Daily Tech News Show is made possible by you, the listener! Thanks to all of you, including Irwin Stir, Ken Hayes, Phillip Shane, and new patrons, Polly, Rodney, and Eva! Welcome them in! Polly, Rodney, Eva! On this episode of DTNS, Adobe brings AI chops to video editing, Apple kicks out a game emulator a week after letting it in, and why Samsung and Apple are looking a little like Nokia and BlackBerry these days. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, April 15th, 2024. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. From the Atlanta area, I'm Nika Monkwardt. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. It is a wonderful Monday here in the United States of America, where millions of people are filing their taxes.  Let's start today's show with the quick hits. OpenAI is opening an office in Tokyo and announced plans for a version of GPT-4 to be optimized for the Japanese language. It already works with Japanese, but, you know, they can make some tweaks to make it work perfectly with Japanese. The office will be led by Amazon's former cloud computing lead in Japan, Tadao Nagasaki. OpenAI opened its first international office in London last year, followed pretty quickly by a European Union office in Dublin. And so if you add in San Francisco, the home headquarters, Tokyo becomes its fourth location. Microsoft has resolved a problem that prevented Windows 11 from working on systems with Intel smart sound technology on Intel's 11th gen processors. Intel released audio drivers that fixed the problems almost two years ago, but they were just added to Windows Update this past weekend. After updating the driver, the Windows 11 upgrade should be available within about 48 hours. I don't know what took Microsoft so long to get them in there, but good to know. Remember last week when we told you OpenTable was going to reveal the first names and profile pictures of all reviewers, including past reviews? Remember how we said that wasn't real cool to reveal past reviewers since they didn't know that's what they were signing up for? Well, OpenTable agrees with us, and it has changed its policy. It will show first names and profiles only on new reviews starting May 22, but the old reviews will stay as is. The Turkish Competition Authority issued a temporary injunction against Meta for linking threads and Instagram data without user opt-in. Meta announced that it will shut down threads in Turkey temporarily starting April 29 while it works on a solution. Turkish threads users can delete or deactivate their profiles until the service resumes. It's going to come back. I just don't know how long, right? The Verge has seen a list of specs for the upcoming Sony PS5 Pro. Its sources say Sony is giving the specs to developers so they can make sure their games are compatible with the new console if they want. Sony is apparently encouraging them to take advantage of things like improved ray tracing. Developers can use a PS5 Pro enhanced label if they provide enough enhancements. The Pro will have an improved GPU capable of higher resolutions, frame rates, and the advanced ray tracing. The CPU will be capable of some higher clock speeds, so a little bit faster. Verge says developers can order test kits now, and Sony expects PS5 Pro enhanced games to be certified by August. So that certainly sets the table for a holiday release of a new version of the console. And the existing PS5 model is supposed to continue to be available as well. Adobe is working on integrating generative models for Adobe Premiere. That's its video editor. That would include Adobe's own Firefly Tools along with integrations from PicaLabs, Runway, and OpenAI's Sora. Video editors using Premiere would be able to add and remove objects with just a text prompt. So, you know, take Tom out of Daily Tech News Show and I'd disappear. Premiere would be able to add and remove objects with the text prompt similar to Photoshop's generative fill feature. And Pica might be used to extend shots while Sora and Runway can generate B-roll. Content credentials will let creators watermark these so people can see which models they used. No idea when we'll get these though. Adobe said this year but did not announce a beta. In Adobe News, you can take advantage and you can now subscribe to Adobe's Acrobat AI Assistant for just about $4.99 a month. Not too much. It can answer questions about PDF and other documents, finding specific info, creating summaries, or even creating citations. You can try it out for free on mobile and beta. Adobe plans to bring extensions to it for Chrome and Edge browsers. Who would have thought you'd have a compelling reason to subscribe to Acrobat in this day and age? Usually that's something that people are like, oh, I forgot I subscribed to Acrobat 12 years ago. But the video editing is interesting. It is something that I think would bring more people over to Premiere, at least to try it out. And Roger, I know you do some video editing for us for Top 5 and other things you've been doing video editing for a long time. Do you see these as the features you would want to use? It depends on how they actually work out in real life, in IRL. There's three things that really I think would help. One is some AI scaling features. So you could take a low res video clip, say if something you shot 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And you want it to look as good or maybe not on par, but enough so it's not jarting when you shift to it in a video sequence. The other one is creating any kind of stock image, whether it's a graph or some sort of chart or something. And you don't necessarily want to go into, okay, I got to go and excel, now I got to punch all these figures. You just say, I want a pie chart that shows 68% of Americans prefer pie. And then the other 42% prefer cake. And then just have that so I can throw it in. If you think about all the YouTube explainer videos, often times they use tools that allow them some sort of expeditious process to get it done. Which is why like CG Gray or whatever you use, very simplistic graphics because they're very easy to produce and put out. You could get it so it's a little less threadbare and a little more polished. That would be awesome. Like I need a pie chart or I need a Roman gladiator hacking away at a lion. Because you're talking about gladiatorial games and some sort of Roman history less. I guess I'm talking about Rome. Yeah, there you go.  It's Roger. Roger's the one who thinks about it more often in this group.  It's interesting. Willie Scott pointed out in our chat room that, you know, Sora Pika Labs runway, those could be integrated into other video editors as well. That's not unique to Adobe. It's Firefly. That would be the separating factor. But do any of these sound like things you would like to mess around with? So it we I do some editing for my podcast and I haven't used Adobe Premiere in years. I've had fundamental issues with Adobe's kind of cloud, you know, base system that they moved into. But this does pose some interesting options when it comes to video editing because we know everybody is trying to find ways to cut down time to get content rolled out because it's all about how fast and how efficient you can get your content, you know, turned around. So some of these things are fairly interesting. My thing is, especially when it comes to AI, we need to be creating, you know, AI tools that actually improve the user's experience is actually beneficial. It's not just something to say, oh, we kind of came up with this. This is kind of cool. What is actually going to make video editors lives easier? Similar to what Roger was just saying, if you can text edit to create a graph or a graphic that you need to go along with what you are presenting. Then that takes out a significant amount of time that you would have to do to go and actually create or actually search for that particular piece or that particular graphic that you want to throw in your video. So it I think it it has some potential. It's just getting people to to leave something like a final cut to go over to Adobe Premiere. Yeah, it's interesting to me, a lot of the talk around Sora open ai's was, you know, oh, is it going to replace filmmakers? And what we're seeing here is an example of using it to create B roll. And I think that that's that's bringing the expectation back down to earth, right and saying, yeah, sure, I guess so is pretty impressive. But what it's going to be best at is something pretty simple, like, you know, show me a city street in New York with cars driving by, because I just want to show some B roll of that. That's useful. That's something as a video editor. I could I could I can say we'll speed things up, obviously extending a shot to say like, oh, we, you know, we ran out of room and I want to have some I have some sound that needs to have a little more of this. Can you just make it work for another second? These are all useful. I don't know how often we need to add or remove objects from video. I mean, I guess maybe because we haven't had an easy way to do it before we didn't use it a lot. But I I don't run into that with even still photos as often. So I don't know about video. Yeah, it's very interesting, you know, the things that they are are putting into this. Let's put some things in