Good morning and welcome to the third Health and the Built Environment Conference. First of all I'd like to say everybody who's from out of town, welcome to San Antonio.  We hope to have today a full conference. We're trying to start on time because we have a lot of activities that we're playing for today. But I just want to run through a couple of things just so that you understand the purpose of this conference. As I mentioned, this is the third conference. But the purpose is to work collectively and to break down silos both within and without the community in order to facilitate health and wellness in all of our neighborhoods. We are working with architects, planners, construction people, as well as the health department in integrating this environment that we live in. So that's really important that we talk about that today. So our premise is to underscore and incorporate what we call the social determinants of health. And social determinants of health are going to be integrated. Okay, test. Okay, the social determinants of health are going to be integrated into each one of these sessions today. So you get a broader perspective of what we mean. Now, along with the American Public Health Association and the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, our goal for this entire year is to deal with health and all policies. And you hear that throughout, that theme throughout all of our sessions today. But we also want to thank a couple of people for getting us here today. We have the San Antonio River Authority, the University Health System, and you'll see some streaming here on the side. The UTSA Department of Kinesiology, Health and Nutrition, the Bear County Health Collaborative, the UT Health Science Center, the San Antonio Institute for Health Promotion and Research, the American Institute of Architects, the San Antonio Chapter, HEB, our famous grocer here in town, the Whitty Museum, and HEB and the Whitty Museum and Health Department have a very unique program that we collect in data that you'll see in some of the posters outside, some of the work we're doing that's very unique to that collaboration. Also, some of our sponsors include the Institute for Leadership in Capital Projects. It's time, Texas. The American Planning Association is the Texas Chapter and now cast San Antonio. But also, another group I want to actually introduce as well as thank, and that's the Planning Committee for this program. They worked almost all year planning this program. And so, if the Planning Committee viewers in the room, would you just stand up just briefly so that people can see who's or part of this? So, we're going to make this short here. I was told just to do a couple of words and then I have to introduce our illustrious mayor. But also, there's some sponsor exhibits that we have outside. So please, during the course of even changing sessions, just to stop by and see some of the poster sessions. We also have a UTSA student project on low-impact development. That's also out in the foyer as well as our display on, again, the social determinants of health. And you actually understand what our perspectives are in the health department as well as how we're trying to integrate into the community at large. And I'll say one other thing. We have three major projects going on in the city of San Antonio this year. That's our sustainability plan, our comprehensive plan, and our transportation plan. All those plans now have some piece of health involved in all the plans. And we look forward to the outcome of those projects. But my real task here this morning is to introduce an outstanding mayor of the city of San Antonio. She's been a member of the San Antonio City Council prior to her appointment and election as mayor of San Antonio. She has remained focused on balanced growth throughout the city and targeted investment areas where opportunities have been limited. She led the effort to bring over $50 million in federal funding for revitalization of the San Antonio Eastside. And that's one of her favorite communities. And also, Mayor Taylor has obtained a master's degree in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor's degree from Yale University. Without further ado, I'd just like to introduce Mayor Ivy Taylor. Thank you, Dr. Nathan. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to see such a nice looking crowd out here, especially at this hour of the morning on a Friday, right? Well, on behalf of the citizens of San Antonio and my city council colleagues, one of whom is here right now, Councilman Gonzales, welcome to this very important event. I know that you've taken time out of your busy schedules. I appreciate that, and many of you have been involved in organizing or will be presenting today, the third annual conference addressing health in the environment, so we appreciate your presence and participation. I know that you are in for our treat today. It's a great opportunity to talk about issues that we all care so much about, the ways that we can make our community and our families healthier, safer, and more resilient. We're also up for a challenge. As you know, we need to make changes, and that's never easy. Our air and water quality are top except that we must address the threats to them. We have rates of chronic diseases like diabetes that are still too high here in San Antonio. Now, I'm not only the mayor, but I am also a community development professional. I'm also a former instructor in urban administration. I've trained as a planner, but most importantly, I'm the mother of a sixth grader. And the impact of public infrastructure projects and the regulatory and incentive environment that shapes the private components of the built environment will be one of our key topics today. We need infrastructure that connects all San Antonians to opportunity. It's mayor that's a principal concern of mine. It's my key theme, but also the safety of the streets on my block and the opportunity for my daughter to enjoy our neighborhood park, also topped the list as a mom. Each of you here in this room bring valuable perspectives, just as each part of our public realm should serve multiple purposes. Streets, parks, plazas, and sidewalks are our Howard W. Peake Creekway trail system properly designed and maintained. They support our social bonds by connecting us, giving us a chance to get exercise, clean our air and water, and improve the adjacent property values and even attract visitors. These all offer social, economic and environmental benefits, and that's the way we need to think. All of these multifunctional places taken together constitute our shared living space, a space that belongs to everyone, places that belong to all of us have to welcome all of us, particularly in light of our need as a community and a country to grow more sustainably. Now, while sustainability is often thought of as a green concept, it isn't just a green concept, it's also about efficiency, which we talk about a lot at City Hall, using our resources wisely, especially if those resources are taxpayer dollars. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in unmet transportation needs around the country, and many cities are laboring to fill environmental remediation mandates from the federal government due to impacts on air and water quality. Now, just let me digress for a moment here. I don't want to imply that cities aren't green because density is the best path to reducing resource consumption, and the greenest city in the U.S. by many metrics is the one where I started my life's journey, New York City. I'm surprised to find that out. When we can all walk and cycle safely to access places we need or want to go, and these are modes of transportation that are supported by density, by the way, then we will have a healthier and more sustainable city and a more equitable city because walking and biking are much more affordable than other modes, mainly having an automobile. We don't tend to think about how much it actually costs to maintain a car. A city like this that I'm describing also offers a benefit for people who want or have to drive their cars, and that would be a reduction in traffic congestion. As the incomparable Jane Jacobs wrote, In the death and life of great American cities required reading for any planning student like me, traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in them. At the national level, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox issued the mayor's challenge for safer people and safer streets, which I have accepted. And in just a few moments, you'll hear from my colleague, Councilwoman Gonzales, regarding Vision Zero, which truly complements Secretary Fox's challenge. I'd like to highlight the progress that we're making in regard to meeting the goals of both of those initiatives. After reviewing that mayor's challenge with staff from our city departments, such as transportation and capital improvements, I was pleased to see that many of the components include actions that the City of San Antonio has already been working on in order to enhance safety. And in 2011, the City of San Antonio adopted a complete streets policy, and we're actively working on reconfiguring important streets like Broadway to welcome and protect pedestrians and cyclists. In 2011, the City adopted the Safe Passing Ordinance, requiring a minimum of three feet of space be given to vulnerable road users such as bicyclists and pedestrians when passing. And a few years later, in 2014, the City Council adopted the first-hand free ordinance restricting individuals from using cell phones when operating a vehicle in order to reduce dangerous, distracted driving. More recently, under a grant administered through the Alamo Area MPO, the city staff is working on identifying pedestrian priority areas and treatments that go above and beyond minimum standards to emphasize pedestrian safety and comfort. And the city is not only looking at engineering components, but also we're looking for opportunities to continue the enhancement of walking and biking safety laws and regulations at the local and state level, including reductions in speed limits. In short, our city has been and continues to be proactive regarding traffic safety. We've made and are continuing to establish policy decisions that direct the city staff to construct projects that keep everyone in every mode of transportation in mind. However, as we'll discuss today, achieving a healthy built environment is not just about traffic engineering. It's also about land use decision, urban design, which I've been talking a lot about lately, and how we structure our development incentives. But most importantly, achieving a healthier built environment is about each and every one of you here in this room. It's about each of you being an advocate for change, letting your elected officials and neighbors know that our future depends on realizing these very ideas and actions that we'll be discussing today, and that the cost of maintaining the status quo is too great for our community. Thank you so much. I'm very excited about the rest of the day. Thank you for being here.


