that, right? So can we do something about it? The answer is yes If you are curious enough and you want to contribute towards the discovery of new species now You can definitely do that in this age of internet, which is making the world a smaller place There are a lot of websites in which you can upload information Let me show you one among them, which is called the I nature list And this is how it works if you see something which is weird or new to you You can just click a picture and upload it to I nature list There are a lot of scientists or texonomist there They can look at your picture and the location in which this picture was taken and then you can you can discuss About that picture if it is an already discovered species, then they will inform you about that that way You will enhance your knowledge and if it is something which is not yet discovered Wow, you may end up discovering a new species or Maybe save an endangered species from extinction How great is that? So go share it with your friends or any younger sibling who would love to do this with you And I hope you start looking at nature with more curiosity now All the best


Alright, I did it. I finally finished Throne of Glass. I got through the last book, Kingdom of Ash, and honestly, it's still really bad and really boring, but it's not even bad in a fun way. It's just bad in a, yeah, this is done terribly way. Let's get started. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So quick reminder, like I said in the last video, I left off at book 5 and apparently book 6, Tower of Dawn, is not really necessary to continue the series. There are a couple of plot points in there that I didn't know about and I didn't totally understand this book, and so I'm not going to criticize those because it wouldn't really be fair. Like, there was an explanation given at some point. I just didn't read it. But for the most part, all you really need to know about it is that Kale went off to a different continent to get his legs fixed because at the end of Queen of Shadows, he was made paraplegic. And then while he was there, apparently he left his girlfriend and started seeing another girl and they're married now and she kind of sort of healed his legs. Cool. That's really all you need to know. So Kingdom of Ash starts with Alen still under Maeve's control. She's trapped in an iron coffin. She's getting tortured a whole bunch and I mean, that's kind of all that happens. Like, it's just, there's this dude that works for Maeve who really enjoys causing pain. He's total sadist.  And they're just trying to get Alen to tell Maeve where the two word keys are that she has and also swear a blood oath to her so that she'll control her forever. It's, you know, standard stuff and the whole time it's like, I'll admit that the torture is pretty hardcore because I've said that before and I'll keep saying it. Like this series does get pretty hardcore with the violence at times so I'll give it credit for that at least. But Alen just doesn't seem all that affected by it, at least not at first. And so it doesn't seem that bad.  Like, it doesn't feel like that. It just feels like, ah, this hurts, but whatever, I'll shrug it off. And then at some point when Maeve takes her out of the coffin and says, submit to me, wah-ha-ha, I'm evil. Alen, by the way, I did do this one as an audiobook as well so with the bad prose and everything, I don't have like direct quotes that I can read for you because it'd be pretty much impossible for me to go back and find them. So I'm going to be paraphrasing a little bit but, you know, it still gets pretty bad because there are points where I really remember it. But anyways, when Maeve pulls her out and says, ha-ha, submit to me, Alen makes a quote obscene gesture as foul as any she's made before. And I'm just like, Sarah, Miss Moss, this book has plenty of swearing in it, okay?   They say twat.  There's graphic, graphic sex in here. Like, just say she flipped her off. You're not doing anything. Like, if this was really a kid's book or more of an old school YA book where they didn't really think they could get away with much, like say the last couple of Harry Potter books, I could understand them just saying obscene gesture and in your head you're like, oh yeah, I know what they're saying. But in this, this is trying to be darker and more adult. Like, just say she flipped her off. Jesus Christ. So then it goes back to the other continents where, like, the forces of Terrison and Aedion and all of Alen's friends are fighting against Erewan and the demons, as well as, you know, some of their allies that they have, because, you know, they had like the assassins and all the people that were not brought up before, but apparently Alen asked them for help. And I will say, there were people in the comments of the last ones mentioning that, like, people like Ansel, the queen that came out of nowhere and the silence assassins that came out of nowhere and such like that. They were apparently mentioned in the prequel book, but the thing is about that you shouldn't have to read the prequels in order for things to not feel like they came out of nowhere. Okay, because they did come out of nowhere in the core series, and so that doesn't really help anything. You know, just whatever. I don't think there are too many people that disagreed with me on that, but I did want to put that out there. But anyways, all of Alen's friends are back on the continents.  And, you know, I had this later in my notes, but I'm just going to say it now. None of the battles are good because it's difficult to tell what the consequences are for losing. Now, obviously on the small scale, the battles are pretty bad too. Like, we don't understand what's going on. It's just soldiers are in formation. Demons are fighting them. They're losing, and heroes rush in to try and help. And usually they wind up, like, losing the battle at the end, and they're like, okay, we gotta retreat. But the thing is, strategically I don't understand what's going on with these battles. Like, why is it a bad thing that they're losing? Are they losing control of this road that they need? Are they losing control of cities that they need? Are they losing control of important resources? Like, all it's saying is that they're being pushed back. And their army doesn't even seem to be taking all that much damage, really. So what this turns into is just two mobs smashing into each other, and apparently not even hurting each other all that much. Or rather, the demons are taking really heavy losses, but somehow they're able to recover those or something? I don't know. I'll get into that later.  