there that are actually going to make creators lives a little bit easier. And I could be wrong. There could be people say, Hey, I asked for this all the time. I need it all the time. Let us know. Oh, yeah, for sure. Feedback of daily technician.com. Apple made a big change of policy. We talked about it previously, allowing emulators, game emulators into the Apple App Store. They said you're going to have to, you know, you can't be violating copyrights. You can only distribute games you have the rights to and all of that. But they said, we're going to allow you to do this. We're going to allow you to have a game store in your emulator and all of that. The fact that you had to abide by copyright rules and only provide your own ROMs may have tripped up the first emulator to get the boot. It was approved. It went into the app store. It was called IGBA, a Game Boy emulator. It allowed you to go on the web, download ROMs and put them in the emulator. That could have been a problem. You know, if they weren't policing where those those ROMs came from. But Apple said it violated guidelines on spam and copyright, which it usually does not taking a it doesn't it doesn't give details. It took a, you know what you did approach the IGBA emulator appeared to be a source copy of GBA for iOS, which is an open source app, but they didn't just take the underlying code. They basically copied GBA for iOS without permission and then spammed a bunch of ads on it. So Apple told Mac rumors that in fact they removed the app because it was just a copy of GBA for iOS's submission and not an original app and the ads were the spam part of this. Nika, it's the first test case of this, but it really doesn't give us any clarity on whether ROMs, how you get your ROMs to put in these emulators are going to trip people up or not. It seems pretty clear cut that this was violating the app store policy by just ripping off someone else's submission. The question is, why did it get through app review in the first place? And that is the question. How did it get through the app review process? Apple is typically pretty stringent on what it allows into his app store and what it does not. And the fact that something this blatant made it in and people were actually using it. To me, it signals that either someone dropped the ball in the app review process or it just was quote unquote that good that it made it through, which I don't think is allowed. I think it's a former. It just goes to show that Apple can be fallible and they are probably going to have to put some extra steps in the app review process for specific cases like this to ensure that they are not basically just copying and pasting someone else's, you know, code in this to to invent to add ads on top of it. It's kind of a slap in the face kind of both ways. So there's definitely, I think, going to have to be some additional governance around what they're allowing into the app store, specifically as contained as it pertains to emulators. Weird Ami in our chat suggests that stuff reviewed after lunch by Apple may get through with less scrutiny. It's a good reminder that these are humans doing this and you have a lot of apps to review. Not there's not one person reviewing all of them. So it's possible that someone looked at IGBA and did not realize that it was a duplicate of GBA for iOS. There ought to be some automated ways, I would think, to flag those sorts of things for human review to say, hey, these apps look a lot similar. Can you take a look and make sure they're not? In this case, it seems like just public outcry because the developer of GBA for iOS went online and was like, well, thank goodness for Apple review, somebody's ripping off my stuff. Now, in the end, Apple review did pull it out. And so, you know, he got what he asked for, but it took some complaining online for that to happen. Yeah, absolutely. And that's not the way the policy should work, is it? I shouldn't let it through and then say, oopsies, let me take it out. It should have never happened in the first place. It is also still hanging out there. Are we going to have problems with ROMs? Because if anybody doesn't realize what we're meeting with ROMs, ROM stands for read-only memory. And it's a shortcut for talking about games that are on cartridge. So in a Game Boy, for example, you have the little cartridge, you stick in the Game Boy, and it has read-only memory of the game. You can copy that memory and make a virtual cartridge out of it, and then you can use the virtual file to play in the emulator, right? So that's what the emulator is doing. The emulator is a software version of the Game Boy, and then the ROM is a software version of the cartridge. And so the whole controversy around emulators is if you don't own the copyright to the ROM, you can't just make copies of those without permission. Do you have anything to play on the emulator? And there's a lot of homebrew stuff that people do, but there's also a lot of wink-wink stuff, right, where an emulator says, yeah, we've got our own ROMs, but also you can use it if you find them somewhere else, right? And there's a difference when it comes to kind of doing it on the side, so to speak, but when you're putting a whole app in the App Store that gives a different context to it, it's not just something siloed that someone is doing in their free time on, you know, for fun or something they're just trying out at home. You're actually creating what you're calling a new app. You have a whole name, you're putting ads on it, and you're putting it in the App Store where people can download it. I think that's probably the biggest delineation between that is how are you using it for profit, so to speak, and not for profit. And that's where it comes into play to me, is you're actually taking this code that has been submitted by someone else, that's owned by someone else, that was created by someone else, and you're putting it in the App Store under your banner saying that it's yours. Yeah. And honestly, this is the least controversial kick-out of an emulator that you could have expected. You know, somebody who literally took open-source code, so it was easy to make the code, copied the interface, so they're not doing anything defensible there, and then spamming it with ads.  I think a lot of people expected the first emulator to get kicked out would have been kicked out over a different kind of copyright violation, over you are enabling people to get ROMs that they don't have the rights to. And that may still happen, but that's not what happened this time. Nope. Well, folks, if you have thoughts about this or anything else, you might want to go and check out our Discord where you can chat with other members of the audience. We've got all kinds of channels in there, from hardware to science to food, Apple, Microsoft, Google, all the things you might expect. You can join our Discord by linking your Patreon account. Become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. It was big news in January when it turned out that Apple had replaced Samsung as the top worldwide shipper of smartphones in 2023. It was the first time Samsung had topped the list since 2010. Now, Samsung is off to a good start to take that back this year. IDC's Q1 estimates for 2024 show Samsung topping the chart again with 20.8% market share worldwide, followed by Apple with 17.3%. Both of those are a decline in market share, but Samsung's is almost flat. It dropped 0.7%. Not much. Apple fell 9.6%. Xiaomi stayed third while Tranzen jumped up to fourth place and knocked Oppo, which makes one plus, back to fourth. IDC notes that overall smartphone shipments were up worldwide from last year. So even though we had a couple of these folks like Apple experienced declines, shipments were generally up 7.8%. The third consecutive quarter of shipment growth. Xiaomi rose its market share 33.8% and Tranzen, whose strongest market is several places in Africa, rose 84.9%. Average selling price also increased. You may look at this and go, oh, well, it's Tranzen, so it must be people saving money. Selling price increased, indicating customers are opting for more expensive phones that they intend to hold on to longer. Nika, there's been a growing sentiment that iPhone is stale. That doesn't help, but Apple's top spot was boosted by Chinese sales, which have slowed for everybody. Do you think this means Apple needs to get better at sales outside of the US, Europe and China? I think it's a, it's a layered issue for one, people are keeping their devices longer. People have some economic anxiety and it's like, hey, if it's not broke, let's leave it. And honestly, the last few iPhones have been nominal changes. And what that means is if you have an older iPhone upgrading to one of the new ones is, wow, this is a big boost. But if you're going from year to year, if you change every year, you're not seeing a huge difference in the actual, you know, phone itself, the hardware, the design itself, I think where Apple has been spending a lot of their time lately is around the software. They are definitely making significant changes to the iOS and what the phone can actually do, not necessarily so much to what it looks like. And I just think again, as you mentioned, you have to expand your footprint.  