Following the spate of insecurity in some parts of the country with the attendant loss of innocent lives and property, the Senate has demanded a review of the security apparatus in Nigeria. This is equal to a point of order raised by the senator representing Banry South, Senator Abba Morrow, where he called for the review of security architecture of the country. He stressed that all hands must be on deck by all arms of security agencies and the people to neab future occurrence in the board. In his reaction to the ugly incident, Morrow recounted how a similar incident of bank robbery in Utupo led to the killing of some police officers on duty in Ojali in Kodblad some years ago. Other speakers in their contributions described the incident as callous calling on security agencies to be up and doing for the safety of lives and property of Nigerians. Back urgent need for investigation and intervention. Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, I rise to inform you that on the 28th of October, 2023, at about 4.15 p.m., it was a maggot on loose as men of the underworld invaded Utupo, the ancestral hometown of the Udama people, unleashing mayhem in the process. Consequently, the Senate notes with sadness the dastardly attacks on banks and the police command in Utupo on the 28th of October, 2023 by men suspected to be armed robbers killing about 8 persons, including four security personnel. It's seamlessly handicapped. They don't have enough manpower and at times equipment are not even available. Even if we move tens of other motions without equipping the police, without recruiting more policemen, honestly we will not be able to achieve the desired objectives. So it is now time for us to take a firm stand that the federal government should employ more police personnel in order to meet the manpower gap we have in the country. Is that there is need for police to collaborate. To me it's not about recruiting one million police or one ten million police that will not help. The key issue is equipment is as they present. When an age now, when we talk about artificial intelligence, the police should go beyond the classical police.


That's a little frustrated because his team not contending. He's been there, done that his years with the Phillies, a 34-year-old lefty. Is he a guy you think at the trade deadline? Somebody can make a move for a club option after this year for $20 million. It's a lot of money, but I believe he can help any rotation be a veteran guy, especially if you match him up in the middle of that rotation, be the second or third slot guy. He had it. But not the ace. Not the ace, but he can be a nice little side dish. He'd be a nice little crab dish for that. But again, 270 R.A. coming into this ball game over the last seven starts. He had a little hiccup towards the end. I love the way he commands the strike zone. He's not afraid to miss batting. Like you said, he thinks about the game mentally. And he still has the command and the velocity to beat a lot of teams. Yeah, man, I faced this guy in the World Series back in 0-9. I know that feels like ages ago. But this is a guy that wants to be in that spotlight, man. He wants to pitch for a contender. He thrives in that. You're right. He wants to be there. He's not that type of guy that's going to overpower you, you know? I mean, you saw Garrett call tonight, who was absolutely electric, running it up to 99 miles an hour. He's got a little sink. He's got a little cut. He's got a good change up. But when you're throwing that and you don't have that electric stuff, you can't be missing in the big part of the plate, man. I hope he gets an opportunity to play for a contender, because I'd like to see him pitch some time late in something. But even in his type of game, though, he was able to go deep in some things. Yeah, gave you the angst. He's a guy that could do things. He's a team in mind that you think he could. Yeah, you know what? I mean, just from all the grumblings that have been going around and from the people that I've talked to, I heard Philly could be a destination. Cope could be going back home. Obviously, that's kind of up in the air right now. I'm just saying, man, from my sources, that's what I've heard. Yeah, he has sources. I got sources now. It's interesting, his home ERA is almost two runs higher than his road ERA. Arlington's a very tough place to play. You love hitting that. Oh, everybody loves hitting that. The numbers can be a little obscured over there, but he definitely focuses on the road. And this is a tough situation. The West has gotten better. Everyone's gotten better, except the Rangers. I think he feels that his time is up any day now, so that's tough to go out there and focus on. Also, as a pitcher, man, when you're getting absolutely no run support, like you said earlier, man, I mean, how much, yeah, that's what I'm saying. You feel like you can't make any mistakes.  I mean, that's a lot of pressure. And he made the point to going against a guy like Gary Cole and a team like the Astros. Who's your Seattle most valuable player? I feel like anytime you have your All-Star, your leader, he goes down in Robinson Cano, and obviously for a very bad reason. But you need guys to step up. You need team guys. And the team, the guy that comes to my mind is D. Gordon. Not only did he move to center field this year to start the season off, but when Robinson Cano went down, he said, you know what, guys, I got this covered, man. I can play second base. And like you're saying, man, I mean, he can play above average defense anywhere you put him in the lineup, man. I love what he brings to the ballpark. He's a veteran. He has so much fun. And you know, man, people love this guy. Yeah, and for me as Dean's the girl, he's been an absolute great pickup for the Seattle Mariners, last 15 games hitting 380, 15 runs, 24 years. He's one of the best table setters in all of baseball. And he also plays defense. So I love his effort. He's quiet. But he goes about his business. If they don't have that type of productivity from him, especially in the two-hole spot, they don't have the streak they've been going on right now. Yeah, and the schedule, they've been taking advantage of teams that they'll just say at the lower portion of their division. But they have a stretch coming up in mid-June, where they have 10 games all with either Red Sox or Yankees. That'll be an early test for them to see just where they are. But right now, they'll be ahead of the defending World Series champs. That's impressive. They did good in Houston. They had some fight. They put them on the ropes. They gave the game away. But they like their chances going head to head, especially against the playoff contending team. I think they'll be OK. If you would have told me, or any of us up here, if the Seattle Mariners would be in first place this late in the season, we would have told you you were absolutely great. I don't think anybody in their front office would have said something like that. So they happy. They're going to get a spot right now. It feels like they're playing with house money right now. Obviously, you love their pitching staff. They're doing a tremendous job. And any time you have great pitching and you play great defense, you always give yourself a chance to find it. Yeah, it's been 15 years since they've been in first at this point of the season.