They're not good. And later it just introduces these characters, and it's like one of them asks a question, and then it has, like, long paragraphs explaining them and their backstory. And then the answer. So by the time we got to the answer, I had to stop and remember for a sec. Like, wait, what? Oh, right, right, right. So, you know, just more bad pros, whatever. And then a messenger comes in and he gives them a message about how, hey, if you win the battle, do this.  The news couldn't get here, and he's like, oh, I have two messages. One for if you win and one for if you lose. And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense, because if you lose, you can lose in a bunch of different ways. And if you win, you can win in a bunch of different ways. And if you don't know precisely how they won or lost, how are you supposed to give them proper orders? That doesn't make any sense. Like, okay, I get that this isn't a military-focused story. And I'm willing to bet that Sarah J. Moss is not particularly well-read in areas like military history or military theory or anything like that. And I wouldn't expect this book to be really in-depth about that sort of thing. But for fuck's sake, could you at least try? Could you at least try?  Yeah, okay, cool. And anyways, they find a giant talking spider who I don't think I mentioned it, but in part one in the third book, I believe, Manon did talk to one of them. So, you know, those exist. They didn't come out of nowhere. But, you know, they talk to one and she's like, oh, I'll guide you to where the Crockins are. And the Crockins being this other witch clan, which Manon found out that she was a part of and they've been hunting down and yeah, all that stuff.  If you join with us, we can destroy the demons and all that. And you guys can go back to your kingdom and we can live and be happy. And they're like, I don't know. I don't think we trust you. Which is, you know, fair, honestly, considering that she was participating in a genocide against them. But also, this whole book is basically just people arguing. This whole series is just people arguing and it's, God, it's so boring. Like, I honestly, I wish there was more in this last book that was like just so crazy over the top bad that I could laugh at it. But there's not even much of that. It's just boring. So Lissandra, who remember is pretending to be Eileen, has her identity discovered, not by the majority of the army, but by a couple of people.  Anyways, Kayle and his girlfriend go to meet his dad and they're like, hey dad, you should help out the army.   And the thing is that as they're walking around his castle, they specifically describe that it's in disrepair and like it's falling apart, basically. And Kayle says, yeah, my dad says that if it hasn't collapsed, then you shouldn't spend the money to fix it. So basically it's saying that they have the money to fix it, but he chooses not to. And I'm just thinking, Kayle, your dad is supposed to be a warrior. He's supposed to be an amazing battlefield commander and stuff. You'd think he would understand the importance of defensive fortifications. Like if your shit's in disrepair, then your enemies can destroy it.  And yeah, anyways, his wife Irene is also pregnant and Kayle doesn't know about it, but his dad figures it out just from the way she's carrying herself and like doesn't like she's sick and all that, whatever.  So then we come back to Alen and Maeve. And Maeve does that thing where she takes her out of the coffin and she tells her like, I'm gonna tell you a story. And then she's like, oh, there once was a girl who was doing this in this land. And then she kind of, and it's like very obvious that she's talking about herself. And honestly, like just once I would like for a villain to give their backstory like that, but they just, they're honest about it. You know, they just say, hey, I did this, I did that rather than pretending it's a story about another person because it's just such a cliche at this point. But that said, I actually really like Maeve's backstory. Because what it is, is apparently she is actually a demon from another world and she got married to another demon and was just reading through library and stuff and found out, oh, hey, you can go to other worlds. And so, excuse me, she did and she came to this world and she is basically a spirit. So she like created a body for herself, which is her fey form, fey form. Even in that body, like other demons couldn't recognize her and she went into the minds of the two fey queens who are dead now, but they were around before and convinced them that, oh, yeah, there were always three of us. So she became their ruler. And then the three demon kings that came over from the world were into this one and almost destroyed everything. They were looking for her, including her husband. And so Arawan, the one who's still here, is her brother-in-law. And honestly, I just like this backstory, you know? It's actually a good twist. I mean that. Like, I didn't see it coming. It makes total logical sense. And it forces you to look at Maeve's character from a different perspective.  Like, that, you know what, that makes sense. And even if it's not told all that great or in the best place, I will say, yeah, that's good. So Aylin manages to escape, but she also still has an iron mask and gauntlets locked onto her. And the thing is that while all of this is going on, some of her friends are planning to help break her out and she just kind of winds up escaping on her own because they leave her, like, very sparsely guarded for a little bit and then she's able to break out and run away. And the thing is, like, that's also a cliche at this point. Like, characters are trying to break somebody out, but they're already breaking out on their own and then they meet up and like, all that, whatever. That's also a cliche, but like, it's not a huge deal. The problem is that you could have had some fun with this. Like, you could have had a very intelligent escape plan or something and you didn't. You know, you could have had an intelligent escape plan with her friends breaking her out. You could have had an intelligent escape plan with her managing to break out on her own, but it was just, oh, they left me