All right. So let's start with why be optimistic, why it's important. And here I want to... I don't mean by optimistic being polyanish. I don't mean by optimistic massaging the facts of reality to be somehow positive. I don't mean optimistic by being delusional. I mean by optimistic as having a basic positive view of the future based on rational facts, based on reality. And I can certainly see circumstances which you can be optimistic. Just things are so bad that optimism is impossible. But why is it important to live for a healthy life, to be optimistic or to live in an environment to live in a world where you can be optimistic and I'll make the case that we could still be optimistic in this world. Because life entails action. And life entails action into the future. Indeed, we live in the present, but we're constantly moving towards a future and creating a future. We're constantly thinking about the future, planning for the future and acting now for the future. And it is impossible, impossible to act into the future and to be successful in acting into the future and to be energized about acting into the future and to be committed to the future if you think the future is bleak and horrible and depressing and nothing can be achieved and your life is just one long miserable. I mean, what's the point? How can one plan for what horizon? If failure is the name of the game, then why plan? Why think about the future? Why plan for the future? Why live? And it's impossible to be happy. So to be happy, to be successful, one needs an attitude that is based on reason, on fact, on reality, but an attitude that says I can't achieve in the future. I can succeed. My actions will bring, or at least with a high probability, bring positive outcome. This is not futile what I'm doing. What I'm doing is going to lead to something better, to achieving my values.  It's not possible. Optimism is the attitude that says my values are achievable. I can't achieve them. They can be gotten. I will not give up and I will fight for them because in this world with all its problems, I can still achieve my values, at least some of them, if not all of them. And that is a necessary attitude.  It's a necessary frame of mind to go after a new job, to pursue a new career, to pursue an existing career, to pursue a raise, to pursue a promotion, to study a new area, to go into a new field. It's a necessary condition to try dating, to go after a relationship, friendship, love. If you are convinced that it will fail, you will not try. If you're convinced that you're going to fail, you're not going to succeed. What's the point of planning? What's the point in thinking? What's the point in thinking? What's the point in acting? So to act into the future requires a belief, again, based on facts, based on reality, that achievement can be achieved. Values can be attained. Is that positive view about life, about values? Needs to be there. Otherwise, you're paralyzed. You're paralyzed either into hedonism or into just passivity. And then pessimism is to a large extent a self-fulfitting prophecy. Because when you stop believing in the future, when you stop believing in your ability to attain values, when you stop believing in your efficaciousness in the world, or that the world is open to you, then you stop acting. Then you stop making no sense happen. And then all of that negativity is exactly what happens out of default. The default, when you don't act, is failure. Inaction is failure. So a positive sense about the future, at least an important realm in your life, is crucial if you want to live a successful happy life. And, of course, that positive sense about the future has to be, optimally is, related to the values that are most important to you, to the things that you care about most, to the things that advance your life most. If, yes, you can be successful in the minor stuff in life, but the important stuff in life you're an absolute failure at, then it's very hard. It's very hard to actually keep that motivation, and keep that drive, and keep that positivity. Say, once you want to make it in the important aspects of life, and what are the important aspects of life? What are the parts of life that are most important to the achievement of happiness? What are the parts in life which are most significant to all of us as individuals that make our life better, that we want to be successful in?  And if we're not, we'll have the biggest impact on our lives. Well, what are they? What are those areas in life? Well, balance is relationships. Absolutely, relationships, right? Your friendships, your romantic relationships, your family, these are hugely important. And you want to have healthy relationships there. You want to build those relationships. You want to act towards that. And you, in that context, you want to make sure that you act in ways that promote a good relationship into the future. You can control them. Sometimes a good relationship turns into a horrible relationship. Somebody, somebody, sometimes somebody you're close to will stab you in the back.  See, to have that successful life, you have to be able to project into the future and you have to act towards it. And if you give up, you can't have that. You won't gain that value. Adam says, finding a purpose and being productive. Yeah, having a, having a career. I mean, career is crucially important in your life. And you've want to develop a positive attitude towards your career. If your career is, and I've said this many times in the show, if your career is no good, if it's a dead end, if you're struggling, if you don't like it, if you're not enjoying it, you don't see a future in it. If you cannot be optimistic about your career where you are right now, then do something about it. Because it's crucial that you have a positive view of your career. It's crucial that you're ready to act to make your career better. You act to make your life in this realm better, that you act to do well, to succeed. And it's not completely in your control, not relationships and not a career. But in most, both cases, it's mostly in your control. You get to decide who you have a relationship with or not. You get to decide who to get close to or not.  This is something that's very much in your control. Make it happen. Make it good. Again, you're going to fail. We all fail. Failure is part of trying. Failure is part of living. It's what you do with that failure, what you learn from that failure. And whether you're willing to get up and try again and try again and try again. And the same with the career. Not the first career you choose won't necessarily be the one that you stick with. You might have to change. You don't have to try, but it's in your control. Yes, you might have a lousy boss. You might have a lousy company that might lay you off for no reason. Lots of things might happen. But at the end of the day, your career is in your control, particularly in a job market like today, where there's a huge shortage of good people. So be courageous, be brave, be willing to change.  You're living for an ever better future career-wise. So you got relationships, you got career. I don't know. What else is important? What is crucial to your life, to your happiness, to your success? Let's see. Yeah, what you do for a living, we just talked about. Yeah, have a reason why you want to live. Yeah, but a lot of that has to do with having a purpose, having a career, and being able to have that positive view of the future. But what else is important to you guys? Relationships here, career, anything else? Well, art, Jennifer says, art, absolutely. Art has a huge value in life. Hobbies have huge value in life. Now, who controls the art that you get to experience? You do. So make it a positive experience. Figure out what you like. Figure out what you don't. Expose yourself to more and more of what you like. Give yourself that energy, that satisfaction, that pleasure, that enjoyment that comes from experiencing art. But you are in control of it. Nobody else. Therefore, you can create a positive future. Save up money to buy a beautiful sculpture like that one. Save up money to buy a beautiful painting. Save up money to go to a concert, to go to a museum, to go on a trip. So art is in your control. You can be optimistic about art because there's plenty of good art out there. And it's under your control whether you choose it or not. Nobody can take it away from you. With the internet, there's an endless amount of good art. Endless amount of good art. Pleasure. Stephen says pleasure. Yeah, I mean, all kinds of pleasures, whether it's pleasure you get from art, whether it's pleasure you get from sex, whether it's pleasure you get from great conversation, whether it's pleasure you get from listening to your own book show, whether it's pleasure you get from a good massage. Again, under your control, you get to set the terms. And there's no reason to be pessimistic about it. You can create a world. You can create your life to have pleasure in it. Ryan says a sense of accomplishment. I mean, that comes primarily from work. Again, go do it. Get it. Get it done. Achieve it. Had a plan. Be optimistic about it. You can't accomplish stuff. As long as you set your goals appropriately. And if you can't accomplish things here, go somewhere else. Move. Take control over your accomplishments. When a female says health, loyals herself. Yeah, again, this is not a passive activity. Find a good doctor.  Get a overall evaluation. Change your diet. Exercise. Study. Figure out what's healthy or not.  But medicine has advanced so much that the chances for surviving are very, very good. The doctors, they're amazing doctors out there. There's amazing technology out there. There are amazing drugs out there. We live in a world in which many of the diseases one gets can be cured, can be dealt with as hard as it is, as difficult as it is. What used to be death sentences are no longer. But again, you have to act. You have to do it. All right. Others say, yes, as health relationships, career, financial stability, and personal hobbies, learning, volunteer, if you like, etc. You didn't have art. Art should definitely be in your big five. And financial stability is really linked to your career. I guess you could separate them out. But again, all in your control. Now notice, you know, somebody says a dog, good meal, cats and rabbits, goldfish, hamsters, not sure what any of that has to do with anything, possums, yeah, having a pet, that's good. Note that on the values that we have talked about so far, that are really necessary for happiness, for flourishing, for being successful as a human being.  They're all values that no matter what happens in Washington DC, up to a point, we'll talk about that up to a point, no matter what the truckers do or don't do, no matter what you do, does or doesn't do, up to a point, all of those are achievable, or at least in different scenarios, many of them are achievable, in spite of the crummy, horrible, disgusting state of the world. I mean, all of that is to illustrate that if you focus on the things that matter to you, on the personal values that are important to you, on your relationships, on your career, on art that you love, on your pets, on your, I don't know, whatever, you will achieve success and you can be optimistic because in every one of those realms, you get to control it, you get to control it. Now it is true, the things could get a lot worse. Under dictatorship, a lot of the things that we can control now, we can't control under dictatorship. Many of the things that we take for granted today disappear and go away. All of that is true and it's why you should care about politics and you shouldn't just ignore it. But it's also true that we don't live in a dictatorship. In spite of COVID lockdowns, we don't live in a dictatorship yet. One likely to live in a dictatorship anytime really soon and that there's very little you as an individual can do to prevent whatever catastrophic dictatorship is coming down. I mean, not to say you shouldn't do anything. So why am I optimistic? How do I stay optimistic? Because I'm focused on the values that are important to me. I'm focused on achieving the things that make my life good, that make my life happy, that make my life fulfilling. And I don't let the things I don't have control over. I don't let the macro political situation as bad and as dark and as bleak as it is get me down too much. One of the women says, Yuan, don't visit Russia. I visited Russia. Russia's bleak. Russia's not my favorite place indeed of all the places I visited in the world. Russia's maybe among my least favorite places because it's bleak. Partially it's the weather. Partially it's the people, although there are some wonderful Russians but in Russia and it's just an atmosphere of bleakness and of oppression. But most of us don't live in Russia. And if you live in Russia, get out. Again, something you can control. It's not the Soviet Union. You don't have to risk your life and climb a wall and get shot at in order to leave.  That is the source of optimism.     And you are rational and confident and have some self-esteem, then how can you not be optimistic about your life? Maybe not about the world. Maybe not about three generations from now. But what really matters is your optimism about you, about your life, about where you're going, where you're heading, about your ability to achieve your values. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and, of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