Welcome to the build my sports big show where we talk about how to create build and scale your own local sports training business It's time to get started with your host Ben neighbors. The show starts right now Hey, what's up? Welcome back to the podcast today's episode. We will be diving deep into starting a newsletter for your business and Again, just like most podcasts that I put out there's going to be actionable steps. So if you have a pen piece of paper We will go through this piece by piece and then on the back end of this podcast if You are interested in like really taking emails to the next level and you want to have that as a system I have a full course. It's called the social media blueprint. It's not advertised on my website And if you want access to that Shoot me an email or shoot me a message on Instagram and I can show you how to get that That is a Extremely in-depth course, but in today's podcast. I just want to give you an overview of email marketing Why you need to be doing it and how to set it up? All right, so the first thing we want to dive deep into is why should you be sending emails all right, why the heck do you need to be doing this and What will happen if you don't okay, so why do you need to be doing this? Well, the first reason why is because with parents They're they're very busy. Like we have to just put ourselves in the shoes of parents what they wake up in the morning They have to take care of their kids. They have to drive their kids to school. They have to Go to work. They have to make dinner. They have to do whatever they have to do throughout the day They're super busy and if you think about it parents are not going to be thinking about you at all during the day I mean, let's just face it They have more important things to do other than think about you and your business and trying to Tell other parents about what you're doing and so knowing that we have to Get our message in front of them as much as humanly possible So this way they actually do start thinking about what you offer and they do start thinking about referring you to their friends and The way that we do that is by sending emails and I'm not talking about logging into Gmail and sending out a One email to one parent. I'm talking about creating an email list and Sending one email and that one email gets sent to everyone and a good example If you look at my build my sports biz email, so I send out That's a daily newsletter that I send to coaches, right? So that goes out every day That's like a for me a non-negotiable thing. I don't care what's going on that day. The email will be sent and I had Let's see here between 2009 Okay, 2009 to 2000 I'd say the later part 2016 With my emails for neighbor soccer Academy, which is my soccer training business I sent I think on average four emails per week Right, that is a lot. Right. I don't even want to break down the numbers. How many emails that is total And then for another company that I have online soccer skills I had a daily newsletter and I did that daily newsletter for three years Three years straight like never missed the day and then now with build my sports biz I have a daily newsletter. So if if you put all the numbers together. I've done thousands of these things and I can tell you from experience that Starting them is very difficult Especially if you're like me if you aren't good at writing if you Are worried about what people are gonna think of you like starting is very difficult, but Why again, why should you do it? Well, it's so you can get the parents and your area to be thinking about what you are doing and be Like learning more about your program and they can be consuming your ideas and your thoughts That's all ultimately what you want. You want others to consume Your ideas and your thoughts and again, what that does is it influences Their decisions when they think about signing up for a camp Like they're probably gonna want to sign up for your camp They're thinking about signing up for private training. Well, if you're marketing hard to them all the time They're going to know more about you than anyone else in your city and they're gonna think that you're the only option and that's what you need to do and In my email newsletters, I've always talked about creating the category of one in your in your city And I can 100% guarantee you there's no one in your city And if if I'm wrong on this send me a link to your competitor's website if they send a daily newsletter And I'll give you a hundred bucks. I'll give you a hundred bucks You can find someone who does what I'm talking about, right? But no one in your city is going to be sending a newsletter on a regular basis They might do it once a month or maybe once a week I'm talking about marketing hard and really the harder you market yourself To these parents the more response you're gonna get and the more customers you get right and if you think about it There's so much information you have that you can draw from as a coach as a player and whatever sport that you're coaching As a kid when you're in high school Like any adversity you've ever faced any success you've ever gotten like all of that can be combined into your newsletter Where really what you're doing is ultimately you're branding yourself. Okay, so why should you be doing these things? Number one, it's to separate yourself from any other person who tries to do Training within your sport in your city, right? Number two, it's to get attention from parents. So they can start like Trusting you more they know like and trust you more when they hear more from you and about you and and what your program is about And how you can help them, right and lastly like by doing this it ultimately gives you I Just call it polls in the water like you'll you always have a poll in the water that has bait that parents can choose to latch on to and That happens when you're out of the field that happens when you're eating dinner like parents can consume your message whenever it is that you send out the messages and The more you do that it will affect your business. You will make more money. You will have more clients and Again, you'll be able to create something that works for you when you're not working and That's the ultimate goal with the newsletter. All right, and now let's talk about how to set it up, okay, and I've gotten questions from coaches. They're like, well, I don't want to pay money for that If you don't want to pay for it Like that's telling me that you don't want more clients and what's I mean, let's just break down the numbers In email service that I used to use in the past was $20 a month. All right, so I take $20 a month times 12. That's $240 $240 Per year, I think that's right. I could be way off. All right, that means that if I have one camp and it's Let's say it's $20. It's a $20 camp and I can get 12 kids there Like if I could do that one time throughout the year, it would pay for the entire email service. All right, that's ridiculous Like those numbers are so easy to to get to but that only happens when you send out newsletters all the time And most coaches that I help they run multiple clinics per month Like they'll do thousands of dollars per month And so if you're not willing to spend $20 a month writing emails, that's fine I'm gonna show you a great free resource to use It's called mailchimp.com MAILchimp.com it's free So like there's no excuses if you think it costs money just go get a free account with MailChimp and From there you can upload your contacts and right there like once you start sending your newsletter You already have people on it. I started my contact list with three people it was my Two brothers and it was me. I had a Alternative email account so I have three people and none of those people were customers and so like for me like just the action the action of setting it up Right is key because if you don't set it up nothing's gonna happen. So just go get a free account with MailChimp If you have more than 500 contacts You have to start paying for it, but if you have more than 500 contacts, you should be paying for it Like that's telling me you can send one email to 500 people and if you're doing anything the way I teach with like high-end private training or Like automating your camps and clinics. You're going to want to have email set up And you should be willing to pay for it like for me personally I would if I had to I would be willing to pay thousands of dollars per year just to send emails fortunately for me the system I use is very affordable and It's not that costly at all. So I'm getting a great deal with it. Okay, but we have to think about, you know Setting it up first. Okay. Don't think about the content Don't think about what you're gonna say get it set up first Like actually do that and then step two is we want to think about well What is the frequency like how often are you going to send emails?  