weak, or they left me weakly guarded for a minute, whatever. They left me weak and guarded for a minute and I broke out. Like, that just makes the villains look like dumbasses rather than making the heroes look cool or smart. There's just so many things like that in these books where, like, you could have done something with it, but they failed completely and it also makes all the stuff with her friends trying to break her out mostly pointless because I know I didn't mention it, but they spend quite some time on that and it's really annoying that it's all for nothing. Also, Aylin comes across as kind of whiny when she meets up with her friends. She's like begging them, take off the mask, take it off, take it off, which conflicts with her, like, not breaking before. Like, before she was just thinking, haha, I am strong. I will never do what they say and now she just transitions to, like, no, no, this broken, like, I feel like it would have been easier to understand if they had actually had a transition there, but whatever.  And she tells him it's with Erawan somewhere at Morath, and Dorian is basically saying, okay, I gotta go get that.  This is a phalanx. Look at this. That's what a phalanx is. Just use words properly. And Lissandra, in her form where she's still pretending to be Aylin, manages to grab a sword and fights a little bit and almost gets killed and kind of inspires the troops, which is an all right moment, because I'm like, I do like Lissandra. I really do as a character. There's not all that much to her, but she's pretty badass when she's a shifter, and even when she's not a shifter, she can still do neat stuff. And then her and Aideen argue some more, and then they apologize, etc. I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, then I'm going back and forth, but this is kind of how the book does it, and it's... Well, it's not that great, but whatever.  And apparently he's also a shifter now, which is... Okay, this is the problem with not explaining very much about how your magic system works, because up until this point, it seemed like being a shifter was one, super rare, and two, something you had to be born with.  He can do a lot of crazy shit, don't get me wrong, but shifting was not on the table before this.  If they had just said even a single line of dialogue like that before, this would be fine, but... Like, yeah, he's a shifter now, and he's trying to learn how to do it. He's teaching himself how to shift, and it takes a while, actually, which is kind of weird, because Lissandra was able to do it automatically. And I know she said that she practiced when she was a kid, but she also hadn't been able to do it for 10 years, and she just immediately went back into... All right. So, yeah, Menon manages to convince the Krokans that, like, hey, you should work with me, as well as a couple of iron teeth, which is the clan she's from, remember, who defect, and they're like, yeah, we can't work with the demons. They're insane, all that.  And at first I was confused, like, well, why didn't she kill her? She kind of hates her at this point, and it would be better for their war effort. And a little bit later, they explain that, you know, it's better to let her go because her being humiliated kind of undercuts her as a leader, and so a lot of iron teeth are probably going to, like, defect now or just fight amongst themselves, whereas if I had killed her, it would have united them against us.  Sure, that makes sense. I'm not disputing that, really. I think that's actually a good explanation. I just wish I had been given at the time, so I wasn't spending however long.  Why didn't you just kill her? So they're, you know, fighting more battles, and then the demons go off and they break this dam, which was not really mentioned before. Nothing is mentioned before it's necessary in these books. And then they're going to break the dam and flood this whole valley area, and it's going to, like, kill all the allied armies and, oh, that's so terrible, you know, all that. And Lorcan is, like, caught up near the dam while the others are running away, and he's, like, trying to hold it back, and Elid is, like, no. And so she runs off to save him, and she manages to do it, because, obviously, there's no major characters that are going to die in these books, or no major good guy characters, I should say.  Anyways, Elin comes back, and her and Rowan manage to stop the majority of the water from hitting, because she has, like, so much fire in her that she'd been storing up for a couple of months at this point, and Lorcan has, like, you know, wind and ice, and just, yeah, no one really important eyes. And I'd like to take just a quick moment to talk about this series and its emphasis on suicide, specifically its emphasis on painting suicide as some sort of selfless and heroic act. Because, like, okay, I've talked about this a little before. That bothers me. All right, like, in this we have Elin, who is, like, she has to sacrifice herself in order to seal the gates where the demons came through and keep them from coming into the world, which is, you know, that's not too bad on its own. And in fact, Elin does mention at a couple of points, like, yeah, I don't really want to do this, but I kind of have to. And, okay, that's not a huge deal. But then we have stuff like Elid going off to save Lorcan, and she's like, even if I die, at least I'll die with him. And she's like, well, even if I die, at least he'll be safe, or just things like that.  Like, they're not saying it in that many words. They basically say, I'm going to throw myself into battle until I die, which is, you know, not a healthy way to have a relationship at all.  