My name is Paolo Rufino and I'm from the University of York. My research so far has been mostly about gamification, as I will discuss today. Gamification is seen by many to be one of the latest developments of the quantified self-movement, because it combines self-tracking with elements of game design, as I will discuss. So what I would like to talk about today in particular is a very personal story, and it's a story of how I ended up my two years long relationship with Nike Fuel. The reason why I talk about it as a relationship is because I've been wearing this wristband on my wrist for more than two years every day, so I don't think any relationship could get more intimate than this. And breaking up with it has been of course also a very emotional issue. So I would like to talk about how I came up to the decision to break up with Nike Fuel. This story will of course be used to me to talk about some of the keywords of gamification. But first of all, what is Nike Fuel? So Nike Fuel is a technology developed by Nike, the sports company. It's a technology for the measurement of the movement of the body. It has an accelerometer in the wristband. This is supposed to be put on the wrist and to be worn at all times by the user. So the accelerometer records the movement and converts it into a Nike Fuel score, which is visible from the wristband, if you press the button, or by connecting the wristband to the laptop or via Bluetooth to the smartphone app. At midnight the score resets and the counting starts again from zero. It is designed for sport practitioners as well as beginners. It is advertised as a tool for self-improvement by self-tracking. And it is very often used as a reference on techs about gamification and on the quantified self-movement. Gary Wolf actually from Wired Magazine uses Nike Fuel as an example quite often. The reason why I would like to reconstruct this romantic relationship that they had with Nike Fuel is to, in order to, I will use this story to rethink some of the keywords that are very often used to discuss about gamification and also about the quantified self-movement. And these keywords are engagement, first of all, but also movement, time, space, and also maybe life. If there will be time, we will talk a bit about the meaning of life in this presentation. And I would also like to discuss about my own personal experience with Nike Fuel as a strategy to counter some of the dominant narratives on gamification and the quantified self-movement. They try to analyze and quantify the metrics of these tools on their users. So they essentially try to focus on the statistics about users' acquisition and retention seen as methods for telling the truth about the effects of gamification and quantified self-technologies. So instead what I would like to argue is that we can develop multiple counter narratives by looking at how individuals engage with gamification and quantified self-technologies. But first, what is gamification? So in a few words, as defined by Dieter Dingetal quite effectively, is the use of game design elements in non-game context. So gamification is a current trend in the design of apps and services for self-improvement oriented to education, learning, health, and so on. And it is used very often to attract new customers in online and digital businesses. Extensive use of the term is reported since 2010-2011, although the term gamification has been used also at the beginning of 2000. These courses about gamification are quite dominated by the marketing consultancy sector. And when Dieter Dingetal defined in 2011 gamification as the use of game design elements in non-game context, what they meant was that with game design elements is what they broadly defined as elements that are characteristic to games. And more specifically, these are usually interface and game design patterns such as badges, levels, scores, rankings, leaderboards, rewards, and so on. So for example with Nike Fuel, what you get once you upload your data on your personal service, your personal profile is a series of statistics about your own activity and you can compare them with your own performance from previous days and you can compare it in the future with how you will move in the following days and you get a series of badges and scores to kind of reward yourself if you have been moving throughout the day. So it reminds a game-like experience. In the last few years we have seen the emergence of many events and publications and conferences about gamification. We have the website gamification.co owned and managed by a game zigerman who is one of the gurus of gamification. It's a website that updates on daily news in case stories about gamification if you want to spend time on the website you will see that every day has very different stories. So gamification is seen as a very broad phenomenon that can include stories about health, education, and also for the improvement of the conditions of labor and work, for example. But also mostly brand loyalty and consumer retention. Most of the stories reported on gamification.co are about how businesses have been improving their consumer retention by using gamification. There is also an annual conference called Gamification Summit organized by Gabe Zigerman again every year in San Francisco since 2011. There are also, of course, many publications. The book Gamification by Design, Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps, the one at your left, is authored by Gabe Zigerman and Christopher Cunningham is probably the most popular book. And in textbooks on gamification such as Gamification by Design, gamification is mostly presented as a technique. It's a technique based on the collection and analysis of previous experiences in user engagement. So gamification is there presented as a series of very practical and operational suggestions on how to involve the users, be they customers, citizens, employees, or gamers, and how to maximize their performance through the creation of this game-like scenario. So in order to achieve this goal, gamified technologies need to collect and archive data about the user. And data needs to be first archived and processed to later become part of the game. And it is collected according to a principle of transparency as you can see if you read these textbooks. Gamification proposes itself as a technique to play with the truths, with the facts about the user, and attempts to assist the user in improving those true facts, those real data about the self. So here you can see how the connection can easily be made with the quantified self-movement, which very similarly proposes to quantify the self in order to improve it. And the quantified self-movement has in fact originated in a context which is very similar to gamification. It is mostly the TED Talk series. Both terms and expressions have been made popular around 2010-2011 when mostly through the pages of Wired Magazine both gamification and the quantified self-movement receive extensive exposure. So collection and data processing is oriented towards the improvement of life. Life is intended as the sum of the data about a person body as it is generated during daily activities. The quantified self is also promoted as a solution to medical problems and for the improvement of certain characteristics of the body. So gamification can actually be seen as a further step in the process of quantifying the self, in which the improvement of life happens through a game-like environment and towards the establishment of practices of participation between users. Now one of the key words of the discourses about gamification is engagement. So engagement is seen by many authors who work on gamification as the sort of the holy grail of gamification. It's the most important concept. Once you are capable of designing an effective and engaging experience you are a master of gamification. So engagement is used as a term to discuss and represent the extent to which players are using the game and being influenced by the game. Zickerman and Cunningham in gamification by design actually started their text with the definition of engagement. And this is how they define it. Determine engagement in a business sense, they say, indicates the connection between a consumer and a product or service. Unsurprisingly, the term is also used to name the period in a romantic couples relationship during which they are preparing and planning to spend the rest of their lives together. Engagement is the period of time at which we have a great deal of connection with a person, place, thing or idea. Somehow this definition is seen as being too broad and too problematic by the two authors so they quite quickly narrow it down in something much more prosaic and they say that engagement maybe is better if you quantify it through an e-score or engagement score which includes recency, frequency, duration, virality, rate, etc. I will not go into the details of this mostly because actually I quite like the broad definition that they first define and that they so quickly dismiss. So engagement, if we take it in its more kind of romantic interpretation so what is it? It's a special kind of relationship and it's a relationship that precedes a passage towards a more binding relationship. So engagement is by definition expected to end at one point and transform into something else. Engagement is a term which actually does not simply define a relationship but a relationship between two things that are about to change the relationship. So it implies change. It implies movement towards a point of modification of the relationship itself. It implies progress towards an event that will alter the terms of the engagement itself. Engagement implies change and movement. Now what's interesting is that Nike Fuel, this gadget is in fact sold and advertised as a technology for the quantification of movement and movement is the keyword used by Nike to advertise its own product and I think it's not just a coincidence. So what I would like to show you now is the ad used by Nike to present its product. I would like you to focus on the words that are actually used by the voice-over to describe Nike Fuel. Well, it is a presentation about technological failures anyway, so it's perfectly, it fits perfectly with what I'm about to say. Experience all tell us that movement is life and that the more we move, the more we live. It's something athletes have understood from the beginning. The kind of movement it takes to improve your game is the kind of movement it takes to improve your life. But unlike sport, life doesn't come with convenient ways of measuring movement. So we developed one, Nike Fuel, a single universal unit uniquely designed to measure the movement of the entire human body for the entire human race.  It's that simple and that revolutionary.  