So I think it's one of those things where you have to take a look at it at a couple different places. If you have a market that is, you know, consistent, they're going to support you, but your product is good and they don't really see a need to change or to buy something new, people are keeping their products longer. And it's one of those things where if you want to move with the time, you're going to have to expand, you know, your sales environment, your whole marketing presentation to keep customers and to gain new customers. That's to me, that's really kind of the only way to ensure that you're staying competitive. Yeah. It's fascinating to compare Oppo and Apple tracking here. So it's one thing to say, oh, it's Apple being too restrictive or it's Apple doing this or Apple not having a medium range or a high medium range phone. But Oppo had almost the exact same experience as Apple did. A slight decline in shipments and an almost identical year-over-year change. Apple fell 9.6% on the year, Oppo fell 8.5%. So it makes me want to look at those two specifically and say, what are the similarities between Apple's strategy and Oppo's strategy? And there's not a lot of similarities other than the OnePlus isn't as widely available worldwide. The Apple iPhone is certainly widely available worldwide, but it's not marketed like you were just saying in all the places that Apple might benefit. So it does seem to me that this indicates not that it's too late, but Apple is going to have to diversify beyond just China. Like they need China. China's a huge market and they're doing the right things to try to bolster sales in China. They need to do more to bolster sales in India and they need to have a strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, Latin America as well because they need those markets. That's where Trangin, which I've been watching for a long time, Trangin sells budget phones, mid-range phones. They've dominated most of the African markets. They're huge in Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia as well. So I feel like, you know, you look at it, Trangin jumping 84.9%. That tells you something. That's huge. Right? Yeah. And the thing is, Apple does have, you know, non-pro line phones.  They do have, if you want to call it, an entry-level iPhone. They do have that option. And I think a lot of Apple's focus, particularly the last year, iPhone we know is the flagship device of Apple. But they have the new chips, the new M's, the Apple Silicon chips. They really put a lot of effort into Apple Vision Pro. So I think some of the marketing has been skewed towards some of the different products. And, you know, iPhone, it's the standard. It's, you know, it's always going to sell. And I think that may have played into this little bit that they maybe took their eye off the iPhone ball a little bit to put focus on some of the other hardware products. And I think it's potentially showing now that that shift in focus did have an effect on the flagship device. Yeah. Keep your eye on the phone, Apple. That's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. The other thing, before we move off of this, I think it's worth pointing out is that Trenchin didn't just do this overnight. Trenchin has been slowly building up local operations, employing local people, doing local marketing in multiple markets. So they are marketing specifically to the people in those regions. I think Apple, just in a lot of places, relies on its worldwide profile of like, oh, it's the iPhone, right? It may indicate they need to do a little more localization, a little more on the ground work to, you know, be able to pitch the iPhone for people in Kenya, people in Ecuador, people in Vietnam better than they do right now because those are different markets with, you know, different quirks and different sensibilities. And I know we always say Apple is a juggernaut. It's so huge. It's so large. But as you mentioned at the top of the show, is it becoming, you know, you got to keep your eyes a very slippery slope if we think back to Nokia, Blackberry, how popular they were when the iPhone was coming out with people like, oh, this iPhone, whatever this thing is, can't possibly compete with Nokia and Blackberry. I mean, it's a very slippery slope.  I read this sentence in the IDC report. While the top two players both saw negative growth in the first quarter, it seems Samsung is in a stronger position overall than they were in recent quarters. I mean, just put Nokia in the place of Samsung. And I bet you can find a similar line in an IDC report from, you know, 2011, 2010, something like that, maybe even earlier. So I am not saying that Samsung and Apple are in exactly the same position as Nokia and Blackberry. There's certainly no equivalent for the iPhone coming up at this point. But it struck me. It struck me, Nika, as somewhat similar of like, oh yeah, Nokia and Blackberry. They've got a big lead. They don't have anything to worry about. And you know what? A dark horse is coming in. Yeah, don't get too comfortable. Be careful. Exactly. All right, let's check the mailbag. Brian heard us talking about deepfakes and rules about deepfakes and a proposed law from the U.S. Congress about, you know, making it easier to sue and bring a civil action over deepfakes. And Brian asked, are deepfakes protected speech or are they libel slash slander? Obviously, there's a question of intent. If you are trying to present a deepfake as truth and harm someone's reputation, it's probably not protected speech. That is the question. Brian is asking the question that the courts are going to weigh in on, which is if I just do a deepfake and I say, I'm not trying to harm anyone's reputation. It's a parody or something. It's fairly defensible. If, however, you can show like, oh, this person was trying to ruin my reputation, which is, you know, the ones that are intimate depictions and things like that, they're subject of that law that we talked about last week, then it becomes easier to say, I don't think they were trying, you know, I don't think this was done with good intentions and it is harming my reputation because it's not true. But also, a deepfake is never true, right? So is it something where people would think it's true and then does it fall under slander? And I'm not going to try to answer these right now, Nika, because it's a thorny issue and you do need the courts to weigh in on it. Absolutely. And it's one of those things where it's better to get ahead of this than to be lagging behind because it could potentially have huge repercussions, whether it be on an individual or a company. It's, like you said, it's very thorny, but it's a very present issue that needs to be addressed. And that question that Brian asked, is the question that I was getting to when I said, do we have existing laws that can address this? Because on the one hand, if you can clearly show, okay, this person was trying to get revenge on me, they put my head on this fake picture and made it look like I was doing something embarrassing. You could probably get a judge to say, okay, that shouldn't be allowed, but are there damages? And then that's where that law came in, is to say, you know what, we're going to make it so there are damages. It won't just be up to a judge or a jury to decide the damages. We're going to put a minimum that's pretty hefty on that. Yep. Well, thank you, Nika Monford, for hanging out today. As usual, it's wonderful to talk tech with you. If people want to hear more of your perspectives, where should they go? You can find me at Tech Savideva on all of your social media platforms. You can also head on over to snubwithcast.com, a podcast that I co-host with another contributor of DTNS, Terrence Gaines, where we talk all things Apple and then some. We air every Friday. Wherever you get your podcasts. Go check it out, snub-o-s. And patrons, stick around for the extended show. We're going to carry this conversation on, Good Day Internet. Apparently, according to Tech Crunch, investment in AI companies is falling already. Is the boom over? What does that mean for the tools you're using? Stick around and we will talk about it. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday for PM Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more about that at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow. Talk to you then. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


Getting on stage, two minutes in. I started noticing that my mouth is getting so dry that my lips was getting stuck to my teeth. So I was like, oh, can I get some water? Can I get some water, please? It's gonna take too long. So I just ran off stage when grabbed the bowl of water. So, alright, just hold on a minute. Here we go, here we go. Ooh, yeah. And then as I'm coming back, my quick wittiness as a comic just came out. How unprofessional? I'm so sorry. Oh, I'm sorry.  Water's very hard for black people to find. And the room just wet in uproar, man. And that just gave me the next level of confidence and you can see the differences in performance after that. Then I just came out hot, then just poured it home. Shane, Jacobson, shouts out to Shane. Really loved my set and then gave me the golden buzzer moment.  It actually just made the show. You made it your moment. Yeah. Fire out, imagine if you remembered the water.