What you need to do instead is You need to have a yearly goal and when I say yearly goal Yes, that means you are going to commit to doing this for 12 months It's not a short-term thing. Like I've never told coaches in the past. Just send an email and And do that one time and after you do that, you'll never have to do it again Like this is an ongoing process And so you set a yearly goal and I'll give you a good example of I would think of this to be a good starting point for you if you have never done this the way I like to do that is you break down the year by weeks and A good starting point for most coaches and you could set this as a yearly goal and then you could Obviously have more emails that you send but a good yearly goal is sending two per week All right, so take 52 weeks. All right times two. Okay, there's two that are going out every week That's your goal. All right make that your goal and when you do that then you can break it down per month And this is a very simple and easy way to do it, but here's how I would recommend okay every month you have a set day and You have a day where there's no distractions. They're like it could be a Saturday It could be on a Monday. It depends if you work full-time or not And you have a day and that day your phone is off You disconnect your internet you literally pull out your computer I think I'm gonna show you two ways to do this, but you can pull out your computer and You write eight emails that means that all the emails for that month are finished Right and then from there you can go schedule those on MailChimp So all of your emails are finished all of your marketing is done for those emails, right? You get it done in one day you don't wake up on Monday write one email Wake up on Thursday write one email that that is not gonna work and just give you some insight like Every email that I've sent over the last Especially over the last three years every single email has never been done on the day it gets sent out like that That's a rule. I have I get it done way before then and this way I can actually Create time throughout the week Where I'm not focusing on that focusing on other things that are probably more important. Okay, and so Again, you want to have one day you carve out time however long it takes you to write eight emails You write those You schedule them and then they go out and then the next month You have the same day like you figure out. All right. This is the day. I'm gonna do all the emails So this way you're always a month ahead And by doing that you'll never fall behind and you'll always have the emails go out And that's a good thing. You can schedule these emails to go out whenever you want Right, and that's one way of doing it and I did that way for years the other way that I currently do it is I take my iphone I go to the notes tab And I go outside and I plug my headphones in to the notes tab And I start talking and in the notes tab It will transcribe what I'm saying and it will transcribe it into text So I can literally Like just be talking and I can be saying out loud what the newsletter is and I do that because Personally, I don't like to type typing takes longer it For me when I over analyze when I type and when I'm talking it's just coming out of my mouth the same way I'm talking right now. I and really to be honest It's more in my voice when I'm talking just because that's just how I normally talk anyways Okay, and that's that's a problem. I see a lot of coaches have is when they're typing They're not using the same personality as they normally would when they talk You know in a normal conversation and you do want to Like in your in your emails you want to come off I I think you want to come off very casual You want to come off just like it's there you're talking to them in real life That's how I like to do it not everyone agrees with that But I think that's a great way to do it because you're authentic that way, right? But really what I do is I go outside I plug in my headphones. I go to the notes app I start talking and I can write an entire email in 30 seconds because I'm just talking And then I can go the next one I can go to the next one and with that process I can In one I don't know and try I'd say two hours I can write 20 to 30 of those Just because I'm talking it out loud and then from there I can Email that to myself and I can go plug it into my autoresponder that I use And then they get scheduled and then I'm done with it and that's how easy it can be But what I where I see coaches slip up with this is they will get distracted. They won't They won't get the job done though They might do one or two and then like the next week they're trying to do one or two again I'm telling you it doesn't work that way I've yet I've never seen anyone succeed With sending emails and having that set up as a system when they do it the week of or the day of So you want to get it done? Schedule it out and let it go out and then have a set day where you do it again, right? So tactically that's how you want to have it set up You don't want to jump ahead with this type of thing. You just want to get started get the first eight done And just be disciplined about it and when you do that, I promise you in one year from now You can come back to this And be like man, like I really committed to that and it worked And I've never like in in the history of me consulting with coaches I've never seen any coach Who is like Failed With what i'm talking about like as long as they do it as long as they do it All right, no one has ever failed Like with sending emails or not getting more clients or not getting kids signed up for clinics and camps Like it's going to work, but you have to put in the work Hey coach, thanks for listening to our show today if you enjoyed the content I'd really appreciate it if you would leave us a five star review here on itunes If you want to attract more committed clients Generate more income and create more freedom in their life You'll want to check out our inner circle mastermind This exclusive group is reserved for coaches who want to build and scale A dominant sports training business To learn more about the inner circle program simply head over to our website at www.buildmysportsbiz.com Thanks again for listening. I'll catch you later


The Kaduna caucus of the House of Representatives has decried the incestant attacks by bandits, insurgents in kidnappers, along the Abuja Kaduna Highway in recent times. They say it was the latest, or the latest, been the killing of a retired civil servant and a gubernatorial candidate at the last governorship elections in Zamfara State, Sagar, Amadru. And many abducted on the sporadic gunfire shows that these bandits are getting booed there by the day. The caucus called for an urgent government intervention to prevent future attacks as these begin to affect human and capital resources in the north-east, or north-west rather. Indeed, the Abuja Kaduna Highway is the key outlet for the transportation of persons, goods and services across Nigeria. And this is evident in the extraordinary traffic on its round the clock. For these and other reasons that cannot be accommodated in this statement, it is imperative that the secure state of Abuja Kaduna Highway must be rested at once. Let us add that the perpetuation of this state of insecurity on the Abuja Kaduna Highway as well as the many other highways in this country challenges the Nigerian state in terms of its obligation to Nigerians to guarantee the security and welfare of the people as the primary purpose of government, Coshuan to section 4, 14, subsection 2B of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended. Also, the killers and the maiming of our highways severely infringed upon the right to life of Nigerians as guaranteed under section 33 subsection 1 of the constitution. And the quantum of budget being given to the Federal Ministry of Works will not permit them to be able to pay the contractors what they require to be able to do that job once and for all. So the small envelope given to the Ministry is splitted through all the various competing projects all over the country. And you know Jules Badger of today is not the same Jules Badger of yesterday. They work for you based on what you pay them. If you give them X Naira, they work for you for that X Naira and stop working there. So you get notified about fresh news updates.


Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of Search Off the Record, a podcast that we're trying out. Our plan is to talk a bit about what's happening at Google Search, how things work behind the scenes, and maybe have some fun along the way. My name is John Mueller. I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team here at Google in Switzerland. And I'm joined here today by Martin and Gary, who are also on the Search Relations team. We've done a number of episodes now, and I think we're kind of getting a hang of it, but it's still all kind of exciting and cool and awkward sometimes. But anyway, lots of cool stuff happening, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Martin, do you want to take us off? Yeah, sure. Sure, why not? I was on vacation recently, and while I was on vacation, we announced a cool new thing that we have been working on for quite a while, which is the virtual webmaster and conference. And I was really, really surprised, because one of the things that I was worried about up front was the fact that I knew it would be a very different format, and I was like, no one's going to join that, but that's not what happened. It filled up really, really quickly. That was wild. I'm not sure how the event's going to go. John, what's going to happen if the event goes wrong and doesn't go the way that we expected it to go? Will this be OK? It'll be OK, Martin. Don't worry. I think, I mean, by the time this episode is live, we'll know how it went. But in general, it's good to try things out. And I think, especially when it comes to online events, people have tried various things already, and some people are kind of tired of the traditional things. So doing something different and taking a risk, trying something new out, I think that is fantastic. I really, really hope that it goes well, because I kind of miss, as you say, like there's so many virtual events out there, and most of them are just like some speakers talking to you and you were watching them, and I'm like, yeah, this could be a YouTube video. This doesn't have to be like a live event. So I'm hoping that we get some nice outcomes from the discussions and panels and feedback sessions. Can we fire him if the event doesn't go well? No, no, no. Oh, bummer. Sorry, Gary, you don't get rid of me that easily. Also, if it goes well, I think we will definitely turn it into like a series. We can definitely run these multiple times and with different things. People have asked me like, oh, can you record it? Can we like listen in? And I'm like, no, I don't think that makes sense, but maybe we can try that with later events, just not in this pilot. Yeah, and I think one of the things we also notice is there's just such a high demand for any kind of event from our side. And I think the big takeaway we picked up there also is that we kind of need to do something more traditional along the way too. Definitely. Yeah, so I don't know exactly how we'll do that. I think timing-wise, we'll aim more towards like end of the year so that we have a bit of time to get everything organized, to make sure that we have everything set up properly for the speakers, that we have sessions that are interesting and setups that are a little bit, I hope, interactive and where we can get some feedback from people beforehand and maybe along the way as we go in there. Like what kind of sessions do you think we should do there, Martin? Do you have any ideas? I would love to have some sort of maybe Q&A panel. I think these are very, very useful. I think your site clinics are generally also super useful. I'm guessing that we have probably new things to communicate, so the classical front-centric sessions where we have a talk is probably also a good idea. What I'm wondering about is, so on one hand, I want to make sure that we are not limiting capacity because people don't like that. And I think the beauty of virtual events is that we don't have to limit capacity, but then we have to figure out how we can mix the interactive parts with the less interactive parts and with the non-interactive things, like the regular talks. I prefer them prerecorded, to be honest. I don't know, how do you feel about prerecording and screening with the live chat, like we do with the Webmaster Lightning talks, or do you prefer live presentations as in live, live? I kind of like both. I think for information-rich talks, doing something prerecorded makes it a little bit easier because then you have a chance to really fine tune the message and to bring it across in a way that is easier to understand, where you can match your slides, maybe if you're doing slides as well. But the live-life talks, I think what's interesting there is just, it's a whole different energy because you have all of this kind of pressure and adrenaline from doing something live, which means it's not perfect, but it also, I think, brings across a little bit more the kind of human touch when it comes to content. So especially for Q&A, for maybe a small panel or something like that, doing something live, I think is pretty cool. Doing some of that in a chat format is also an option. I kind of like the video for live as well, but sometimes chat works just as well. And especially considering that not everyone speaks English as a first language, then sometimes having something written makes it a little bit easier to understand what is actually happening. Definitely. And you can also get transcriptions for the videos and stuff that that makes pre-recording a good option. And I think if it's recorded, it makes it a little bit easier for the different time zones, but anything interactive, we still have to figure out how we deal with the time zones there. So if people from Asia are interested in joining in or want to listen in live, does that mean they have to get up in the middle of the night or could we do something that's spread out a little bit more? I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe we could do like a two day event, one in one time zone and then the other in the other time zone. But it's like similar content. I don't know. We'll have to figure this one out. This is gonna be interesting. Or we could just do it as a podcast. Then we don't have to worry about the video format at all. I approve of this idea. Of course, yeah. Because Gary, we want you on video, but you really, really don't want to get on video, huh? That is correct, sir. But your class on how search works was so good. I would love this content to be more widely available. And I know that you are okay with being on stage in person, just not on video, right? So we were actually talking about this with our producer with Anna, but I really want to do it properly. Not from a home recording, but in a studio. And we have, well, Anna has ideas about how to make it happen. But you will be on camera? But when we have a studio and I would be on camera, basically if it's worth it, then I can deal with being on camera, but like for events, for example, I just feel so awkward about it that I just don't want to do it. If someone tricks me into being on camera, like for example, there was this aircoats podcast the other week where I was invited to talk on a podcast, again, aircoats. And then when I joined in into the meeting, then they started recording the video feed. And I'm like, hang on, what's happening? And what do you mean, what's happening? It's like, I thought this is a podcast. It's like, well, it's actually a webcast. What does that mean? It's like, you are recording me? Yeah, could you also change your t-shirt because it's like you're in a home t-shirt? But don't you think you should have told me this before? Oh, well. So yeah, I will not cancel on the spot because I don't know, I feel that it's unprofessional. But yeah, that was kind of awkward and not something that I would prefer to repeat. But if we have a studio and we have our producer and her ideas, then I'm very happy to do it for something like Lifehawk Query or House SearchWorks or whatever it's called externally. That is fantastic news. So, Gary, like since we're in a podcast format now, would you be interested in going through some of those details around like House SearchWorks, how indexing works here? What kind of question is that? Tell us a little more about indexing, Gary. Come on, let's do it. Man, I wish I could, but I really don't want to. You should do it. Tough luck, Buttercup. You have to. Let's do it. Well, it's kind of, well, fine. Okay. Let's talk about caffeine. Actually, that's a good topic because there was some confusion about that on Twitter as well. So maybe I can shed a light or two on that topic. Actually, we could do a breakdown of caffeine on these podcasts. Okay. Yeah, we should. Okay, let's do that. So yeah, we have caffeine. That's our indexing system. Only externally it's called caffeine. Internally it has some other name, but that doesn't really matter. And it does many, many things. And I think that's actually not very clear externally, that it does many things. For people it's just like, we have the crawler, which is Googlebot, and then that goes to something, something Google magic. Well, people know that it gets rendered, and then something, something Google magic, and then we have an index. Now, we can actually break down that Google magic, and people in general know that Google magic, or could figure it out if they wanted to, but that Google magic is essentially what caffeine is doing. Basically ingesting, picking up whatever is produced by Googlebot, which is a protocol buffer. You can look it up on your favorite search engine, what a protocol buffer is.  