Okay, sorry for the interruption. So movement is life is the slogan by Nike and this is the text of the voice-over, right? So what I would like to focus on is the first part of it where the voice-over says our minds, our bodies and our experience all tell us the movement is life and that the more we move, the more we live. Now, the video shows people of different ages, different races, practicing sports at more or less professional levels. They all move and therefore they all live according to the syllogies implicated by the presentation given in the spot. So the slogan movement is life. It's quite key to understand Nike Fuel. But how is Nike really understanding movement and life? So what I would like to argue in this presentation is that Nike's understanding of movement is actually read the homogeneous, static and spatialized. So what Nike is ultimately promoting is a kind of movement that remains static. Now, in order to argue about this, I would like to confront Nike's slogan movement is life with the very same slogan pronounced by someone else by Henry Berkson who similarly concluded that movement is life much earlier with very different conclusions coming from very different premises. So Henry Berkson in Time and Free Will actually explains his idea of movement and life. Now, I will not go into the details of his explanation but I will only stop on one argument. Unfortunately, I will need to show another video now. So hopefully it's going to be much smoother. So what I would like to show you is a video by the Open University where they explain the paradox of Zeno, in particular the story of Achilles and the tortoise. Now, this paradox formulated by the Greek philosopher has been received by a computation or an explanation by Henry Berkson much later on. And through the explanation of this paradox, I would like to introduce Berkson's understanding of movement. First, the tortoise is given a slight head start. Anyone fancying a flutter would still rush to put their money on Achilles but Zeno pointed out that to overtake him, Achilles would first have to cover the distance to the point where the tortoise began. In that time, the tortoise would have moved so Achilles would have to cover that distance giving the tortoise time to amble forwards a bit more. Logically, this would carry on forever. However small the gap between them, the tortoise would still be able to move forwards while Achilles was catching up. Meaning that Achilles could never overtake. Taken to an extreme, this bizarre paradox suggests that all movement is impossible. But it did lead to the realization that something finite can be divided an infinite number of times. This concept of an infinite series is used in finance to work out mortgage payments which is why they take an infinite amount of time to pay off. So, what was Bergson's response to the paradox of Zeno? Well, it was that, of course, Achilles actually will reach and pass the tortoise because it is much faster. But the paradox of Zeno remains unsolvable as long as movement is seen as homogeneous and specialized as Bergson puts it. So in this quote Bergson explains the problem quite well. So why does Achilles outstrip the tortoise? Because each of Achilles' steps and each of the tortoise's steps are indivisible acts insofar as they are movements and there are different magnitudes insofar as they are space. This is what Zeno leaves out of the account when he reconstructs the movement of Achilles. Forgetting that space alone can be divided and put together again in any way we like and thus confusing space with motion. So according to Bergson, the movements of Achilles and the tortoise are different in kind while space can differ by degree, by magnitude it can be more or less. So according to Bergson, movement has its own duration and duration cannot be reduced to space. The space surrounding Achilles and the tortoise is, in fact, homogeneous and can be divided an infinitely number of time in infinitely smaller fragments but the movements of Achilles and the tortoise are not similarly homogeneous and happen in time as much as in space. So Bergson solves the paradox of Zeno by introducing what he names intuition and this is what Deleuze later on will define as stating a problem and solving it in terms of time rather than of space. The sports company Nike, instead, actually reinforces the paradox by Zeno by specialising movement and life with it. Bergson will say that Nike actually uses an intellectual approach rather than an intuitive approach. So when intellect is analytical in that it divides and recomposes things in order to give us the knowledge that we need to satisfy our needs, intuition gives us instead the knowledge of how things are in constant movement and always in the process of becoming other. So this is why ultimately I believe that Nike's conception of movement and of life actually remains static. And Nike actually says this explicitly in its advertisement, if you remember.  So they're essentially saying that there are no movements that can be different in kind or quality. They cannot be homogeneously quantified by the wristband. But then how can anyone really be engaged and happily engaged with something that doesn't move, something that is so static. So how can engagement make anyone happy if there are no differences in kind between the various movements that the couple goes through together? Now, during my relationship with Nike, if you will, there's been a time actually where that I should have triggered my attention. It did only much later on. After about nine months of our relationship, an event happened that actually could have changed my relationship with it. It didn't raise any particular concern at the time, but it gave me later a good reason to rethink the value of our engagement. So after about nine months for the date of purchase, I had the wristband at the technical fault and it was not working properly. Essentially, it was altering the data whenever I was traveling to a different time zone. So I wrote to Nike's account on Twitter, as you can see, that's from December 2014, trying to report the problem. This went on for a few weeks and ultimately was offered to replace my wristband. I was given a new one. Now, the problem was that the Nike Fuel wristband that I got as a replacement was working exactly like the previous one, but of course without the technical fault. So everything was fine, it seemed. But actually, much later on, I started questioning what really happened there. So what was I really engaging with if the wristband had been replaced? Was I engaging with Nike Fuel as a concept, an abstract concept? Or was I actually engaging with something else? Did the terms of our engagement change somehow? Or should they have changed? And will Nike Fuel as a wristband work exactly in the same way if it moved to someone else? And of course, of course it did. It doesn't quantify my own movement, but anyone's movement. Which, of course, might sound like an obvious statement, but in fact, actually, it triggered a consideration in me. Because relationships sometimes come to an end when there is an unexpected event that changes the terms of the relationship. For example, someone cheats, or someone needs to move to a different town, changing job, whatever. And these events are seen as a rapture in an established order, which makes the previous condition of the relationship impossible to recover. Events of this kind cannot be undone. So in those circumstances, it is usually said that nothing can be the same ever again. Between us, nothing can be the same ever again. In my case, actually, I slowly started to realize that by swapping the wristband with a new one, everything will have always stayed the same forever, which is much worse. So after these considerations, I came to the conclusion that Nike Fuel and I could actually replace each other with no significant consequences. So in other words, the daily scores that I accumulated for over two years, while being different from each other by their degree or intensity, by being different in magnitude, being higher or lower scores, were unlikely to ever become of a different kind, of a different quality. A quality that would be incomparable and indivisible by the same criteria applied to all the other previous measurements that are also going to be applied to all my future movements. So the game of gamification, as we know, never really ends. We know that tomorrow the game will be repeated according to the same criteria, according to the same mechanics. Our engagement will always be measured and evaluated through the same criteria of the present. So if this was really a romantic relationship, a romantic engagement, it could be said that Nike Fuel is a wristband that never becomes a ring. It never becomes something different. Okay, so what are my conclusions after this experience with Nike Fuel? So by telling this personal story, I've been trying to reflect on some of the most common use keywords of gamification and quantified self. First of all, engagement but also movement, time and life to a certain extent. We have also seen how these are discussed by Nike and it's in the presentation of its Nike Fuel product and also as they appear in the literature on gamification and the quantified self movement. I have approached this through a personal story, one that looks at my own engagement with Nike Fuel and also the failure of the promise of movement as it was advertised by Nike. And particularly at the static conception of time and life that the technology ultimately offers. So within these conditions, our relationship could only come to an end. Our relationship that was supposed to be since the beginning all about movement was not really going anywhere. So in conclusion, I think we can maybe start thinking about other keywords, not necessarily to replace engagement, but to maybe further kind of define what we are really doing when we engage with our quantified selves. I don't think that engagement really works ultimately because it promises change, a change that never really happens, a mutual change that is supposed to happen at one point in time. So this implied promise of movement and mutual change is necessarily going to fail and disappoint. Engagement implies its own end, its own transformation in a relationship of a different kind. But as it is currently understood in texts about on-gamification, engagement can only change by magnitude, by quantity. As you might remember when I first introduced the definition of engagement by Zygerman and Cunningham, they evaluated to a metric to a score. So it can get higher or lower, but it's never going to change in kind. So rather than engagement, maybe we can start thinking about gamification and quantified selves as things that we to live with more broadly, as temporary companions. We can think of our relationship with our quantified selves, maybe in terms of kinship, which is I think a much slightly more preferable as it is open to uncertainty, it is open to change, it is open to the possibility that relations might also come to an end. It is open to the possibility of unpredictable events actually happening in the relationship with the other. It also looks at the events of the relationship, rather than looking at engagement as homogeneous, as an homogeneous condition to be analyzed through metrics and statistics. It opens therefore to an intuitive understanding of gamification in quantified self, one that considers the problems in terms of time rather than space in a constant process of becoming a movement rather than as something static. Accidentally, this might also be a suggestion for developers and designers. What would be a gamification or a quantified self experience which actually opens to and welcomes uncertain events, which is expected to change in time, which might change in time, and that changes the terms of the engagement radically in a way that cannot be undone. What could be this other kind of gamification in quantified self? It will definitely require, from the side of the user, a different kind of engagement, a different kind of interaction, interactions that are personal, intuitive, timely, and unique, that cannot be repeated. So I'm not sure how this engagement with these quantified selves would be like exactly, but I'm sure it would be different, it would be much more interesting and certainly much more fun to play with. Thank you.


The paper reviews and classifies statistical transformations for post-processing regional climate model, RCM, output into three categories, distribution-derived, parametric, and non-parametric transformations, each with different underlying assumptions. A real-world application using Norwegian precipitation station observations shows that non-parametric transformations have the highest skill in reducing biases in RCM precipitation. This article was authored by J. E. Haugen, T. Engenskogen, J. B. Bremmins, and others.