It's known as the Fairground. It will eventually flow into the River Thames. It looks like these trees were once used as a gate post. Hello, thank you for joining me on this winter's day. You can see where I am. I'm at Mortimer Railway Station. This is on the railway line from Reading Down to Basin Stoke. Very nice Italian-made station building. Today is another episode of Classic Villages of England. What we're going to do, we're going to explore the village of Stratfield, Mortimer and Mortimer Common. This station opened on the 1st of November, 1848. When this station opened, the church over there wasn't there. That's where we're going to go to next. Sorry, I'm behind the other line. So the station opened 1848. I'll say it's just a line from Reading to Basin Stoke. So that way it's looking towards Reading. The other way is going towards Basin Stoke. I really like this station. Very nice and Italian-made. I think the other similar one on the network is at Chepstow, which I remember going to as a child and watching trains there. So it's got this Italian-made style. If you look at the arches and that, it does also remind me of Taplow, but Taplow is on a larger scale. So it may well be the same architect. So I'm going to make my way out the station. I'm going to walk up to Stratfield, Mortimer, where the church is. Oh, look, nice to see the GWR benches, wooden benches. Especially on a cold day up to that. It's just nicer to sit on. It's warmer. You sit on the metal bench. It's freezing now. As I sit here, I just look at that. That's one of the nicest station buildings we've ever seen. Almost symmetrical except for the chimneys. One other thing I want to show you. It looks as though there's going to be some engineering work taking place here this weekend because the car park is full of various diggers with rail wheels. I'm wondering also, I mean, this station doesn't have lifts at the moment. Oh, look at that. That old way out. That's the old First Great Western style way outside. So I'm wondering if at some point they're going to replace the footbridge because this is the only way in and out the station. So bear that in mind if, you know, you would need to use lifts. There's the road bridge. So here we are up on the bridge. Get a nice view of the station. I haven't been on this line many times. I went on it once on a class 47 when they still ran 47s to Bournemouth. Last year I travelled on this line and fly in Scotsman. And if you want to see the next station up the line, have a look at Lincoln's screen now. It's Redding Green Park. And it opened last year before we leave the station. I'm going to show you that because it's a bit different. Look, there's all the equipment for some engineering work that's going to happen. So you can see like there's a digger and that's like a flat wagon that the digger will turn along. So I don't think there's going to be any trains here at the weekend. Anyway, I'm now going to walk up to the church. So walk up the road this way from the railway station. I'm heading towards the church. If you're thinking, did he come by train? The answer is no. I drove here. There's my larder. Here's the church. Now this church, as I mentioned back at the station, it's new in the station. It opened or it's built rather in 1869 by someone called Richard Armstrong. Now I understand it's replacing an earlier church on the site. It's not the original church, but it's a really nice big Victorian Gothic church. Look at that. It's one of my favourite type of buildings. It's listed building. I don't know if we're going to be able to go inside. I will try if we can and maybe we can come back another day. I reckon you went up there. It hasn't really got balcony up on that tower, but you must get an amazing view. I don't think it's any good for watching trains, because the railway is just over there. Well, you know what it is because we can see the church spire from the railway station. There's the stairs in there. Looks like another little stair tower in the main tower. So there's the entrance. I'm going to take my hat off just in case the church is open, and I'm not supposed to wear hats in church. Sorry about the hat there. Yeah, this is open. I'm not going to get too excited. I don't know if they'll be locked. Okay, yeah, it's locked. Well, maybe another time we can come back. What I'm going to do now though, I'm going to get in my car, and we're going to drive up to Mortimer Common. I've arrived at Mortimer Common now in my larder. This area here looks like a common sort of ground. You might call it the village green. It's known as the Fairground. There is no fairground here today. That name comes from, they used to hold horse fairs here, and occasionally Welsh cattle fairs. So that's why it's called the fairground. I suspect what you'd think of a fairground with rides and games and that is potentially auto-held here. Over there is the other church. That's St John's Church. Now that was built in 1881, so that's even newer. So it started at the railway station, went to a newer church in the railway station, and that was because when the village up here grew, people had quite a long walk down the hill to the church. It's about at least a mile down to the church, so another mile and a quarter or so down to the railway station. So it's potential you can walk down to the station if you live up here. That's St John's Church. And just down there is where the shops and cafes are. There's a pub over there called the Horsingroom. I'm going to head out across the fairground that way, and we're going to go down into the countryside. So I'm going to walk across the fairground. I'm now in a completely different landscape in this woodland of mainly, seems to be mainly, holly and silver birches. I understand the name Mortimer comes from the Mortimer family. They came from Weekenmore Castle in Herefordshire. That's the one I'd like to visit one day. So I say this area is Mortimer. This is Mortimer Common. There's also Stratfield Mortimer.  First recreational groups. I'm just doing a circular, really. And then that will take me back to the fairground at Mortimer Common. So having now walked through the little woodland, I'm out into open fields. And there's quite a few horses over there. We're quite high up over there. I can just sort of see down towards the valley. If I was to continue down there, I'd come to Redding. And there's a horse standing here. Hello. Hello.  It's a bit shy.  I'll leave the horse to enjoy the nice weather. Hello. You're on YouTube. You are. That's it. Yeah. You allow on YouTube.  I'm going to leave the horse now in peace and continue on my walk. I now feel like I'm really out in the countryside. I can see a long way, miles, in that direction. Over there. Come to another point. You can just see some whiteness. There's some buildings in Redding. Where we were previously was just the other side of that farm. Over there where those horses were. You might also just be able to see that white building there. That's Wokefield Park. It's now a conference centre. It was a boar stall at one point, but now it's usually a conference centre. Also on the horizon again, I don't think the camera's going to pick out. I can see a line of well and Tonya trees. That's over a three mile cross. I did a walk there once and I remember it was all a lot more built up than I expected to be. They've built a lot of houses in that area. Maybe one day we can go down. I'm going to follow this path around the fields and the oak trees down to the stream at the valley. I'm now at the bottom of the hill. I said when I was at the top of the hill I thought there might be a stream down here. Underneath this oak tree is a little bridge. That's going to take us over the stream. This is the Lochrum Brook. It's called Flows Off down there. It will eventually flow into the River Thames. It must come from a spring somewhere further up the hill. And then, as I say, Flows Off down there, down there. And possibly into the River Lodden first, then into the Thames. I'm not too sure. Anyway, it goes in that direction. I'm going to go in that direction up towards the oak tree and find my way back to Mortimer Common. The character of this walk has changed yet again. We're now on the edge of a pine woodland. I'm just following my way down this... It's a drive to some houses but it's also mainly a public footpath and right away. I'm going to go down into Stavale Woods. There's the other woodland. There now, something quite interesting here. The path we're going to take is between two trees. Unfortunately the sun is right in the way but have a look close up. It looks like these trees. See that? And that. And that. Looks like these trees were once used as a gate post, or was there a gate post and it's just been absorbed, the trees growing around it. I'm not sure. Maybe if you've lived in the area for a long time and you're watching, if you remember the gate on here, do let me know. It'd be interesting to know what it looked like. I'm going to walk off down there now to Stavale Woods. I'm back at the fairground now. That was a really pleasant walk. It was about three and a half miles. So a nice, circular walk. Interesting varied scenery. Different types of woodlands, crossing a stream out through open fields. And now common land. There's children's parks. I'm going on to see those horses. I haven't seen one those for a long time but I can remember the park near where my grandmother lived. Used to enjoy playing on the horse. This is a really pleasant village, Mortimer. Well, this is Mortimer Common and then there's Stratfield Mortimer down at the railway station. So it's something if you wanted to come and visit this village, you could quite easily do it. You could drive up here as I did, or you could come by train. If you come by train, just bear in mind, it's a fairly long walk up to the hill to the village. But it's been a nice winter's day walk. It's a shame none of the churches are open but it's understandable. They can't always be open. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching. It seems to be standing on a basketball court at the moment. I don't know why I'm rushing to get off it as long as I'm having to go. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video. Please do feel free to like, share, comment and subscribe. It all really helps the channel. So thank you very much. And from Mortimer Common in Barkshire. Goodbye.