And then we add the information that caffeine produced into our index. Now, what's happening inside caffeine? Well, the very first step is that protocol buffer ingestion. Basically, it picks up the protocol buffer and starts processing it. The very first step after ingestion is conversion. What does that mean? Well, it's conversion. Basically, it converts, right? What to what? Do you have a problem with the word or? No, I'm just like, okay, we have a protocol buffer, which has all the information that it needs. What does it convert there? Does it convert the protocol buffer into a different format or? Well, that too, but first, we have to, for example, normalize the HTML. Because as you may have heard or noticed, the internet is generally broken, HTML-wise, but we still try to make sense of it. Now, if you have really broken HTML, then that's kind of hard. So we push all the HTML through an HTML lexer. Again, search for the name. You can figure out what that is. But basically, we normalize the HTML. And then it's much easier to process it. And then there comes the hot stepper, H1, H2, H3, H4, I know. All these header tags are also normalized. Through rendering, we try to understand the styling that was applied on the H tags. So we can determine the relative importance of the H tags compared to each other. Let's see what else we do there. Do we also convert things like PDFs or? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Google search can index many formats, not just text HTML. We can index PDFs. We can index spreadsheets. We can index Word document files. We can index, what else, Lotus files for some reason. Seriously? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Wow. Yeah. Can we index floppy disks? What's your obsession with floppy disks? I love them. They are such a beautiful medium. I wish they would come back. No, they are not. They are actually the opposite of beautiful, whatever it is. No.  But they are iconic because they are the safe icon. Oh, my God. Oh, not sorry about this. Okay, sorry. Yeah, so we convert these. We put out the HTML tokens. We normalize the HTML tree. Wait, wait, wait. So going back to PDF. So PDF is a binary format. It's not that easy to process. So for that, as far as I remember, we license Decoder from Adobe that we use to basically convert the PDF to HTML. And then from there on, we are just working with HTML. And this happens with all the other binary formats that we can index in web search. Of course, those are also normalized. So the HTML eventually will be very well formed. We then start looking at meta tags because there are a few meta tags that we deeply care about. For example, the meta name robots. Keywords. No, not the keywords. We don't care about the meta keywords at all. Like, at all. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I changed my mind. But the meta name robots, that's something that we deeply care about. And for example, if we find with a value no index, then we know that we have to stop processing that document or at least don't put in the index. What else do we do here? Something that confuses some people is that if there are HTML body related elements inside the hat tag. Like iframe. That belongs in the body. Like iframe or div or p or span or whatever. Then the HTML lexer will close the head right before those tags and starts the body from there on. And you can also look at this, like how it works in practice, on the W3C HTML validator, which will do something similar. But that's an important detail if you're injecting stuff in the head and you want stuff to be picked up from there. What else we do here? I think that's pretty much that's it. One system that is related kind of to converter is something that we call the Collapser, which is essentially the system that's doing error page handling. As we said previously, the internet is generally broken HTML-wise, also HTTP-wise for some web servers, but we still try to make sense of the internet. And one thing that is broken on the internet sometimes is error pages. For example, there might be not found page, 404 page that comes back with an HTTP 200 status code. It's actually quite common. And what we call soft 404s. Every single page app in the world has probably at some point ran into soft 404s. Oh, really? Oh, wait, you're saying we have to do this for JavaScript sites? Not just for JavaScript, okay? Other people screw this up in different ways, too. Are you saying that JavaScript sucks? No, I'm saying people don't know how to use it without breaking the internet sometimes.  No.  So you're saying JavaScript is an error page? Okay, continue. Why am I even working with you, people? I just... So going back to error pages, which are generated by JavaScript... Gary! Okay, okay, fine. Not every error page is generated by JavaScript, but some are. Thank you. Okay, now that we have Martin's blessing error pages, soft error pages, we don't want those in our index.  Basically, we have a very large corpus... Well, actually corpora of error pages, and then we try to match text against those. This can also lead to very funny bugs, I would say, where, for example, you are writing an article about error pages in general, and you can't for your life get it indexed. And that's sometimes because our error page handling systems mis-detect your article based on the keywords that you use as a soft error page. And basically, it prompts Caffeine to start processing those pages. And of course, error page handling also works on other kinds of error pages, not just 404s. Like, for example, if the server sends an overloaded message, HTML page, but the 200 status code, then we might be able to understand that. We have redirects that are not so obvious, and we can detect those as well. What else? We also try to detect login pages here. I'm not sure why is that useful, but we know about login pages. So with error pages, would we also count something like an e-commerce site that has a product out of stock? Would that be seen as a soft 404 page, or would we try to index that page anyway? I think generally that would depend on the words that you are using on the page. So should people try to hide that then, or is it? Well, I think this is a philosophical question. And I'm sure that there is someone on our team who's trying to figure this out. But in my opinion, you don't want out of stock pages in the index. So you would probably want to get rid of them. Again, I think it's a philosophical question because you can definitely provide some functionality on the page so people can, I don't know, subscribe for updates about that product or something like that. And then it might become more useful, maybe, to have those pages in the index. But if you just have an out of stock page, why would you want to do that? Okay. Questionable value there. Except, I have an idea. Except if you are trolling the users. Basically, you are advertising that you have this product, but when they end up on your site, then it's like, just kidding, out of stock. That doesn't seem very nice. Yeah. Okay. So I guess the answer is, it depends. It depends. Okay. It's one of your favorite words, I know. Or phrases. Yeah. It's the catch all phrase, I think. Yeah. I think that's really tricky. Like the out of stock situation is something that people, when I talk about e-commerce, it always comes up. Like, how should we handle these? And it feels like on the one hand, you still want to be findable for some of these, especially if it's like a vintage item. Like there is only one in the world and you no longer have it. But you have all of the documentation and all of that. Right. And you kind of want that to be findable. But if it's like something that everyone else has and you just don't have on stock at the moment, then for the user, it's more useful if they just go to some shop that does have it. Yeah. I think it depends phrases very applicable here and on many things in SEO. I know that people don't like it, but it's very useful and we should use it more. It's true. It's true, yes. It is just, most of the things depend on the context. Yeah. Oh my gosh. We should use it more. Okay. Fine. So one of the places where I kind of ran into some of these struggles with it depends myself is when I had a friend who got in touch with me because they heard I was at Google and doing some stuff on search. And of course they have a website and like could I just help them to make it number one kind of question, which of course I can't. I can't go there and give you that secret keyword meta tag that will make you rank number one because Gary just said my secret doesn't work, the keyword meta tag. Wait, the keyword meta tag is your secret?  