game to that game. Yeah, we just up to our level. Um, you know, we started getting stops. I was getting great looks, great shots. You know, just one fall in the moment. So we knew we keep getting those looks. They'll fall eventually and then they started falling. Then we kept getting stops, good styles, good board. So, you know, that's it really for you personally to go from, we're talking about three can without blazing it on the floor at the end of games, close game, there goes trust in you. What does it mean for you? It means a lot. You know, it was a rough first two, three weeks of the season for me. Um, so then for coach JV to have, you know, have trust in me to close the game out, you know, and play me a good amount of minutes these last two games. Um, I can't thank him enough for that. And also, um, I don't think my teammates too, for, you know, trusting me with the ball down the stretch like that. KD, of course, you know, so I just, I was like to thank my teammates as well. You guys have been in that, you and KD have played a lot of two man games. What's that about? No, it's good. Just, um, just reading the game. Um, coach JV draws it up sometimes for us to run that two man game on the one side.   So he just has to make the right play. I got to make the right play. And then, you know, at all, the dominoes fall after that. So, you know, it was real good offense. Obviously, you'll take 40 point point at any time.  Is there a value? Oh, it's definitely a value, but obviously it's still early, but it's definitely a good stepping stone for us to be down about 12 in the fourth.  So, I feel like it's a good character


Dear students, in this topic, we shall discuss the role of acetylcholine and catechol amines on excitation. Dear students, first we shall study the effect of acetylcholine on paste maker potentials. The parasympathetic cholinergic fibres of vagus nerve that is 10th cranial nerve. Innovate the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes. From these cholinergic fibres, acetylcholine is released. Acetylcholine slows the heart rate. This action of acetylcholine is known as negative chronotropic effect. Acetylcholine produces this effect by increasing the potassium ion conductance of paste maker cells. The flow of potassium ions keeps the membrane potential near the potassium equilibrium potential for a longer time. That is why the actions of acetylcholine slow paste maker depolarization. So the interval between the action potentials is increased. Acetylcholine also reduces the velocity of conduction of excitation from atria to the atrioventricular node. This way acetylcholine has three types of action potential length. Number two, atria to ventricular node excitation transfer. And number three, atrioventricular node excites the ventricles. As a result, it slows the heart rate. Dear students, now we shall discuss the effect of catecholamines on paste maker potentials. Sino-atrial node, atria, atrioventricular node, or ventricles. Adrenergic nerve fibers, they release norepinephrine, which is a catecholamine. Norepinephrine increases the rate of contraction of myocardium. It increases heart rate by increasing the conductance of sodium and calcium ions. The sodium and calcium ions accelerate paste maker depolarization. Norepinephrine also increases the force of contraction of myocardium. This effect is known as positive ionotropic effect. It also increases the speed of conduction of wave of excitation over the heart. This effect of norepinephrine is known as positive dromotropic effect.


Finally, some good news, I think, I think this is good news. You know how there's this campaign to ban plastic straws, and there are lots of places now you cannot get plastic straws. And instead of the plastic straws, we have to use these horrible, just disgusting paper straws that fall apart, that just they get distorted, that you can never really finish a drink with them. You start, they're okay in the beginning, but even then they just don't feel right, they don't taste right maybe, and they just get shredded. No matter how well they're made. So paper straws are disgusting and horrible. I mean I am, I should, we should have a presidential candidate who runs on the platform of, you know, passing a constitutional amendment that we can use plastic straws. Anyway, it turns out that in a study by a group of Belgian scientists, it turns out that plastic straws are actually, sorry, the paper straws are actually probably worst for the environment than plastic straws. This is the best news I've heard in a long time. It turns out that the paper straws have to be, you know, in order to make them work, in order to make them water resistant, they have to be treated. And that treatment embeds in the paper straws what are called forever chemicals. And it turns out that there are more of these forever chemicals in paper straws than there are in plastic straws. And it turns out, of course, the forever chemicals are these chemicals that cannot, you cannot break them down, they're just there forever. Although I think I did a show a while ago, one of the news items was that scientists have figured out a way to get rid of forever chemicals. But anyway, that would, I don't want to do anything that might suggest that we should save paper straws. So it looks like by banning plastic straws and introducing paper straws, we are actually increasing forever chemicals in the pollution that they result in. And I am starting a movement to, in the name of the environment, to ban paper straws. Because forever chemicals clearly have to be, no question about it, the worst thing for the environment possible, right? No? I don't know. I have no idea. They strike me as just the latest, greatest forever chemicals. Sounds so ominous. It just sounds like the latest, greatest, ominous thing to induce us to behave ourselves, to induce us not to destroy nature. They're artificial. That's the thing that we're artificial in the sense that they are recombined atoms, molecules that exist in nature. But recombined by man rather than recombined by nature. And that makes them evil and bad.  What can I say? I am all in favor of returning to plastic. All right.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspeyscasebreaks.com with a random number block randomizer for this group of teams right here. This unlocks flawless five. That's coming up in a separate video if you're looking for that. Big thanks to this group for making it happen. Congrats to the people who won those spots and those two hanger box breaks. There are the numbers right there. Let's roll it. Let's randomize names and numbers one and a five six times each. One, two, three, four, five and six in final time. After six, we got Derek down to Waseem. One and a five six times four. The numbers one, two, three, four, five and six. Four down to five. And I got six times for everything. Great. Alright, Derek with four. Bartholomew with seven. Brian with three. Waseem with one. Zachary with zero. Jeremy with six. Alexander with eight. Matthew with two. Ed with nine and Waseem with the number five. Let's order these numerically. Now you're wondering, Joe, where's your usual spiel about zero getting any and all redemptions? I'm fairly certain that flawless does not have any redemptions at all. So I don't think that applies here, but it's in the description. Alright, we'll see you in the next video for the break. jaspeyscasebreaks.com


Hi everybody, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with Jaspy's 10 box sweet spot baseball mixer It's a random team break and we're giving away that 9 5 10 Acunia It's numbered a number to 50 as well So you got a good number on here as well some pretty good stuff from update and Here are the boxes in the break also great stuff in this mixer as well So good mixer good boxes a chance at a Ronald Acunia, Jr. Thanks to thanks to nobody nobody's on that list right now. Thanks to Got too eager for this break Thanks to those wonderful people right there We appreciate you getting in Some of you got spots straight up. I appreciate that someone got it got spots via the fillers. I appreciate that as well Thank you. All baseball teams are in no combos There's the spreadsheet right there. Let's roll it. Let's randomize each list one and a five six times. Good luck one two three four five and Oh one sixth and final time After six times we got Ryan H All the way down to Ryan C 105 six times for the teams one two three four Five and good luck six in the final time after six. We got the Texas Rangers down to the Colo Rattorockies All right, so Ryan H With the Rangers Steve with the Cubs Ryan C with the Red Sox Travis with the Rays Ryan C with the Angels Matt with the Cardinals Ryan with the Nats Tony with the Pirates Townsend You got the Mets and the Tigers Colin with the Phillies Darren with the Royals J With the Yankees Townsend with the Braves Raymond with the A's Yancy with the Reds Lonnie with the O's Matt with the White Sox J With the Astros Ben with the Padres Ryan C last spot mojo star next to your name Marlins Matt Medlin with the Diamondbacks Oliver Smith with the Giants Townsend Jack You have the Blue Jays and the twins Matt L with the Brew Crew Matt's Ryan C with the Mariners Matt You have the Indians Ryan C. You have my Dodgers and the Colorado Rockies So let's get all this on one screen and alphabetized by column B right here and I'm gonna pause the video when we come back. I have the boxes all set up here when we come back We're gonna see if there's any trades and then we'll have the break stick around. I'll be right back All right. Welcome back folks. We did have a trade A's Rangers are trades so Ryan H out of the Rangers spot and into the A's spot and Raymond out of the A spot and into the Rangers spot right here So we'll put T next to there to see who draws first blood in that trade. So let's print Let's press the print button. There we go and rip Good luck. That's the giveaway. So if you're having a pretty terrible break Or if you've got randomized a team, you don't like just keep keep this in mind We're giving this away at the end I don't think I could get this hair Fabio link. I doubt that would be way too much. I couldn't do that This is a 10 box break. Come on, man One two three four five six seven eight nine ten That's what it says on the on Jaspie's 10 box sweet spot baseball mixer cut my hair with a box cutter Done my power diminishing of each slice here the exclusives here I don't know if I'd want to sell my locks of hair though Mac and and Mike Because Because I mean what what if what if someone creates an unauthorized clone of me? I thought I'd be worried about Or they could plant my hair at a murder scene