Well, this wasn't the video I was planning to make today, but I think it's time that I give you guys an update on life, an update on life in video games, maybe a health update in here as well, and just some general cleanings up that I think I just need to do for my mental state of mind, because it's important to take care of yourselves, both mentally, physically, etc., etc., we all have our responsibilities and our bills to pay, and if you're a parent like me, you have children to take care of, but it's important to take care of yourself as well. And it's no secret that I have had a few health issues over the years, some of those health issues were not necessarily caused by me. One of my kids, you know, smacked me accidentally, it didn't mean to do any damage, just kind of ran into me when they were really little and that gave me a hernia. You guys have heard me talk about that before, I did get it taken care of and isn't too big of a deal outside of the fact that some of my internal organ protection fact came out through the hernia and the surgeon chose not to remove it, which is really crappy when you fast forward a few years and I still have it because now it's considered a cosmetic surgery to get rid of and health insurance won't cover it, but that's a sort of a minor thing. Some of you guys do know that I also had a heart attack, you know, a handful of years ago as well, you know, it was mostly stress induced, but it wasn't helped by the fact that I'm overweight and I do have high blood pressure. Now, the blood pressure thing is kind of under control. I use, I'm not wearing it right now, but you guys might see some of my videos or my live streams that I'm wearing an Apple watch. I'm not actually wearing a smartwatch because I care that much about it, but I actually just want to know what my heart rate is. Now, heart rate's not the same as blood pressure. There is a difference, but if your heart rate is too high when you're in a resting position like I am here in a video like this, that I need to pay attention to that and go check my blood pressure and see if I need to take some blood pressure medications. I obviously don't want my heart overworking itself when I'm trying to not do things like when I'm working out is one thing. When I'm not working out, it shouldn't be working that hard unless I'm doing something physical.   And that happened a number of years ago and I'm doing mostly fine today. I'm also overweight. So we're getting all this hell stuff out of the way right away. And you guys know this, it's no secret. You can talk about looking at me, even just my face alone, my hands, even, you know, a little fatter than I want them to be. I am overweight. I'm obese. There's no other way to put it. I am obese. I'm five five. I'm supposed to weigh anywhere between one to 45 and 160. Now, again, a lot of this BMI isn't like this perfect measure of anything because I have a bigger bone structure as well. So probably should be a little bit heavier than the 150. That's why I threw out the 160 mark, but I'm well beyond that. I'm a hundred pounds plus above that. And that is not okay. It's not okay that I continue to live that way regardless of whatever excuses I want to make. So for those that aren't aware over the last month, it's almost been a whole month, not quite yet. I think I'm at like 26, 27 days or something like that. I don't know, Paul Gale Network knows because I have undergone a health transformation and what does that mean? I've been taking on a very strict weight loss related diet. Now, this diet isn't going to be my diet for the rest of my life. This is just helping me get my weight under control. But it is also training me to have smaller meals more often. And then once I can add more calories in, because then I'm just maintaining weight or just doing muscle growth, that's a totally different thing. But I am on a very restrictive diet that is working and I'm happy to report and I was going to post this on social media. But I guess this is this basically is social media, right? I'm down 20 pounds and that is a big deal. That is a really big deal. I started at 284. I am down to 264 as of today. Today was my weigh in. I weigh in like once every four or five days.  Now, I have a long ways to go, right? I started at 284 and I'm at 264 and I'm trying to get another hundred pounds off, right? So it's going to be a lot of work. And, you know, as I get down to 200 and at last 40 pounds, it's going to be tough. And I'm going to have to make even more probably lifestyle changes, right? Whether it's cutting out all soda in my life because I haven't cut out soda consumption, all alcohol consumption or whatever I'm going to have to do. We'll see how my body's responding right now. It's responding very well to my low calorie diet, but not just that. I'm also working out. And this is a credit to Paul Gale network as well, who helped me change my diet routine and he also helped me work out. I work out at least every other day. I'll just say this, it's four days a week period. So there are times that it's two days in a row. Usually that happens between the weekend and then the following Monday because we do a Monday stream where we work out with Paul every single Monday. So there's always usually a workout on Sunday or there's like a workout Friday, Saturday kind of just depends on how it all lines up. So basically goes Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then that extra workout between then and Monday ends up either being a Saturday or Sunday. It just depends on which day I choose to do it and how my body's feeling and where we are. We work four different key areas of my body. We work on my legs. Of course, you work on your chest. We do abs and then we do she do arms and shoulders, most of shoulders on one of the days as well. So that's really cool. And I've been crushing the workouts, I have to say. I don't know if I'm I don't know them where I want to be with them. And sometimes a workout I did the week before when I have to repeat it the following week is actually harder the following week. And the varies.  I'm feeling better. I have more energy and, you know, even clothes like this that I wasn't wearing much until like the last week are fitting better. So I'm starting to where it started to get the point that some of my biggest clothes I have my a lot of my three X shirts and stuff I was wearing are kind of like dresses on me in some in some some instances wasn't for this little hernia thing here. They probably all be dresses, but it's whatever. I'm very happy about that progress and I wanted to make sure I shared that with you guys because one, I want you guys to hold me accountable to I don't know if you've even noticed that I've lost weight. But more than that, I just want to address that in general. I'm not dumb every Monday night when we work out.  And that's just the negativity that is something that I actually is kind of unique to the internet.  And all the people there will treat you very respectfully because they're happy to see you getting in shape.  