I'm destroying all this stuff. I don't really want to live anymore. Like, it's just very uncomfortable. There's like a weird emphasis on it, and I just don't like that at all. So Dorian manages to go to Morath, and he, you know, sneaks around there, doesn't get caught, and as he's watching, he finds Maeve has gone there, and apparently her old kingdom is kind of rebelled against her. Like, they don't want her in charge anymore, which is fine, you know? I kind of wish they had shown it. And honestly, I'm surprised that it didn't happen sooner, because Maeve is, by all accounts, just an awful leader, but whatever, you know, she's there, and she offers up some of the Talking Spiders as hosts for other volg princesses, which are like, you know, just powerful demons that Aeroan can bring into this world, and he's like, okay, cool. And as Dorian is seeing this, Maeve like notices him, and they kind of wind up making an alliance, because Maeve is like, hey, I don't really like Aeroan either. I think if we can get rid of him, I'd certainly be happy, which, again, makes sense, given her backstory and her personality and all that. And so they just agree to work together a little bit. And as Dorian is watching them, he notices Aeroan, and he's in a new body now. He's in a body that looks like a woman, and they specifically say she's not traditionally attractive, but then they say, with her jet black hair, pale skin, and ruby red lips, she's stunning. And I'm just thinking, so what you're saying is that she's not traditionally attractive, but she's attractive in a traditional way. So Dorian manages to find the word he takes it. He betrays Maeve. He destroys her ability to move through portals between worlds because, you know, she had that, and using the word he does that, you know, and that, like, makes sense, and then he kind of destroys Morath, and that's the bit I was talking about before, where he's like, oh, I think I'm going to die, and he manages to survive kind of by accident, really.  So Aelen and Elid and them come across Elid's evil uncle, who was working with the King of Outerland, and they just lock him in a tower with no food or anything, and there's no one there to take care of him, so it's basically saying, yeah, he's going to starve to death in a couple of days, and that's, again, kind of hardcore. Kind of cool. So by this point, Aelen has not met up with the whole army yet, and a large chunk of it has fallen back to Orinth, which is the capital of Tarrasyn, and they're under siege, and that pirate dude that they spent, like, 7,500 goddamn pages trying to get on their side, returns with some help, and then they argue about Aelen forging the lock, and Rowan is... Okay, apparently Dorian might also be able to do it, which is not really explained, and Rowan specifically says that, like, hey, you should just let Dorian do it, he wants to do it, like, I guess kind of makes sense, because, you know, he's in love with Aelen and not with Dorian, but also makes him look like a massive twat. Yeah, and then he specifically says to Aelen, you can't make our decisions for us, but at the same time, he's telling her that she can't sacrifice herself to make the lock, and that she has to let someone else do it, so he's kind of trying to make her decisions for her, and that should speak for itself.  So, before they go to Orinth to save everybody, they decide, you know what, we should just make the lock now, prevent any reinforcements from ever coming through, yada, yada, yada, and okay, that makes sense strategically, that's a good idea. And then so, her and Dorian kind of work together to make the lock, because they have the three words she's now, remember. And so, okay, okay, so basically they make the lock and they can kind of sense or see all the gods that are in this world, which remember, gods are just beings from another world who are kind of on a higher plane that humans can't really see, whatever, and Mala is the goddess, I should say, that gave Aelin all of her powers, or the majority of her powers.  Yeah, because Mala was the source of her powers, but Mala also wanted to sacrifice her or something. She doesn't die and she also becomes immortal. Alright, so basically the one thing that this character would have had to sacrifice in order to save the day, she didn't wind up having to sacrifice. It just came, at the 11th hour she has discovered, oh, I actually have all these cool powers that I can use to get rid of the gods and then they can't kill me. And I mean, she loses most of her power after this, not all of it, but her army destroying fire was a gift from Mala, so she can't do that anymore, but nonetheless, that is just, do I even need to explain that one? So we go back to Orinth and there's a bunch of battles there with the witches helping and demons and all that, and I just gotta say, and I promise this will be the last time I go into the military aspect of this, but how are the demons winning? And I assume it's mostly just numbers, because when we see the demons and the main characters fight them, they don't really have any trouble against them, even large numbers of them. And remember, even back in the second book, before Aelyn had her magic or anything, she could fight like 20 dudes without much issue, so I get that the main characters are super big badasses, but because of that, we don't know where normal humans stand in relation to the demons. Like, can a normal human fight like five demons and come out on top? I couldn't tell ya. I would assume not because they're trying to make them super tough and everything, but again, when you have the main characters able to do all this damage to them without even really breaking a sweat, I find myself wondering, well, how did they pose a threat at all? And again, it's numbers is my first thought, but they don't really go into detail about that, and if it is numbers somehow, I don't know how they would be replenishing those numbers, so the Wheel of Time had kind of a similar problem, because the main force that the bad guys used were Trollics, and Trollics are, you know, pretty big and tough, and they could kill humans without too much trouble, but they're also really dumb and clumsy, so if you are a skilled warrior, then you can take them out without too much trouble. And over the course of the series, most of the main characters become that, but even more so, they become, or some of them do, become very powerful channelers, which, if you don't know, that's basically just magic, and so they can take out like entire armies at once, but they manage to mitigate this by, one, just making Trollic armies unfathomably massive, like just millions and millions of them, and they'll desert Russia, and two, they also have other types of shadow spawn, like Drachar and Merdral and stuff, and those ones do pose a much bigger threat, because they're much more powerful, and three, like the leaders of the shadow spawn, like the Forsaken and the Dreadlords, those guys are also super powerful. Those are on par with the most powerful magic users on the good guy's side, so overall, I get how the armies could pose a big threat to the good guys, whereas in this, we have like Erowan and Maeve at the top who are a threat, but they don't really do anything until the end, and all the rest of the guys, we don't really know what's going on with them.  