No, thanks No, thanks. Don't want to be framed for For murder's most foul Is that how they start sky high? How does sky high now? concerns me Travis yes, brennan mckay is a big name to trace for the rays One of the could be one of the top prospects One of the top top prospects for the rays definitely Could be a big rookie this year Like clones would be awesome mac that'd be awesome. You could always break then 24 hour breaks with joe and his clones I don't know I feel like one joe is already a handful I think I think I think each joe's would would Probably argue with each other What's up joe p. Yeah, no hacks that I brought a hat in case this bothers me, but I'm trying it out Can't wear a hat every day. It's just too much It's been doing that for too long Also, I'm trying out for uh, I'm trying out for bts after work All right. Here's uh some series one. Let's just fly through this I think actually for the rays there may be some auras aranhas Hiding in here somewhere, right? It's another solid player Thanks, joe p. I I just need barbershops to open up again soon. We need the I need people to follow directions We need to flatten this curve Get the vaccines rolled out Let's let's open up some uh, let's open up some barbershops So I can support my local barbershop I don't know people with long hair do it It's uh, it's much warmer on top of my head too like temperature-wise I deal with that There you go. There's Brandon McKay For both with with both. Where what happened to the barbershop quartet? I want to open up a barbershop Where it actually has a barbershop quartet There's uh some 70s Dodgers here and it's numbered as well It's a 299 005 out of 299 I think would would old Don Sutton be part of these old 60 70s Dodgers Think so RIP Don Sutton. There's this is for my Dodgers Ryan Carlson RIP Tommy as well. There's Tommy the sortest picture on there too There's the uh AL rookie of the year that goes to Ryan Carlson and the m's What boxes would I recommend you buying for a hundred bucks or less? I'm not sure. That's a good question. That's a decent budget though. Um Whatever it is It would have to be anything on jasps.com where you can get personal boxes We can send them to you sealed or we can open them up for you on instagram live I think Jason just got here and he's he's setting setting up for the day So they'll be on soon There's a nice mic trout there a little foil Now remember it's it's vet commons don't ship But every rookie card you see will ship inserts will ship obviously And this mic trout would ship anyway But different parallel I think A little different boost in value anything with trout on it's pretty good There's a relic here.  I don't see a lot of these foil mic trouts It's another one for the angel. That's ryan carlson Another relic. Oh, it's a piece of uh, nolan aeronautos lumber Right there for the rocks ryan carlson with that as well Incarnacion I know this is a baseball break folks, but philip rivers announcing officially announcing his retirement is that uh philip rivers a hall of famer I think so I don't know if he's a first ballot hall of famer, but It's got to be a hall of famer at some point eventually I think uh, maybe Maybe not for anything you know individually Exceptional, but I think there is something to be said about If you can survive in the national football league for as long as he did and play at the level That he has played at It means one of those volume guys, you know that are that are gonna be you're gonna look at his numbers and be like Yeah, dang You know that those are h o f numbers It's just a shame there's nine out of 25 max scherzer nationals So a couple nationals relics for ryan carlson just a shame that he hasn't really You know, you would have liked to see him seen him in uh See him win a super bowl I I realized also I don't know if you guys overheard this in the background at the sports center. Um philip rivers was part of a draft class that included like Eli Manning and ben rossberger, right? Maybe a couple other cubies Yeah, you know, I did cry when he got drafted by sandy But actually that turned out to be a pretty solid quarterback class if you think about it It's devon williams Devon williams for the brew crew Matt lever Exactly. Yeah pat. I agree. I think the I think the volume argument Does does does make sense Because now don't yeah, I mean to put up to put up those quality numbers He had a pretty decent season last year too. I think he could have probably played another year or two Before there was like serious noodle arm decline We got each euro Mariners edition we're going to ryan carlson in seattle All right, there you go And we got these exclusives right here too. So there's the these patches are pretty great Here are the exclusive cards. I got a nice green boba shut right here to 66 out of 99 for seattle seattle for toronto. That's going to be for towns in Blue jays adding uh George springer to that team, right? And I love these They're this one this one's buster posey.   Yeah, I think I agree with shan jaspy Llt is definitely when I think charger. I definitely think lt then gates Then rivers I wonder what happened. There must have been at least Or everyone was lot was relying on one source that was I was just leading people What's that jason That's one thing if just one person jumps the gun, but if a lot of people jump the gun then Then there must I feel like there's another a little layer to that story Okie doke. So what what years this is 2015? panini elite baseball Do I flip these this way maybe All right, again all these rc's will ship Four autos or memorabilia cards per box on out. Oh, and there's a one-on-one madison bungarner all-star salutes for san francisco Not bad. I wouldn't expect this one-of-one popping out of here All aboard the big hay express For my rivals the giants That's for oliver smith Remember how good tim linton was? Oh, no, it's christian walker not someone else brandon finnegan Oh, no, yell at you. I think we'd find in 2013 brandon finnegan for kansas city going to darin members only Alexi Ramirez for the this looks like white socks Lexi rear mirrors it yes a white sock So this relic will go to matt Lieber By as rookie card for the cubs that'll be for steve birch We've got career best materials prince fielder 31 out of 2.99 piece of his lumber Brew crew matt Lieber with the brewers We've got a pablo sand of all red sox edition 37 out of 48 die cut for ryan carlson and the red sox And there's our autograph out of here the danie santana 21st century auto for the twins townsen with minnesota all right Let's go to 2013 select baseball. There's some Nice stuff in here. I think aeronado is a rookie here. I think yellich is a rookie in here Garrett coal may be a rookie in here Okay, dope. Good luck. We're gonna work through the rest of these base heavy Boxes right here and then we'll flip around to maybe some bowman's best some bowman back there. Maybe we'll close out with that that leaf Do some nice stuff some nice stuff in there And then we'll give away that akunya junior, which would be really nice Looking forward to that What else has been going on in baseball? Oh angels sign hosay kintana so that into that rotation blue jays and kirby yates Agree to a deal the old padre's closer White fox got liam henryx. I think we saw that. Oh, yeah, pottery's got joe muskrow I thought that wasn't that was a good move too Twins to sign j-hap. I think that's the The latest unless there's anything else in the pipelines. We should know about this luri garcia I say kettle marté There's for seattle. There's uh bobby left from boy or boys 204 out of 750 Mariners ryan carlson No, yeah, that cold cold definitely definitely worth Definitely worth that Padre's kind of a scary good uh Rotation now there's mad adams Not sure what the The dodgers are gonna do in response or they even have to do anything they got a lot of depth in their organization Yeah, that's a bit of an issue right that angels clubhouse guy trying to blow the whistle on all pitchers. Here's the thing though. I think that The dirty secret is that is that uh every pitcher Does something to the ball? I mean that's not a that's not a secret, right?  He said yes He's a chargers fan. He of course he's gonna say yes, but I think so too. I think I think philip rivers Will eventually be a hall of famer Maybe I don't know if he's gonna be a first ballot hall of famer It depends on I guess who else's Is is up for that but But yeah, I mean he should be he should be eventually Yeah, he's he's amassed enough stats where where Statistically he's just he just has to get in You know, maybe there might be some vote. I actually who votes for this Is this like a baseball writers of america sort of organization? Hall of Fame. Is there a committee? That votes on We don't know how that works for football. All right, there's barry zito Some sort of variation. No, maybe not He's just flipped around Oh, there's a pro football writers association patissing They're the ones voting on it. All right, there you go So, yeah, I think he's well liked among writers, right Emperors of the zone. I don't think I've ever seen that insert out of stadium club Basically, you're looking for the different foil right here at the bottom Yeah, the river's throwing motion was a little weird A member of the media that covered them in their city would present them to the hall of fame committee Interesting I don't know why these cards are flipped right side up and upside in. Is it jamming me up here? classic Arizona Fernando Tetease jr. Oh and there's an autograph right there and it's gonna be It's gonna be just in done Rookie Otto for the ems That'll be for ryan carlson won that spot in the absolute filler Gavin looks right there as well All right, next box looks like uh, alan guinter chrome edition Yeah, I guess I just didn't do it do enough stadium club. The cars flip right side up and upside down Today's not a raiders hat day I'm trying trying a no hat day, but I think I'm gonna have to pop a hat on because His hairs is all over the place My picks for the weekend. I'm on green bay minus three And uh and buffalo Plus three I don't know is my I don't know if my homes is gonna play. I think that I think that I think that's the issue That's why I took that's why I took buffalo because He's just barely gonna be out of concussion protocol I think he still has a has a foot issue or a toe issue or something like that And at worst or at best he has like a pinch nervous neck or something He's not gonna be as mobile as you want in the homes to be he can still sling in no doubt, but But I don't know like, you know one One weird hit, you know, and they're gonna they're gonna be like, yeah, you're out You got a concussion