It's kind of sad, but that's not a majority of people. So thank you for all the people that are supportive and those that have been joining us on our workouts every Monday. I hope you continue to do other workouts throughout the week to help you out or maybe just work a manual labor intensive job and don't need to work out as much and that's fine. Or you just have different genetics, right? Everyone's genetically different. I have some pretty bad genetics in my family. One of those, including being a genetic that actually makes you gain weight when you shouldn't. And it's really weird. But you know what, for the most part, I'm really happy with what's going on. So that's good there. I also want to talk about obviously life in video games. And I say this because something that's been happening over the last month is I've been playing more video games. And I know right on Nintendo video game YouTubers playing video games, but I'm not like most of my content is news based, which technically doesn't mean I have to play the games, but I do play a lot of games. And I started doing these YouTube shorts, vertical live streams about a month ago, and it's been very, very successful for the channel. We've obviously gained subscribers. Some of them have had, you know, random super chat stuff going on, which I never expected on YouTube shorts. And on top of that, we beat Ocarina of Time for the first time in a long time. We beat Majora's Mask for the first time in 20 years. We played a little bit of Hogwarts Legacy. I don't know what we're going to do next. We might play some Fortnite or something else. I don't really know. Maybe Princess Peach Showtime this upcoming Friday, right? Like that might be a good game to kind of get out there and just see how what people are thinking. But it's been kind of fun because obviously I'm playing games off streams as well. So I combined the on stream with the off stream and I'm actually playing games more now than I have in a hell of a long time. So that's been really, really nice because mentally, you know, things are what they are. I am a father of three children. I love them to death. They're eight, 10 and 13. I have a lovely fiance I've been with for a long time. But we've had our ups and downs over the last 12 years. And life comes at you in droves. They always say when it rains, it pours. And I've had a lot of stress going on. I've had battles with depression myself in the past, probably still still today, if I'm completely honest, went to therapy for 13 years. My big thing is there's been a lot happening in my house. Some of it's involving my children, which I absolutely refuse to really get into that in an online setting because they're literally minors and I don't think it's appropriate. But there's been some kid related stuff going on. I'm mostly with mental health and stuff like that, that we've been doing our best as parents to deal with because we're not one of those parents that's afraid to admit that our kids have problems and we're doing our best there. But besides that, my fiance is an amazing woman and she has amazing struggles as well, both good and bad. And a lot of those struggles are internal battles. And I can't, well, not that I can't. I don't want to dive into all of it, but over the last week, it's been a very, very trying time, more trying than our typical week. And she's really been struggling and, you know, knock on wood today. She's doing really, really well. But you guys might have noticed last week, Monday, when we had our typical Paul Gale Network live stream, our stream got cut off and our stream got cut off out of nowhere because of something very serious that happened in my house involving Yulia. And came to her aid and did everything I could and tried to help her. And I'm still trying to help her. But it's a nice reminder that, you know, in life and in video games and just in anything that we need to make sure we take care of ourselves. Video games are helping me take care of my mental state, especially right now. We're actually we doing after this video goes up, we'll be doing another vertical live stream because I hey, I need to play some games and clear my head, right? And we still have our workout stream and stuff tonight. But also that you guys are taking care of yourselves. Like while I'm sitting here dealing with everything in my house and as as I'm often told by my friends and immediate family, I'm like the rock of my family, right? Like I'm not allowed to break. And it's kind of interesting because like this is the side I want everyone to see this nice solid foundation. But then really, you know, underneath it all, I have my little cracks and these little cracks I need to take care of myself. And that's why I do that's actually one reason why I started the vertical gaming live stream was to force myself to play games more. So I could de-stress from everything because I don't want to get myself back to a mental state that I was five years ago. And that mental state was I lost myself. I don't know if you guys know what that feels like, but you start to no longer recognize who you are anymore. You start to not know what to do with your day. You start to not you're just very depressed and don't and it feels off. Like it doesn't feel like you are you and how do you get back to being you? And for me, it was therapy and a lot of self-reflection and a lot of work took years, but I don't want to get back to that state. And so even this video here is more so just me like airing all my thoughts out, both from what I'm doing from a health perspective and what's going on in life and what's happening here. And this isn't always me.  Like, look, we could be billionaires and it wouldn't fix what's going on inside our heads. So and one even fixed what's going on with my body, right? Like, hey, yeah, I can get the surgery to remove that one thing from the hernia, but I still got to put in the work to lose the weight, right? So that's not going to change anything. A lot of the stuff we're talking about is not something money can buy and money can solve. So I just want to sit here and let you guys know that I know that I'm going through some stuff and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job, mostly not letting it seep into my content. And because I just want to keep presented to you guys, the latest rumors and news and all that stuff and has a lot of fun on streams and give you guys my best self. Well, maybe I'm dealing with some stuff behind the scenes because being my best self in those situations helps me deal with that stuff behind the scenes because I'm so focused on my health and my mental health and mental health of my fiance and my children and everyone around me that I want to make sure that you guys are taking care of yourself too. And maybe you're not or maybe you're trying, you're not trying hard enough. I don't know what the answer is going to be for you guys, whether it's be a medicated or being on medicine or I guess it's the same thing. Getting whether you need therapy, maybe you just need to find more fun things to do with your life or find a hobby and a video games and social media like social media is wonderful and I exist on it and I'm thankful you're here. But for some people, social media can actually be draining and hurt you mentally. And, you know, if that's the case, maybe you need to cut back or cut out your social media consumption as much as that might hurt my YouTube channel. I just want you guys to take care of yourself. And so this is not only me just updating you guys, maybe doing a check up with you. How are you doing? No, seriously, you don't have to get too personal down in the comments that how personally want to get up to you. But literally, how are you doing? I hope everyone's doing amazing and wonderful. And I want you to know that I do hear you. I do care. I do read those comments. And hey, you want to talk more? I'll be live tonight, man. I'll also be live in a little bit playing video games if you want to just talk about some stuff going on in your life. I am here for you as much as I reasonably can be with obviously you guys understanding. I have other priorities and responsibilities above, you know, what I do here on YouTube and above you guys, but you guys matter. And if you ever feel like you don't, just remember that Nintendo Prime is right here looking you in the eye, saying you matter to me. And I mean that. Thank you so much for being here. And hopefully we get to some fun video game news tomorrow.