I mean, everyone knows about it. Oh man. I thought we just tell people not to use it because it's one of those things that makes the magic happen and we just don't want them to know about the magic. No, that's the page rank meta tag. Oops. Oops. You mean meta rank, name rank, content cheese? I don't know. Well, anyway, so on the one hand I was putting together all of the general SEO information that we have that we can give people and tell them what to do like our SEO starter guide also some of the other third party SEO starter guides that are out there. There's some, I think really useful stuff but there's like a ton of information out there and if you don't know anything about SEO it's really hard to get started. So that's something where they also came to me like so how do I find someone to do SEO for my website? And we have a video on that. We have I think some help center pages on that. So that was kind of useful to point them there but it's still one of those situations where it's like well, I don't really feel comfortable just recommending someone that I know even if I know there's some really good people out there and it was more that I was trying to find ways to give them advice on what they should be looking for when it comes to an SEO and in the past when people asked me about this usually I told them to find someone local that you can work together with in person and kind of discuss the problems and questions that you have about your website. Nowadays like you don't really do a lot of business in person anymore because of all the coronavirus stuff but it's still something where being at least in the same time zone and being able to do some kind of a phone call video conference makes it a lot easier to discuss and it makes it a lot easier to kind of figure out what kind of needs you really have and what kind of things the SEO side could be helping with. That was really interesting to kind of point them at that. One of the things that I ended up doing more for my own sake was to crawl their website. So that's something that before I joined Google I wrote a site map generator that basically went off and crawled websites. Of course it did. Which was really fun and it was one of those things that I found extremely insightful because then you notice how broken the web is. Kind of like how you mentioned Gary. On the one hand, the content on the web is really broken. On the other hand, all of the URLs and crawling on the web is just so broken and it's sometimes a surprise that Google get through it all. But I picked up some third party website crawler tool and I played around with it and it's really cool to see how you can just crawl your website and see what the current status is and especially when you compare it to something like Search Console which is based on what we index it is really interesting to see that immediate feedback where you can just crawl your whole website in an hour and see what kind of comes out versus in Search Console where you wait a month and see what comes out. So I mean it's not to kind of like say Search Console is not useful in that regard but it's just, well, Search takes a long time to update everything across all of its indexes and kind of understanding those differences I thought was really useful. So I pointed them at a website crawler like that as well and said like if you're going to make big changes on your website here's one way to kind of test that before waiting to see how Google actually figures things out. So I thought that was pretty cool. It was fun. Yeah, I always find it awkward when people are asking recommendations about SEO and especially if they are close friends and you are like, well, I can't really tell you and then they are like, but you work on Search. So yeah, that's exactly the problem. And then you point them to the documentation and they are like, are you really just sending me to some documentation that you wrote for the noobs?  Like what? And then when someone asks for an SEO recommendation like recommend an SEO company then gets even more awkward because I do know tons of good SEO companies that I could recommend but since I am working on Search plus we are the face of Search for SEOs and marketers and webmasters and whatnot how do you single out one SEO company and recommend that it's just so weird or it would be so weird? So yeah, that's also really weird. Yeah, it's an interesting struggle because we are so involved with the whole community and at the same time we really don't want to point at any particular people and say, well, we know them really well and you should go and do business with them. I don't think that would be fair. Another cool thing I found not while looking at their website but just on Twitter in general is this really cool presentation from Tobias Willmann. He's also from Zurich. So, woohoo, Swiss people. I hope he's Swiss. I don't know, actually for sure. Oh, Swiss local community. But he's in Switzerland. He did this really cool presentation and kind of some research on GIF SEO. Have you ever heard of that? I heard GIF, isn't that like a peanut butter brand or something in the U.S.? No, no, GIF. That's the image format. Like GIF. Animated images, yeah, GIF. Oh, you mean GIF? GIFs, yeah. No, GIF. I know that the inventor got it wrong how his own invention is called but yeah, it's definitely GIF. Okay. Am I called Gary or Jerry? You're called Gary. Jerry. I think I'm Jerry. Oh, so cool. Sometimes you're George. I made a terrible mistake. Now we know you're Jerry. Cool.  Sorry of my life. Anyway, so one of the cool things in that presentation was kind of a side note that actually some of these GIF search engines are really popular and apparently one of them is actually the second most popular search engine. What? Yeah, like I never realized. Let me repeat that. What? What? I mean, I don't know if it's really like the second most popular. Maybe Google is second most popular. I don't know. Jugo. Jugo. Jugo. No, wait. So what's up, Jerry? All right. Well, anyway, it's really obvious once you think about where these search engines go, namely on your phone, on your keyboard, when you're looking for an animated image, it goes to one of these GIF search engines, right? Yeah. It's like you're looking for a meme, you're looking for something funny to add to a chat, or to Twitter, or whatever.  And you include that in your message.  And John, to be fair, we both are meme material when it comes to that. I know that I have a few GIFs of myself that I use as reactions sometimes and people have seen them in slides and enjoyed them. And I think we need more of these.  And I think also GIFs, we should probably produce more of that. I'm pretty sure in our video material there's so much that you can use for reaction GIFs or GIFs. It's GIFs. We should support that. We should do more of that. We should do more reaction GIFs. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Or maybe we can do stickers like Googlebot stickers, like the virtual kind. Oh, that's good stuff. But how do you actually make these stickers? It's in his presentation. I'll send you a link. It's pretty cool. Okay, I need to check that out. Also the way to do SEO for these is hashtags, basically keywords. Wow. So meta keywords would work there. Meta keywords is how you rank your GIFs. That's okay. That's interesting. That worked out really nice for early search engines, web search engines. Well, I think, I mean, I don't know, maybe people search differently when they're looking for GIFs. But who knows, maybe all of that will change and it's more kind of a generational question. And at some point people will be like, what do you mean people searched for text? Wait, but you know what the difference is? There's no commercial intent. It's true. Not yet. And how would spam look like? I mean, if there's like advertisement in the GIF or GIF results, then you would just like not click on it. That's it. Well, I don't know. I'm sure there are pictures of spam that you can include in GIFs. I love spam. Hashtag spam. Love spam. Spam spam. Spam spam. Spam spam. Okay, wait, wait, wait, guys, guys. I think we should just cut it off here. This is getting out of hand. Spam. Spam beans and egg. Wait. Spam spam. Spam spam. No. Eggs and spam. Spam. Where's the mute button here? Anyway, thank you all for listening in to our episode of Search Off the Record. We'll be back with more useful and insightful information in one of the next episodes. Hope you subscribe and listen in when we come back. Thank you all. Spam. Bye-bye. Go seichou arigatou gozaimashita. Whatever it goes at. Yes. I mean, Jerry.