last week. Even if it's mild. I think they Even if the the doctor's upstairs a third party is even if they think it's Close, I think they'll they'll be extra careful watching that player, especially if he's cleared There's a booming city, dubai We'll randomize that to uh I guess when we do the the akunya randomizer this group of non sports We'll randomize to the second name down like these bug cards And we've got a green paul molitor 12 out of 99. This is blue jays edition going to jack townsen Yeah, travis thinks My homes isn't gonna play. That's a big factor Pat's saying that yeah drosh. I don't have to play better. I think I think you will There's ryan nyquist 67 out of 99 for houston Or no, I'm sorry for he's a bmx legend Not for houston. I was just looking at the star on the hat like that star I think both games are on sunday There's a ralando rca to uh to 50 For the brew crew. I love all these these little mini cards There's a there's a giraffe Oh, this is terrifying. No, thanks to the peacock spider Oh No, thanks They're bright psychedelic color schemes and outrageous courtship dances Make the peacock spider a fascination to arachnophiles I don't want to know an arachnophile, but not to But not to squeamish arachnophobes Seven new species of this tiny harmless spider identified in early 2000 harmless. Sure That's what they say that that's what big spider wants you to believe that they're harmless What about the hercules beetle? Okay, these guys are kind of cool There's the atlas moth atlas moth that moth I guess I'm neutral about moths. All right. I like this guy the gray crown crane I like cranes cranes egrets These guys are pretty cool. I don't know who this who is this guy I don't know who this person is There's Istanbul or for you old school guys out there constantinople Which will show you your age probably a couple hundred years old. There's a dragonfly Don't mind the dragonfly. They're okay, too They're all right. Okay. It was just that spider that I disliked there All right, let's move on to archives This is regular archives. We've got signature series In the site that we're going to do a couple breaks of tonight Schedules in the chat I don't know why I didn't put these in here They're going to mess up the corners like this, but I'll go to the Yankees. It's a cool looking Uh, a little mini poster there this Yeah, so far that a's rangers trade is Is pretty is pretty even I mean, maybe there are some random rookie cards in there somewhere I don't know. We'll see we've got one two three four boxes to go The dirty waters in a separate tank the Bissell cross-wave and self-cleaning The vacuum upgrade Michael Bradley two years 32 million. That's not bad You can stay healthy remember that one year with the Indians he was like on He was there was like a little bit of MVP talk maybe three-fourths of the way through the season, but It's like injuries the old injury bug got to Michael Bradley, which has been his Which has been his problem Nice arozerania These are all facsimile autographs by the way in case you're like wait, are these are these like five million autographs in here? No, they're not that rivers that rivers throwing motion is wild, but You know what? You know what they say If you're comfortable with it and it's effective No need to change it. There's blue moon autumn for the a's that goes to ryan herald He draws first blood in that rangers a's trade There's jose abray you We've got a brad keller Light blue. That's the 25 down there bottom right hand corner And we got another autograph. That's dave martinez Ryan Carlson with the nationals And the brad keller will go to darin and kc All right, let's get into some contenders draft picks from 2019 River's plants philip rivers plants coach high school football I heard at st. Michael catholic high school in alabama prior to the season I guess I guess his kids are going to go there Coach's kids. That'll be pretty cool Anything rivers does after After coaching Broadcast booth, maybe coaching does he does he go into College coaching All right, good luck everybody Might need a little help here. We got it. We got a Matt walner a golden eagle cracked ice to 23 I say he's He sounds like a white sock to me Matt walner is a twin That'll be for towns in in minnesota We got logan davidson. That's a white sock Right to 15 That's going to go to ryan harrell. That's a low number there We've got 76 out of 99 seth johnson Seth johnson sounds like I don't know nothing in my head for seth johnson Seth johnson is A Tampa bay ray So that'll go to travis in tamba bay You're now a seth johnson fan We got kory lee 10 out of 99 i say Kory lee sounds like a tiger Kory lee show me tigers No different orange team astros You got the color, right Houston that'll go to jay goins Here is Zach thompson It's a nice autograph college ticket chrome format chrome design here Six out of 20 I'm seeing blue team in my head Wrong red team. He's a cardinal That'll be for matt lieber and st. lewis I know where he goes that nico horner Season ticket cracked ice is a cub That's the 23 that'll be for steve birch And a tj sycama Is he a blue j maybe Or is that maybe i'm thinking of tj zuke tj sycama tiger, maybe No, he's a he's a yankee He was a tiger turned into a yankee j goins With the bronx bombers Terrible at these 2019 prospects here. All right. How about this guy Or Elvis martin. Oh, it already says toronto 73 out of 99 for the blue jays That's gonna be for jack townsen. There you go. And I think that's that. All right. So no no adley rushman or anything All right, almost there folks Almost there Let's get uh, let's do this right here. What's this 2012? home and home of the rookie card Bryce harper garret coal Sespetus in this class twos is ryan herald Let's see what we got Good luck. There's matt latos I guess any mike trout is nice, right? Nothing crazy in that stack James loney One of the dodgers had a lot of high hopes for old james loney Osuna del monaco Jorge posada doubled bernie williams court hit that game. That's who he scored There's there's the sespetus rookie card That'll be for ryan herald and the a's Oscar de verras All right, so we're not seeing the guys on the box, but It's all right. Nothing ventured. Nothing gained. All right bowman's best and then we'll close out with that leaf This is current bowman's best 2020 edition We're still on the lookout for Still on the lookout for more Cases of this keep an eye on jasmus case breaks.com All right. Good luck. We're almost there and then The coonie time Everyone get their uh mega millions powerball tickets today Hey, tonight is mega millions, right? Powerball on friday something like that Either way, I got both. I think I'd build a build a house with a lazy river How about that? Love a lazy river All right, right off the top is spencer torkelson Big prospect for the tigers. That'll be for jack townsen Yeah, john. I'm I'm I think I'm gonna have to pop a hat back on the I don't know how people would long longer hair do this What are my uh A pop star 129 to 150 tim anderson white socks I need I need barber shops to open back up so I can Can't wear a hat every day What am I? nine nine years old That's for the orials. It's really the only reason why I've been wearing so many hats lately We got kasey schmitt On-card autograph with the giants oliver smith with the schmitt Yeah, I was hanging out with beaver Beaver stylist That's nice jason demigus die cut there Zach vene for the rocks ryan carlson There he is. There's another zack vene and max munsey. That's my guy right there 26 out of 50 Max munsey dodgers ryan carlson You know what? Doctors really haven't made a lot of moons this off season. They've got Some pending creatines. I feel like they need to read something. What are they going to do with? Kike Hernandez jock peterson justin turner So question marks out there and another giant jail and davis So aside from the first auto And this is all all nl west Two giants for oliver smith. All right now. Let's see what we got In this final box 75s or 100s here It's going to show you the inside of this box, but it's a clear box Force of habit we're going to lead off with 17 out of 50 ultimate destinations Detroit dylan dingler. There you go 75 point top loader here Nice, that's for the tigers jack townsen We've got 2020 ultimate draft future stars Ivan Herrera. All right. I have no idea where he goes ryan herald saying cardinals Let's check Yvonne Herrera is a Is the st. Louis cardinal and that'll be for Matt lever What about what about yitty cap? He sounds like I have no idea another cardinal yitty cap is He's got ryan and lion saying marlins Yeah, he's he is confirmed a marlin. I think he has he has my birth date too What about sammy and fonte? He sounds like a tiger Or maybe i'm thinking of omar and fonte This is a national That'll be for ryan carlson What about aj vuk vukovic? aj vukovic sounds like a Royal He is a diamond back Yeah, dvax is ryan herald and travis. I don't know where this guy goes There's asa lacy for darin and the royals nice It's a night. That's a nice finish. There you go ladies and gentlemen. Nice great So we're gonna give away the akunya junior And then we'll do a quick recap Good luck. So let's go back to some fresh dice There we go. We've got a fresh list next to it. Yes Let's grab everybody's names From matt and the diamond backs all the way down to ryan and the nationals and everybody in between. Good luck This is the nine five ten akunya junior. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it One and a five six times name on top gets the akunya junior second name down We'll get all those non sports cards out of um Alan ginter chrome. So six. Good luck One two three four five And sixth and final time after six Thanks everyone for giving this a shot Appreciate you trying Constellation prize for jay goings You'll get all those non sports cards out of ginter chrome and congrats to ryan carlsson With a spot that he bought straight up You're going to be getting the nine five ten ronald akunya junior Pretty nice stuff Gold refractor parallel centering edges are at ten Corners are nine five surface and nine auto is a ten 32 out of 50 on that And there you go Congrats So here on the 20th To to ryan carlsson From the baseball mixer Congrats There you have it. I'm joe for jaskies case breaks.com. Thanks for breaking with us. Thanks for watching I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye


What sort of sentence would you get if you broke the law of gravity? A suspended one. I don't even get it. What's bad temperament goes with custard apple grumble? Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah, I did. What did the grape do when it got stepped on? That's classic.