So, obviously, I am a fan of world building. That's basically what my channel was built off of and I've continued to talk about it ever since I started this thing. And, well, it's a huge part of fantasy and science fiction works, but it's also just a huge part of all sorts of works altogether, like, you know, even if you're writing just like a romantic comedy or something, if it takes place in fictional town or real town or something, you have to get the audience familiar with what that place is like, what the setting is like, what the people there are like, what the culture is. You know, so world building is a really big deal in stories of all sorts and, well, I am a huge fan of it, but it's very, very easy to mess it up. You know, much like going back in time and stepping on a butterfly, you screw up one detail and then years later, nerds are wondering why you're able to have an army of 12 million men in a country that's only, you can walk across in three days. Like, you know, you see stuff like that, especially in fantasy and science fiction works and, well, I don't know. You saw the title of this video. I don't think I need to go too much more into detail in this intro section.  I think I'm past the 60 second mark, so I can just say it now. And, yeah, this is just gonna be details that I found in stories, whether it's, you know, alternate history or apocalyptic or fantasy or sci-fi or whatever. And it's just details that really, really wreck the world building. This isn't necessarily all taken from books that I hate, although granted most of them are books I dislike. I think there's one on this list that I actually enjoyed. But, well, I do want to emphasize that bad world building doesn't instantly make a story bad. Now, it's a bad thing, certainly, and it does detract from the story, but the more important stuff is still, you know, plot and characters and all that. So, unless it pulls from those, it's really not that big a deal. I am solely just talking about how it affects the world building in most of these cases unless I otherwise specify. I'm gonna be sticking to minor spoilers for all of these. There's, I think, one series in here that I give major spoilers for, but that one finished, like, 10 years ago, so I don't think anyone's gonna be too upset with me for it. But, you know, hey, you know how top 10 list works. Let's go. So, starting off at number 10, we have The Fifth Sorceress, which is, oh, god, I hate that book so much. It just keeps coming back, and I'm probably gonna have to read the whole series one day. But in this one, it's just how Eutrasia has basically no government other than the king.  Now, the thing is they do have a rampaging army going throughout them and a bunch of their leaders were just killed. So, I totally, totally understand how that could cause breakdown in society and that would cause some chaos and cause a lot of issues. I'm not saying that wouldn't be a problem, but it wouldn't instantly collapse everything right away, especially in like a medieval system or maybe post medieval. I don't really remember the technology level all that well and I do not care enough to check. There should be other governments. Like, there were specifically a couple of nobles that they mentioned did not come to the big events where the king and everyone else was. So, wouldn't they in their own lands, if they were smart, be able to maintain control there at least and possibly even attempt to take over after the bad guys leave? And even without them, wouldn't there be towns that have things like mayors and town councils and constables and sheriffs, you know, other people that have some sort of authority in those areas? Or hell, even just religious officials like bishops might also be in there? Or non-governmental entities like guilds, which are, you know, maybe not super powerful in this world, but they at least have some authority and some sway in the local area that they could do something, you know, and it's just, it's just not there. Nothing of this is there. And it's a terrible look for a lot of reasons, but that one relatively small detail has just always stuck out to me because it's very obviously coming from someone who just doesn't understand how governments work or how societies are structured. And, yeah, I don't have a whole lot to say. It's just really dumb. And if you are unaware, know a president dying even in like a super centrally controlled dictatorship does not instantly equal the whole government falling to pieces. Like, it takes a lot more than that. Alright, Numero Nueve comes from the testing, which just a couple months ago I did a whole long video of that entire series, which is awful in a lot of ways, but probably the biggest thing about that whole series that stood out to me is how the testing, which everything is built around, is specifically killing off all the smartest kids in the Commonwealth. Now, the testing, if you're unaware, is basically just one of those Hunger Games clones that came out around 10 years ago. You know, it's dystopia, teenagers, leader of rebellion, save the day. It's a particularly bad entry in that genre, but you know, it is just an entry in that genre. So there's not a whole lot that's new there, except that in this world the government every year takes all the smartest kids that graduate high school and brings them to the capital for an event that's just called the testing. Like, it's it's a proper noun, so you know that's how it's being serious. And it comes in pretty quickly that students who don't do well at the testing die. Like, pretty early on in the first book there's one of the smaller tests they have to do where they just have to fix a broken radio and one kid screws up while doing it and a nail gets shot through his eye and he dies. What? And then later they have a testing where they just like drop him in the wilderness and like, okay, you gotta go a couple hundred miles back to the capital and also you're gonna be shooting at each other and there's wild animals and stuff. Good luck with that. And it's the whole time I'm just wondering why they bother doing this. Like, there's not even a reason given. It's just, yep, the evil government does this sometimes and well, it's really dumb. You know, I think that's the simplest way I can put it. But for starters, no one seems to realize that all the kids are being killed even though after they leave their hometown they never come back.      So you're actively shooting yourself in both feet by doing that. And then that's not even counting how when you make the penalties for failure too high, people stop taking risks and so by doing all this crazy stuff and the testing all you're doing is convincing these kids and the ones who go on to like graduate and actually be in college and everything. You're convincing them to always play it safe and that's in some situations, yes, you should do that but not all of them. And like example, if you thought that like you had an optional test you could take in school and there was a 20% chance that if you took the test it would raise your grade and you'd get into a good college but there's an 80% chance that if you didn't do well in the test they would just kill you immediately. Most people aren't going to do that. They're not going to take that risk because the rewards and the penalties for failure, the rewards for success and the penalties for failure are just way too far apart from one another. So it's just dumb on a lot of levels and it's kind of disappointing because I think that this setup, if it was written by a smarter person, I think this setup could be used to actually comment on standardized testing both in America and in other countries like because yeah it's set up in a dumb way and it doesn't always help kids and it doesn't always help society and in fact in places like Japan or Korea or Taiwan sometimes these things get so intense that kids will just straight up commit suicide over it like the stress and the pressure is too much for them and you could have said something about that here but you didn't. Number eight, this one isn't from a specific book so much as an entire genre but in every urban fantasy ever written why does the magic world bother staying hidden? Now I've mentioned this before I'm mentioning it now I will probably have to mention it in the future but in many cases the magical world could have taken over the human world like in some cases yeah like with modern technology and everything they wouldn't really be able to take over everything and humans would probably wind up killing them all if they knew about them so it kind of makes sense for them to stay hidden this isn't every instance because sometimes like they can only be harmed by magic or something like that so you know it still doesn't make sense but I'm not even talking about the modern world necessarily I'm talking about how come 3,000 years ago when the war chariot was the pinnacle of military technology how come back then all these spirits and fairies and gods and wizards and stuff didn't take over you know like they could have done it back then like humanity did not have the numbers the technology or the knowledge necessary to properly do that like they could have ruled over the population as demigods or and they just never do and I'm willing to overlook that in some cases like a couple years ago I read a book called doppelgangster which is urban fantasy and that one is meant to be a little more light-hearted and also it's shown that the magic is not super super powerful so it kind of makes sense that the magical world would stay more hidden from society at large but still I always have to wonder that and now you always have to wonder that too number seven is from the worst book ever written the way of the shadow wolves by Steven Seagal and in this one somehow over the course of seven years eighty four thousand jihadis have been snuck into the United States through Mexico now there's a lot of reasons this doesn't make sense for starters the Mexican border is not that easy to smuggle people across like I'm not saying that things don't get smuggled across like people in drugs because they very much do but it's not that easy that you could get eighty four thousand of them and for another all the jihadis coming across our Arabs and Pakistanis that are pretending to be Mexican by speaking Spanish and I said in that review just because you can't tell the difference doesn't mean they can't a lot of Mexican people would be saying hey I think Abdullah isn't from Mexico City I I think he's from