This must be a long battle.    Okay.   Um, just, yeah, everything's super happy, and apparently Eileen is going to set up a sort of democracy in Terrison, and here's the thing about that. If this series had sort of built up to it in some way, then, like, she's basically saying that they're going to have elected representatives from the different regions of Terrison to come to her court and talk to people, whatever. Like, that's, if they had set that up in any way before this, it could have been reasonable. And if they had done something like what Game of Thrones did, where they just kind of say like, hey, Absolute Monarchy is kind of awful, and Absolute Hereditary Monarchy is even worse, then it could have maybe worked as well, whereas this story actually leans really heavy into the Divine Rite of Kings, which I mentioned in the last part, and I already did a whole video about that, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but it leans really hard into Divine Rite of Kings and how Eileen is just chosen. Like, she's destined to do this, and if anyone else tries it, then things are going to go bad. And this is confirmed in the epilogue when there's like blooms of a whole bunch of this type of flower, which they mention a bunch, and they say, oh, it only blooms when a good king is on the throne of terrorism. So, like, it's specifically saying, yeah, the universe is good for her, so it just, it clashes with that angle of democracy. And, well, in my notes here, I wrote Just End You Wordy Bitch, because, like I said, it's going on forever. And then they have Eileen's Coronation Ceremony, and every time they mention her full name, which is Eileen Ash River, White Thorn Galathenius, and they do that several times, but every time they said, Eileen Ash River, White Thorn Galathenius, my mind just immediately said, Ebony Darkness, Dementia Ravenway. And, well, yeah, again, it just goes on forever, and there's like eight different points where it could end, but then it keeps going, and then it stops. That was the end. That was throwing a glass.   So I also want to say that I did a little bit of research into this, and into Sarah J. Moss, and apparently this book was, one, it was supposed to be a trilogy originally, which I talked about a little bit, and, you know, it's pretty obvious that it's trying really hard to be stretched out, and that's why the story structure is so awful, but even more than that, it was originally like a take on Cinderella, like, Cinderella instead of just going to the ball to dance with the prince was there to kill him, like, that was the original idea, and I honestly see none of that in this series as DNA, like, yeah, you, I seriously don't see any of that, yeah, no, like, I don't see a fairy godmother character in there anywhere, I don't see how Eileen is Cinderella at all, and she's also not there to kill the prince at any point, so, yeah, yeah, there's just nothing Cinderella here, I'm not even sure why she would say something like that, that's weird.  Like, when this series started off, it was just an assassin being forced to work for somebody that she hates, and you could do some stuff with that, okay? Like, if it was just about the fate of this one city or this one country, then you could have a lot of fun with that, but this series pretty quickly jumps the gun and goes straight to, demons are going to take over everything, they're going to destroy the world, we have to stop them, and then it also goes into, Eileen is like this demigod who can destroy entire armies just by thinking about it, and so, like, it feels almost like two different series at that point, and it just doesn't mesh well, and it tries to be epic by just being long and wordy, and, well, there's more to it than that, like, we need to learn more about places, and we need to learn about more people, and we need to, well, we need to care about them all, but we also need to really feel that this is going to be the end of the world if we don't fuck, if we fuck this up, and, well, until this last book, they don't even really have all that many battles or anything against the demons, they're just sort of this presence in the background. Let this also be a lesson that not every character needs to be put into a romantic relationship. My God, like, there are so many in this series because every character has one, and every relationship gets way more screen time devoted to it than they need, okay? Like, I don't know about Kale and Irene because, like I said, I didn't read that book, and I will never read it, by the way, and maybe that one's good, but, like, in this book it gets a fair amount of time devoted to it, and it doesn't really affect anything about the plot or the characters. Aalen has multiple romances, which all get way too much time put in them. Just all the main characters, even the ones that don't really seem interested in romance at first, get at least one, sometimes two or three relationships, and, like, it just... it doesn't mean anything after a while, okay? It ceases to have any sort of emotional impact when you do that, and quite frankly, in addition to patting out this series like crazy, it really drives home how bland these characters are and how personality-less they are outside of those romantic relationships if they had, like, let's say Dorian, for example. Like, he falls in love with Sorsha, and then later he falls in love with Manon.  