Now, to present the President of the United States, please. Two years ago, I saw close-up, very close-up, two profiles of courage, were it not for the brave efforts of Secret Service agents Jerry Parr and Tim McCarthy, I might not be speaking to you here today. When they realized before I did what was going on and literally threw me into a waiting car, Tim deliberately took a bullet that was intended for me. Fortunately, neither of these federal officers nor Washington patrolman Thomas Delahante nor my own press secretary Jim Brady lost their lives that day near the Hilton, although three of these men suffered severe injury. While serving their fellow citizens, however, other law enforcement officers, as we have been told today, have lost their lives. In recent months alone, no fewer, as you have been told, than 13 federal agents have been killed while on the job. Their deaths remind us again of difficult and the very hazardous tasks that we ask our federal law enforcement officers to carry out. Sometimes they must perform these duties in unfamiliar surroundings, sometimes must deal at close hand with the most destructive and unpredictable elements in our society. Frequently, their work is as routine as anyone else's, but they know without a doubt that someday, perhaps today, they may face danger and perhaps even tragedy. Nine days ago, tragedy did occur with the three Secret Service agents who died in that head-on collision on a mountain road in California. George Patrick Labarge, Donald W. Robinson and Donald Bedejeque died performing their professional duties. They were driving to Yosemite National Park where they were to provide protection for Queen Elizabeth. It's beyond our understanding or certainly we're not allowed to know just why these things happen, why these men should have been riding at that moment in that car, just as it eludes our understanding why four FBI agents should be in a plane that crashed outside of Cincinnati, Ohio on December 16th. Robert W. Connors, Charles L. Allington, Terry B. Herford and Michael J. Lynch died in the worst accident in FBI history. They too were faithfully doing their job. They were in search of embezzled money that was supposedly buried near Cincinnati. Agents or accounts, I should say, of homicides so frequently are in the newspapers and the nightly news that they almost seem commonplace, but no murder is commonplace. When a victim is a law enforcement officer, there's an added dimension. Here the assault is perpetrated not only against an innocent individual, but also against the society he represents and is solemnly sworn to protect. U.S. Marshals and Kenneth Muir and Robert Cheshire shot to death February 13th outside Medina North Dakota where they were attempting to serve a warrant on a man violating his probation on a tax evasion conviction. Correctional officer Gary Lee Rowe was responding February 7th to an alert of a possible escape attempt when inmates in federal prison, San Diego, fatally attacked him with an arsenal of homemade metal weapons. Correctional officer Gregory Johnny Gunter lost his life on of all days Christmas when, despite being off duty, he attempted to settle his dispute between two angry mobs of prisoners in the Federal Penal Institution at Petersburg, Virginia. Alcohol, tobacco, and firearm agent Ariel Rios, as the Secretary told, shot and killed December 2nd in Miami while working undercover on a cocaine investigation. And Thomas J. Devine of the Drug Enforcement Administration shot in the leg and the base of the neck October 12, 1972 by a suspect in an undercover narcotics investigation died from his wounds September 25th, 1982. It's wisely said that nothing worth having comes cheaply or easily and the price of a free nation is sometimes counted in the dearest currency, human life. These 13 men, all the best of professionals, were dedicated Americans. They gave their lives in a continuing battle to preserve the domestic peace and to make us America safe from those who would prey on the innocent. Our approach must be one of great appreciation for their work and their lives, and it's only imperfectly expressed by the gathering here today. The family members of each of these men bear a unique burden. It's my wish that they will find solace in the loyalty and support and friendship of the professionals their loved ones worked with and in the respect and gratitude of our citizens for the job they did. Finally, I hope and pray that all Americans will be inspired by the knowledge that each of them, these men died as few men do, a hero. One has said once that a hero is no braver than anyone else, he's just brave five minutes longer. But the men we're talking about today are brave every minute, every hour around the clock and have chosen that path of courage for their lives. And what of the heroism of those who share those lives and who know the possibility that each day holds? If you'd permit me to just tell a little personal story where perhaps I got my first realization of this heroism several years ago while I was still governor of California. Under a tragic assassination in our country, Secret Service were assigned to several of us in public office. And on weekends when I could, I liked to get to the ranch and sometimes do a little target shooting and plinking at tin cans and they liked to keep their hand in too. So together I was men and myself, be down in the woods and do some target shooting. And one day I mentioned that I had read an article on shooting from the hip. And they said, oh yes, we have to do that. And one of them set a tin can up and I went into a crouch as the article had said and I blazed away and the can was entirely untouched. And then one of them stepped up and standing erect took his turn. And I said, well, wait a minute, you didn't crouch. The article said that you go into a crouch and he sort of pebble pushed there for a minute. He didn't know quite how to answer me and he said, well, finally he mumbled, we lose our rating if we crouch. And I said, well, I don't understand. The article said and so forth and the unit chief that day took me off the spot or him off the spot. When he said to me, Governor, if we're ever shooting at anyone, we're between him and his target. It was quite an awakening. I think all of us should give thanks to God that there are men in this society of ours who are willing to take these jobs. Thank you very much, Mr. President. That concludes the memorial service. I want to thank all of you for being here. And as we go about our daily tasks, let us all be strengthened by the memory of these 13 exemplary individuals. Thank you.


Before it happened, most of us thought about fossil fuels only when we filled up our cars. Then the whole extraction industry collapsed, and we realized that something more important than transportation was completely dependent on these fuels. That was the food system. We never thought about the fact that from growing and harvesting to processing and transportation, our food was made using fossil fuels. This is the story of a family trying to cope with the loss of those fuels. We have to grow, harvest, and forage for ourselves in a new world. It's called foodmageddon. Welcome back. We're now in month two of the fossil fuel crisis. It's March, and as you know, the catastrophic collapse of the fossil fuel industry is starting to really wreak havoc on our everyday lives. The government decided to open up the strategic fuel reserves and are pumping out about a quarter of what we used to use each day for fuel. So rationing has gone into effect and cars can only fill up every other day depending on their license plate numbers, just like happened in the oil crisis of the 1970s. Even numbers one day, odd numbers the next. Alright, well, things are still arriving by post. Mostly getting seeds and a few extra things that I didn't have before. We get stuff like a lot of field peas or split pea soup. Beets, spaghetti squash, new England pie pumpkin, lettuce, onions. So I got to start the onions immediately. We're already behind on starting the onions. Canaloupe, German Johnson tomatoes, sugar baby, watermelon, lettuce, different black and pepper cucumbers. Ooh, radishes, yeah. Beets, anyway, so I can give you a picture. We have lots and lots of seeds. And most of these are to replenish my existing seed stock. I save my seeds each year, but sometimes they get intermixed and sometimes they're just not as prolific or as vigorous as I'd like. So I need to reinvigorate them with an influx of fresh seeds from seed companies. Everything here has layers on layers of work. So we're going to have our chickens hatch out some chicks this spring. And I could just, I guess, leave some eggs in there and one of them will go broody, meaning she'll sit on the eggs, warm them up and incubate them for 21 days. But I can't be sure of success that way. And it's the spring. I need to clean this thing out anyway, which means pulling out all of the wood chips that I put in there last fall. Pull those all out, spread them out in the garden, put in new wood chips. Chill out. And then prep an area for the chicks to raise themselves, or for the hens to raise their new chicks. I'm going to do a little bit of reorganization here, but first I have to do the stinky work. Three months worth of chicken poop. And the cycle begins anew with fresh wood chips. I'm not going to build another chicken coop, but if I did, one that I could drive the wheel bar right into would be a nice thing. And to top off the spring cleaning, I'm going to take out all the old bedding, some straw, put a lot of wood chips and stuff gets mixed in there too. I'm going to clean out these old nesting boxes and fill them with nice, clean hardwood shavings. These are made in various woodworking projects, largely from a friend of mine. This is a lot nicer than wood chips or straw even. They absorb water better than straw, so they keep the bed a lot drier, which is going to be important if we want more of the chickens to sit in here for almost a month raising chicks. We need to keep her nice and dry, and we need to allow her to regulate the moisture. Hi, Prince. Prince is the smartest chicken that we have, which is not saying a lot. I don't know if she's laying eggs anymore. I don't know if I want eggs from a smart chicken. I don't like a chicken that out-thinks me. And the brown ones are going to come back and go under a broody chicken here soon. Come on in, Prince. While our current concern is for fuel for our cars, we have to start looking ahead to feeding ourselves locally. In the 1980s, Reagan started to sell off our National Strategic Grain Reserve. We used to have silos full of food all over the country, but the thought was that all this food in the silos wasn't earning interest, so why not sell it, put the money in the stock market, and then when there's a famine, we take that money out and buy food. This doesn't sound like a good idea now, does it? Well, I'm starting to get sap out of the trees, and so now it's time to boil that sap down into syrup. The best way to do that, well, not the best way. The most efficient way is using reverse osmosis. I don't have that system, so I have to do the traditional way of boiling it down. It takes about 60 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, so it's kind of an energy-intensive process. But this year, I have a more effective boiler. Last time I did this, I just kind of threw something together. To be fair, I threw something together this time, but it's a lot better thing I threw together this time. Right now, I'm pouring sap through a screen just to catch any debris that made its way into the sap. These are out amongst the trees, and wind blows a little bit to bark all over. So now, I got a little bit of water in there. I'm going to open up my really fancy door and kind of show you. It's essentially a box where I put my fuel in here. It burns. The smoke comes up and out over here, and I point this away so that the dust, so that the ash doesn't fall down back into my sap and make for a smoky-flavored sap, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but you don't want that in your syrup. So let's load this thing up and get it cooking. So I try and keep everything as organized as I can. And here are each one of these is four gallons of sap. So I'm going to stack up my sap over here. As it boils down, I keep adding sap. And eventually, at the end, I'll take it off and pour it off into that final bucket, and that bucket will go inside, and I'll finish it on a stove that I can control a lot