We continue today with Chapter 29, The Forgiving Dream. The slave of idols is a willing slave, for willing he must be to let himself bow down and worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the Holy Son of God that this could be his wish? Let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up. Here, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is not a dream. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as himself. And in that dream was heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto his Son. How can God's Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will awaken. For the dream will seem to last while he is part of it. Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor can he know the self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your, quote, true identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself.  Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror and despair? And this the idol represents, and so its worship is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. Judgment is an injustice to God's Son, and it is justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. God knows of justice, not of penalty, but in a dream of judgment you attack and are condemned, and wish to be the slave of idols which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it, for idols must be part of it to save you from what you believe you have accomplished and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. Little child, the light is there.  Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world and give their toys the power to move about and talk and think and feel and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget they made them up. The dream in which their toys are real nor recognize their wishes are their own. Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. Yet can a dream attack or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead.  Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real but seem outside himself where they can turn against him for his treachery to them? He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts because he thinks the thoughts are real. And so he makes of anything a toy to make his world remain outside himself and play that he is but a part of it. There is a time when childhood should be past and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children's game in which the child becomes the father, powerful but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts him is destroyed. What helps him, blessed. Except he judges this as does a child who does not know what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen. And he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks he is governed by the laws he made. Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real? Nor have his laws been changed because he does not understand. The real world still is but a dream except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It is a dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else. Nor interpose between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No one is used for something he is not for childish things have all been put away. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy because that is the purpose that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here for time is almost over. In the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers not in judgment but in love. For giving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream as being dreamed by someone else. And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers. Though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness once complete brings timelessness so close the song of heaven can be heard. Not with the years but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again he knows he never heard it not. And where is time when dreams of judgment have been put away? Whenever you feel fear in any form and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content as certainty of help a calm assurance heaven goes with you. Be sure you made an idol and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty. So deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Your self-betrayal must result in fear for fear is judgment leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning. Not another try to worship idols and to keep attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. He does not fear his judgment for he has judged no one nor has sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. And all the while he is remembering what he forgot when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from its penalty. And from the workbook lesson 233. I give my life to God to guide today. Father, I give you all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them, give me your own. I give you all my acts as well. That I may do your will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained. And wasting time in vain imaginings. Today I come to you. I will step back and merely follow you. Be you the guide and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the infinite. Nor love whose tenderness I cannot comprehend but which is yet your perfect gift to me. Today we have one guide to lead us on. And as we walk together, we will give this day to him with no reserve at all. This is his day. And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us. Amen.


A tornado warning has been issued for your area. Residents should seek shelter inside a sturdy structure and seek information on a local AM radio station such as WBAP-820, a NOAA weather radio, or a local television station. Outdoor warning signs have been activated and emergency text messages have been sent via nixle.com. Do not go outside to view or take pictures of an approaching funnel. All people should move to the most interior windowless room in the structure or, if available, a residential in-ground or manufactured tornado shelter. Bathrooms and closets work well as long as they are on the ground floor or basement and do not have an exterior wall. Carry a portable radio with you so you can monitor the situation as it develops. Sit on the floor and cover yourself with a blanket, towels, bed cover, or even a light mattress to help protect you from flying or falling debris. If you are outside and cannot reach a sturdy shelter, get to the lowest lying area to you such as a drainage ditch.  For additional information about tornado safety, visit knowwhattodo.com.


Some human rights activists have staged a peaceful protest in Ibadon, the Oyo State Capitol, kicking against rising insecurity in the country. The human rights crusaders led by Femi-Aborishadi said the current situation in the country has shown that governance has totally collapsed in the country. Aborishadi insisted that those who are in power have broken the social contract between the people and office holders. And we are convinced that of insecurity is economic insecurity. The government has abandoned the economic welfare of the people. Rather than improving the welfare of the people, they are compounding it. And we are using this opportunity that beyond a day of action being called by the Nigerian Labour Congress, it's also a need for Nigerian Labour Congress to call a conference of trade unions, pro-massist organizations, and radical political parties to commence a process to form a pro-working people political platform.