Like, if we just went into more detail and that happened, or if we went into detail about how... and we get a little bit of this, but we went into detail about how he still kind of loved his dad even though his dad was a terrible person, except he wasn't actually a terrible person because he was possessed by a demon, but that was already stupid. Like, we could go into more aspects of him and he would become more of a well-rounded character. And honestly, Dorian has very little personality throughout all this. Like, he's not annoying or anything, very big nothing most of the time, but what I mean is that if you had done that with most of these characters who have unnecessary romances, then we could have had a cast that was maybe not amazing, but at least I would care about them and if one of them had died, which again, this kind of series is not going to do that, but if one of them had died I might have given a shit. But that leads me to my final point. Now, when these books were coming out, they did them one per year. Sometimes more than one per year because, you know, you had the prequel thing with all the short stories and all that. And they're very long, like I said. And Sarah J. Moss, in addition to writing all these, also was writing different series at the same time. Like, she started a court of thorns and roses, and she started her adult series, which just came out a couple of weeks ago, I think. And so she's writing multiple projects, which are all really, really long. And honestly, like, you just cannot do that much stuff at once and have it meet any sort of level of quality. Okay, and I know some people are going to be saying, like, oh, what about Stephen King or what about Brandon Sanderson? Brandon Sanderson takes very long time to outline his stories and outlines them very thoroughly, let's say. And he still took an entire year to write just the first draft of Stormlight Archives 4, which is coming out in November, by the way, I'm really excited. And he's taking the better part of a year to do other drafts and other edits. And people like Stephen King, well, yeah, he writes really fast, don't get me wrong, and he does do editing and stuff. But also he's reached a point in his career where publishers will just throw anything he has out the door without really putting effort into making it better. And Sarah DeMoss, there's no way she's going to be able to write that much and be able to properly edit it all and make it better. And it feels like because she's popular enough, the publishers are kind of doing the same thing as with Stephen King.  So in a sense, I feel kind of bad for her because she's kind of screwed from the start. But at the same time, she's the one that's writing smut in books that are ostensibly for teenagers, so I don't feel that bad for her. And at the end of the day, you couldn't make these good without a page one rewrite. I really mean that. Page one of the first book, total rewrite. That's what you would need in order to make these good. You could do some edits to make them passable, though, and it's kind of a shame that that never happened. So now on to the future real quick. I am not going to read a court of thorns and roses, guys. I keep saying throne, whatever. But people have brought that up in the comments a couple of times. Like, I hope you read this one. And apparently that one's actually a lot worse than Throne of Glass because Throne of Glass at least tries to do, like, role building and have something of a plot. And a court of thorns and roses is apparently a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which I would imagine there's no beast in that version because if this is what Cinderella is and whatever. But, like, yeah, I'm just never going to read that, okay? Going through Throne of Glass is one of the most miserable experiences I've had related to this show. I really mean that.  I don't know exactly when it's going to come out, but I also have Michael Bloomberg's Daughter's Horsebooks, which you can see I've already started on this one, but I got, like, 20 pages in and I had to stop because it's just exhausting already. So I'm definitely going to be reading some stuff I actually like for a little while. And then I'm going to... Well, we'll see which series it is. I don't know. It's one of those two.  I'm not going to make any promises that I can't keep. It'll just be, it'll be a while.  Thank you for watching this part in particular because, hey, a lot of people don't finish these things, whatever. Thanks to my patrons, Oppo Savilainen, Christopher Hawkins, Brother Santotis, Christopher Quinton, Joseph Pendergraft, and, of course, Tobacco Crow, and, of course, all these names. You guys are cool. You helped me get through this. You helped me get through whatever. And please like the video, comment on the video, subscribe if you haven't, although if you're watching, like, part three of me ranting like this, I would imagine you already subs. Like, I imagine you're already a fan, but whatever if you're not, please do that and I'll see you later. Bye.


Anger, hate, fear, anticipation, anxiety, frustration, impatience, resentment, tension. I think it's fair to say that the majority of us have experienced at least one, if not all of these things, especially this year. As natural as these feelings are, they can be toxic to not only our martial arts practice, but our everyday lives as well. So how do we stop these emotions from being a hindrance? By achieving motion. Today, we're going to talk about what that is and a few ways you can achieve it. And for those of you out there who are Kempoists or critics of Kempo, I'll have a special message for you at the end of the video. We talked about the concept of the four different Zen saints of mind a while back, which are Shoshin, the beginner's mind, Zanshin, remaining mind, Fudoshin, immovable mind, and Mushin, empty mind, which is what we'll be talking about today. We took a closer look at Shoshin in the previous episode, and you can find a link to that video in the description. And for those of you who believe that kata is useless, we will circle back around later in this video to show you why it might be more useful than you think. Mushin is actually abbreviated from Mushin Notion, and it translates to mind without mind. And personally, I think this may be the most challenging and quite possibly one of the most important states of mind to have. But in order to achieve it, we first have to break it down and understand it. The first thing to take into consideration is that while it means mind without mind, it does not mean that you should enter your head like a shell leaving the void, but rather achieve an estate without conscious thought. It might seem like splitting hairs, but it's a very important distinction. It is not a state of relaxation or submission, but rather being fully awake, incredibly aware, just not impeded by the burden of emotion or forced conscious interference. It is the ability to be fully aware of your environment and situation, completely unbiased, and letting your mind react on instinct instead of preconceived thought. This is applicable in so many different parts of life, but in the context of the martial arts, I believe this may be a crucial element in the ability to defend yourself or not. It is also not something you can just read about and learn intellectually. It can only be achieved through experience and being able to let your mind go. In a few minutes, we're going to talk about a few things that can help you achieve motion, or at least how to become more aware and more present and aware in any given context. It is so easy to let our minds get cluttered with noise or a barrage of thoughts that weigh on us every day. And it's no surprise that many people struggle to focus on a task with all that static going on. I'm going to give you a couple of examples of my own personal experiences and let me know if any of them seem familiar to you.  