more, because it's just kind of a lot of heat all at once. It's, you know, high temperature all the time, and I don't want to burn and lose all the sap that I've boiled down in the very end, because as, just with reducing anything, it boils and boils and boils forever, and then all of a sudden at the very end, bam, it's done, and you have to catch it at that right time. So this is about 24, 25 gallons that I got in the first week. It's going to pick up here as things warm up this week. It's a lot nicer out this week already than it was last week. The other nice thing about maple sugaring is it's kind of just a waiting game, so what I can do is continually stock the fire, continue to add my sap, boil it down, and then work on other projects out here, because it kind of needs to be baby sap. Most of my taps are across the street in the commons, but my neighbors here let me put up a tap right on their own tree, and this tree I know from previous years is really, really productive, so it gives me a good idea. Oh, this one has about two gallons in it. I probably have one or two gallons in most of the taps across there. Since I have four-gallon buckets on there, I have a couple days between which I have to empty them, but this is kind of like my indicator. Well, things are moving along. We've got about 12 gallons cooked down to about under four gallons, so I'm going to keep adding more and cooking it all through the evening. All right, one thing we're not going to be able to buy at the grocery store is mushrooms. Well, I don't have the capacity to grow things like button mushrooms. I can certainly grow oyster mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms are probably the easiest mushroom to grow for somebody who doesn't have a clean room. They'll grow in just about any medium, and they're pretty easy to propagate, but they're not my most favorite mushroom, but they're easy, so I'm going to try and get some of these guys going. So what I'm going to do is take a sharp knife and some boiling water, just wash it off as best I can, and then I'm also pouring this over about a quart of one-inch pieces of cardboard, and this is to not only kill any spores that are on there from the environment, but also to soften them up, to let them expand, to give them some moisture, because this is what the mycelium is going to grow in. So mushrooms don't grow from plants, obviously, they grow from a root structure, a fungal root structure called mycelium. You can actually, especially in oyster mushrooms, if you get a package of oyster mushrooms and you let them sit, you'll see the mycelium, it's like white threads starting to grow out from the bases. And I'll do a close-up here so you can see exactly what I'm talking about behind the sylphia pedics. All right, so what I'm going to do, put down a towel, put down a rack, dump these guys out, because the main thing is, it's not that I want to dry them out, but I want to cool them down, because if they're too hot, the mycelium will get cooked. And I've done this before. There's another way to do it where you just do layers of cardboard. And then between each layer, you put a sliver of the root here that I'm going to cut out. And that works perfectly well. I just wanted to try this different way. See all that nice mycelium growing here in the base.  And so now, this base, what I'm going to do is just really slice it as thinly as I can. I want to make as much surface area as possible. I want to give that mycelium plenty of chance to come in contact with all my cardboard. People made mushrooms before they had clean rooms, right? Today, what you have to do is basically make like a clean room in your basement, something that's completely covered with plastic and has a HEPA air filter and all these different things. You need to sterilize a whole bunch of jars and stuff like that. I don't want to do that.  Well, I'm going to take this pot container and I'm just going to do layers of cardboard and then mushroom. And cardboard and mushroom. Now I'll give it a shake. I just want to mix up cardboard and the mushroom as much as possible. All right, now I'm going to let this sit in a cool, warm place. I'm not going to seal it. I'm just going to put the lid on lightly because it does need some air exchange and we'll check back in a few weeks and see if the mycelium is growing through the cardboard. What the fuel crisis means to us right now is that we have less trips to town. Typically we'd go to this grocery store at least once a week for our main shopping and then invariably we'd forget something and we'd stop by another time, so twice a week. We tried always to combine trips to town to go to the grocery store, the hardware store and a couple of other things and run all the errands. We can't all at once but still even with the rising fuel prices we're having to reduce our trips down to a quarter. So that means this month we're only going to the grocery store twice. And this of course comes at a time when we're trying to stockpile a bit of food to get us through the gap between now and when our garden starts producing. We're about to eat the last of our potatoes and squash from last year and we have a bit of canned food left that we canned from last year but it's going to quickly dwindle if we're not careful. So today I need to make potting soil and one of the prime ingredients I use for potting soil is worm castings. We have a box full of worms down here and essentially what I do all winter is bring down my compost and put it in on top and give it to the worms and the worms work their way up from the bottom eating their way through the compost and they live in the top six inches or so so what I want to do is take out the bottom six inches of soil now when I designed this originally it's got this pull here and it's got a rack across the bottom and you pull that out and it's got a piece of wood that moves back and forth and drops out all the nice worm castings great on paper but it doesn't actually work so what I have to do is dig out the top six inches with all the worms or most of the worms put in the one bin and then dig out all the worm castings from underneath them and put that into this bin and then I will take that and mix it into my potting soil and now I'll put back that top layer into the bin I'm going to save a little bit because I need to put in all the compost we've been saving for the last week I was giving the worms a chance to finish as much of the compost as they can because every time I add a new compost I want to give them a chance to finish a lot of this now that I have my worm compost or my worm castings I'm going to mix it with well this is mostly peat moss and soil and so I'm going to do a two or three to one ratio so three of the soil and peat moss to one of the worm compost and then I'm going to mix it all together that will make a pretty decent and rich potting soil to start out most of my plants for growing this year obviously peat moss is not a renewable resource peat moss is essentially mined out of swamps in the Pacific Northwest and other places so this is not something I'm going to be able to use next year I happen to have a lot of peat moss laying around so I'm going to have to think ahead next fall to find something that I can add to my potting soil a bungee type organic material to replace peat moss if you have ideas or suggestions for me put them in the comments that brings me to another point if you have questions or comments or suggestions let us hear them put them in the comments and I'll try to address them at least in the comments and probably even on the next episodes the first thing I'm growing this year are onions the first things that I'm planting it's time to grow so what I'm going to do is start them off in this multi-pack fill this with soil and spread the seeds quick way not super fancy not super exact but it fills up this thing nicely I'm not an expert in growing onions by any means I try from seeds every year and I got more success last year I actually got them planted out but they never really developed bulbs and things like that I haven't been super successful with onions so let's hope my luck improves this year because otherwise we are going to be sad and onion-less this winter which would be a real knock on the flavor profile that we're eating so I'm growing New York Early organic yellow onions things are looking pretty good at the seed stores right now it starts at the greenhouses and things just to hedge my bet and hopefully get something for the winter but essentially what I'm doing is I'm really lightly sowing these seeds over over the cell and not all of them will germinate but most of them will and then I will as they get bigger obviously they can't be contained in this small space but this is really just to get them started and then what I'll do is go through and weed them out pick out the strongest ones separate them into three piles strong, medium and weak and I'll plant the strong ones and try and grow them out so I can plant them out in the yard and the weak ones I'll try and plant them out too but I'll spend less time and worry on them so again just trying to spread these out evenly now I'm going to pop these onions into the oven with some other things I've been starting I've been trying to grow Camillus or tea seeds but what I'm doing is popping them in here because we still have fossil fuels so we still have a pilot light on and it's a nice 80, 85 degrees in here which is a perfect propagating temperature it'll raise these up as we run out of propane to run our stove then we're in trouble and that pilot light is running so we might as well use that heat for more than one reason oh and that's just a loaf of bread that's rising and they're also thanks for watching this week's episode next week we'll continue with maple sugaring as well as starting plants for the garden we'll be working on construction projects the garden trying to get our hands to go broody so they can hatch us out some chicks this spring we'll also put a few things on the blog one of them is going to be our planting schedule we're going to plant what weeks and what we expect to harvest on different weeks you can find that at lowtechinstitute.org don't forget to sign up to receive our blog by email on the website just go down to the bottom of the page and you can type your email address right in there we won't spam you it's just an update when we have blog posts and while you're here why don't you click the subscribe button below and at the end of the video thanks again to those of you who have already subscribed to spread the word by using the share link below and send this video or the playlist along to a friend who might be interested in what we're up to we'll also be working on our first podcast soon and this is going to be a behind the scenes look at the project a little more in depth detail talking about what we're doing here at home you can find that episode coming up soon and more as well by subscribing to the lowtech podcast Google plays, Stitcher or other podcast apps thanks again for watching stay safe and good luck


The Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools and the Nigeria Union of Teachers say they may order teachers in public, primary and secondary schools to sit at home if government refuses to address the recurrent assault on their members. Four public secondary schools were affected within the last six weeks as the development has now made teachers in the state work in fear. We cannot set them on that ground. That they should be on the ground, on the guard. Are we saying that if a student comes en masse to attack, they should also attack who will try and create a state of anarchy? No, we will not do that. But we are also sensitizing our members to be more professional in their dealings, to be watchful of any outbreak of their nature, to safeguard their life first. In those days when we were in school, if any child should beat a teacher without such a big cost, the child had already caused himself. Even not even the students now that are going to the school to beat the teachers. It is not their parents and their children that used to go to schools to go and do teachers. The media aid to the governor has reacted. However stakeholders say enforcing discipline in schools must now be decisive. So as a government we are interested in sanity being promoted in all our citadels of learning. This isolated case should not be used as a conclusion drawn that is a pattern. No, but of course it's concerning enough for us to sit down and do the needful.