I could be working on a technique or a kata or whatever, and suddenly a passerby stops by that window and peers inside. Suddenly, I found myself applying my energy differently. Louder key eyes or repeating motions that I knew I was good at or taking dramatic stances after each repetition. My mind would get flooded with a variety of thoughts. Are they looking for a new school? I have to represent this one. Or are they judging me? I have to work harder, or any variety of these thoughts.  But thankfully, I grew out of that. But as a young teen just beginning in the martial arts, it was very easy to be distracted by these types of thoughts. Even when I started teaching, I was 17 and helping out in classes. I hated teaching at first. And it had nothing to do with actually working with the kids or the teaching itself. But we had rows of chairs that were always full of parents watching.  And of course, those same doubts would creep in. Am I paying enough attention to the everyone? Am I explaining the drill clearly enough?  Do they agree with the lesson or are they going to pull their kid out of the school?  I should have been focused on the lesson and the class and whether or not the kids were picking up the lesson. Maybe that's why my instructor put me in that position to get me acclimated to the pressure of teaching and making decisions in front of a crowd. And the funny thing is, I didn't realize that I felt this right away. Teaching made me uncomfortable but I finally realized why when about a year later the school moved to a new location and the parents were still able to watch classes but in another room through a window. That little bit of separation felt so much better and I was able to focus a little bit more. And that's the nature of being in the spotlight. It can blind you if you look at it. Instead, you have to see through the glares and focus on what's in front of you. This was something I had to learn to deal with over time. So what if somebody was watching from the outside? Why should I stop what I'm working on because they're standing there for three seconds? So what if the parents are sitting there? Most of them are probably lost in thought, happy for a time out, or genuinely interested in the lesson. And guess what? If they have a problem with what you're teaching, they'll tell you and you can deal with it then. We can only expand our comfort zone by stepping outside of it. Okay, so enough of that, I'm starting to sound preachy.  I think we can all relate to that. And if it doesn't happen to you now, then I bet it did when you first started. And that's fine, that's a natural response, but it's inhibitive. When we get too wrapped up with the what ifs, we might not be ready for the what is. And that's motion. Being able to leave those thoughts outside the moment and be receptive and reactive to the immediate scenario.  So an experienced boxer that is fully in the moment, doesn't see an opponent wind up and throw a punch and then save himself. Okay, so he's throwing his punch. I should move my head out of the way and then counter punch. He just does it. The mind is engaged for your distraction. And as soon as the opponent moves, that second nature kicks in and reacts because you've worked on it so much. That is why repetition is super important and that is why resistance training is absolutely necessary to be good at self-defense. You can't possibly develop a natural reaction to a person fighting you, unless you spend time working on a person who's resisting you. This is why I feel drills like sticky hands are so beneficial. It's a constant feel of reading and reacting to your opponent's movements. It's always why BJJ and grappling are so good. An experienced grappler will be focused in the moment and when their opponent makes a move, intuition and confidence will kick in with the appropriate response. So if you're thinking too far ahead about the moves you're gonna do, you're not focused enough on the current moment. If you research motion at all, there's a particular saying and example that you'll find everywhere. And it's the expression Mizuno Kokoro, which means mind like water. They use the example of the moon's reflection on the body of water. If the water is turbulent, the image of the moon is distorted. But if the water is calm and still, then you can see it clearly.  It's present and powerful, but you're not adding unnecessary ripples. So okay, how do we achieve this? I wish it was as simple as saying do this and you'll have motion. There are common measures such as meditation that can help. Learning to sit and focus on the task of breathing and not letting yourself get distracted by daily thoughts is a beneficial practice and it can translate to your training too. There is also the practice of developing something called splatter vision that can help greatly with your awareness. You may also hear it referred to as owl eyes or wide angle vision and the whole concept is to develop and utilize a greater part of your peripheral vision. I believe that in general, many people often neglect the benefit of having good peripheral vision. We are so focused on our everyday lives and things that are constantly shoved in our faces as well as putting up blinders when we want to ignore ads or any noise that we may encounter throughout the day. But by expanding and developing our peripheral vision, we can take in more of what's going on in our surroundings. Peripheral vision is especially beneficial to seeing or registering movement, where our central focus is adept at registering sharp detail. In the martial arts, having good peripheral vision can make the difference of detecting your opponent's shift or making a move without having your eyes having to dart all over the place. And it also means potentially detecting other dangers in this situation, such as another attacker or possibly an obstruction to an escape. I put a lot of stock into this concept and it's one of the things that I feel I have toned fairly well in my own training. Whenever I spar, my eyes are locked straight ahead, often locked on my opponent's eyes, but you better believe it, I'm absolutely watching both arms and legs. By being aware of peripheral movement, I can react without having to look directly at the attack. And whenever we did 201 sparring in class, I adjusted this slightly and would adjust my vision to more of the middle space between the attackers and making sure I could see both sets of legs just outside the edges of my peripheral. This allowed me to keep distance and calm until I detected motion and then I would react and use that person as an obstacle for the other one. There are exercises out there that help with this, but there's one really simple one that I really like and it's one that you can even do right now as you're watching this video. Look straight ahead and stretch your arms out directly to your sides that they're about 180 degrees apart. Now you're not going to see my hands because they're going off screen, but you can sit in your chair right now and do this. Once your hands are 180 degrees apart, start wiggling your fingers on both of your hands while keeping your eyes straight ahead and try to register the motion as you see both sets of fingers. Try to avoid bringing your arms into the vision if possible. Focus more on relaxing and trying to expand your awareness of the edges. You won't see your hands in sharp detail. Like we said, peripheral vision is about detecting motion, but sometimes seeing that motion makes all the difference. And by doing this drill, you know, by stretching your arms out and trying to see both hands at the same time, you're actually taking and registering more of your surroundings, engaging your mind more on the immediate situation and more activity and hopefully less on any distracting thoughts or feelings. So yes, I highly recommend looking more into splatter vision or owl eyes for sure. Okay, now where does Kata fall into this? I think Kata has a tremendous role to play in achieving motion. There are obvious benefits such as learning Bunkai and understanding the relationship of different moves and concepts. There is usually a lot of information deep within the forms. But Kata, I think, is a phenomenal training tool for subtle practice when you don't have the tactile feedback of a partner. With Kata, once you learn the steps and understand what you are doing and what each movement means, you can lose yourself inside of it. Find a quiet spot and just start going through your form.  Focus on your breathing and immediate moments. Don't worry at this point about practical application, but rather developing a second nature of the flow and points of focus and timing move like water, smooth, natural, inhibited. In a way, I often use Kata as a form of meditation. Forms I've done for years sometimes feel good to just let go and flow through. And for those of you who feel that Kata is no good for real-life application, I agree and I disagree. The sequences in Kata aren't generally meant to take and drop into a real fight scenario. That's not what they're intended for. They convey ideas and relationships. However, that doesn't mean that you can't use it. Many Kata movements and sequences are actually derived from combat moves. And if it's a form that you are very well versed in, then you might be surprised of what you might resort to if the situation calls for it.  I just caught his approach out of the corner of my eye and without even thinking about it, I stepped off the line of attack. I turned, I did a drop in elbow to deflect the punch. And then I pivoted to a fighting position, got my hands up ready and my knuckles were a few inches from his face. I didn't think about it. I just saw the moment, the movement and I just kind of reacted like that. My brain wasn't, it was engaged enough to react, but I didn't have to think about what I was going to do. It was a move combination from Kempo long form one. And I didn't decide to do the move. My mind just detected the motion and I reacted faster than I could have consciously made that choice. Motion is a hard practice for me. My mind is always going a thousand miles a minute, but in that particular moment, I got to experience it and it was a bit of an eye opening experience. So use that Kata as a training tool. Try not to think about the next move, but let go and let your passive mind do the driving. Use your peripheral vision to observe your surroundings while you do so. With enough practice, I think you can expand a lot of your mental awareness. So speaking of Kempo, here is a message to all you Kempoists out there. Kempo often has a bad rap of learning pre-choreographed motions that we are expected to memorize and execute in the right scenario. So anyone who says that you can't choreograph a real fight and a person isn't going to stand there all day while you hit them is absolutely correct. But that isn't what Kempo teaches or at least not what it's supposed to teach. Each technique is like a mini kata. There is serious bunkai to be applied and a ton of information to be extracted from each one. But as beginners, we learn the basics and we learn how they work together in combination via these techniques so that when a real situation happens, you can recognize specific positions and situations and just respond accordingly.   If you overthink it, you'll get in your own way. If you've been practicing long enough, you should be able to react naturally. Those pre-choreographed techniques are not likely to work as they are written and that's something we're gonna get to more in a future episode, but with enough time and practice, you should be able to instantly recognize many positions and be able to just react based on what you feel. And that is why resistance training and sparring is so important. You can have all the confidence in the world in your technique until you try to get it to work on another person. You expand your skills and comfort zones by stepping outside of it. And if you're able to implement this into your own training, then you are well on your way to achieving motion. So I'm curious to know what your experience with motion might be or any tips that you can share to help others in sharpening their focus and blocking out the noise. Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next week.