somewhere else and he keeps talking about jihad maybe we should do something about that like someone would notice and then you have an entire city's worth of people which admitted they are spread throughout the entire country so it wouldn't be immediately noticeable to your average person that's like law enforcement agencies and stuff that would be very easy to pick up on because I think I mentioned this as well like back it during the Cold War there was a spiring of Soviet spies in the United Kingdom that was like a hundred people and one of them got drunk and blabbed and then the police caught the whole spiring and that's the thing when you have large groups of people it becomes easier and easier for there to be some sort of information leak or double agent and when there's 84,000 of them that definitely would have happened like people would have noticed this shit Steven and then to top it all off like these 84,000 were brought in to perform a variety of terrorist attacks which happen in the the I'm sorry I got water on my sleeve and it's uncomfortable I can't keep it in one spot for very long these terrorists are brought in to perform a series of attacks at the climax of the book all over the country and you would only need like less than a hundred people to do all the attacks they mentioned and the book only mentions like a couple dozen of them at most so what are the other 83,900 of them doing this whole time like what what's their point in all this like this is just a good example of why just adding an extra couple of zeros onto a number or not is not always a good thing when it comes to world-building like just saying okay this country is bigger like that doesn't necessarily make anything better you know like you got to think these things through a little bit like I think maybe if this book had had like 84s yehadi's that would still be a pretty high number and it would still work for the story we're telling but I guess 84,000 because scary foreigners and of course number six is actually pretty similar because this one was from true allegiance which was written by Ben Shapiro and in this world for some reason after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 it turns out Iraq really did have nuclear weapons like I think in real life they did have some chemical weapons which could be considered WMD's but they did not have nukes they just they didn't okay Saddam Hussein's regime did not have the capability to do that either intellectually or materially they just they didn't and if they did then they would have brought definitely used one or two of those bombs on the invading forces like that's just what people do when you put them against a wall like that and yeah the Iraqi government to that point was like okay it would be either this or we all die so let's give it a shot at least in fact that's basically a plot point in the first modern warfare game now that I'm thinking about it but in this world not only did Saddam Hussein's regime have nuclear bombs but they hid one of them in Iran here's the thing about that Iran and Iraq hate each other for a variety of reasons which I really don't think I'm qualified to go into but just as an example of this they fought a really nasty war against each other in the 1980s the Iran and Iraq war you should actually look into that because who that thing was brutal in a lot of ways there's a lot of war crimes and shit going on there but and then there's like the whole animosity between Arabs and Persians which is there and then there's also some Sunni Shia conflicts going on like that there's a lot of reasons they don't like each other and even if for whatever reason Saddam Hussein did not use this one nuclear bomb that he apparently had on the invading Americans which I'm actually kind of impressed that Shapiro didn't just give them like 50 nukes like he stuck to one which actually makes a little bit more sense that's why this isn't higher on the list actually because you know even if Hussein somehow managed to make a bomb like that getting all the materials for it is very difficult and he would probably only be able to make one or two so that bit actually makes sense but they wouldn't hide it in Iran because Iran wouldn't take it like Iran isn't on their side they don't want to go to war with the Americans at that point in time and if they did hide it in Iran because I guess all Muslims are secretly on the same side which they're they're not been they're just not but if they did secretly hide it there Iran would immediately announce hey we have nuclear capabilities now and frankly for that matter Iraq would have done the same thing the because guess what that's how you prevent yourself from being invaded like even if another country has a much bigger more powerful military if they're afraid of nuclear retaliation they're not gonna be able to touch you think that would have happened 10,000% but I guess in this world logic doesn't apply and real-world politics don't apply and real-world religious and ethnic differences don't apply and just I don't know I guess this is how Shapiro sees things. Number five is from the Southern Victory series and in fact it's the only entry on this list that I actually like overall so this series is alternate history and it is a very good entry in the very tired genre of what if the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War and this one is better because it follows what happens afterwards for like 80 years so basically up until the end of World War two and basically the dumb part is how the Confederate States managed to industrialize and grow their population at the same speed or in some cases even faster than they did in real life despite being cut off from the United States and cut off from a lot of the rest of the world. Okay you could probably write an entire thesis on why this is kind of dumb but even those who don't know a whole lot about the American Civil War tend to know that the Southern States the Southern slave rebellion rebelling states really only or not only lost but mostly lost because their economy was dog shit you know they did not have factories or railroads or regular roads or just they weren't producing things the way the other states were they did produce a lot of cash crops like tobacco and cotton and sometimes coffee I believe but they did not make a whole lot else you know even just like regular crops that you have to eat they didn't make all that much of that because you know that's not as profitable for slave owners and if they had somehow managed to pull away from the United States if they had somehow won that war I wouldn't see anything changing you know because most of the industrial centers in slave owning states were in states that the state loyal to the Union you know border states if you're unfamiliar there were a couple of slave owning states that did not side with the rebellion and they had industrial centers which the South just lost when that happened and so they would have had basically nothing to build off of to begin with and then they also would you know have just been at at war which is always costly and messy which is why in real life their economy was falling apart at the end of the war and then they just well I don't want to call them a dictatorship necessarily because but at the same time they weren't just run by white men they were run by a relatively small circle of wealthy white men so if you want to be nice you could call them like an oligarchy or an aristocratic republic but the Confederate states just by modern standards certainly were really not a democratic country they it just wasn't and the thing about dictatorships is that they tend to neglect things like infrastructure you know they'll build a road from the presidential palace to the airport and that's about it like everyone else is kind of just left on their own specifically because they don't want people connecting too much and while that does help prevent revolutions it also shits all over your economy you know like the ruling class of the CSA might have been able to keep themselves living in luxury by you know having all these massive slave plantations and selling off cash crops and maybe they'd have some industry but they just would not have that much like there's no way that they would stop sucking on this golden tit in order to diversify their economy like this that just doesn't happen and the CSA both before during and after this American Civil War did not attract nearly as much immigration as the northern states because well they didn't have nearly as much opportunities for immigrants you know they didn't really have the factories that you could work on or these massive cities where you could well a lot of times land yourself in a ghetto but you know at least you're you're making a living and you're probably better off than you were before and they just they didn't have all these opportunities for them so their population would not have grown from nine million people in 1961 to 30 million by the time World War I starts in 1914 because they specifically mentioned it's about 30 million then and tripling your population in that amount of time is kind of difficult at the best of times but when you really don't have that much immigration and when you well actually there were nine million people three and a half million of whom were slaves to begin with so you know that throws a wrench in the works as well just like everything about the CSA was contradictory and didn't make much sense and it just would not have got into this level okay I don't want to rant too much more number four is from Divergent which came out a long time ago so if anyone cares about spoilers leave now everyone there only has one personality trait and that's not how genetics work now I don't want to go on about this too long because I've talked about it before but basically in that series it's after some sort of apocalypse and society has been divided into five factions you got like the brave one the smart one the kind one etc and apparently in that world there's also some people called divergence who have well basically they have more than one personality trait you know they're both brave and smart and kind and selfless and just all that which is dumb on its surface and even when reading the book the first time I was like this doesn't make a lot of sense I'm I was kind of willing to roll with it at first because the story was still engaging at the beginning but it it was really dumb and then in the third book we learned that the reason for that is that humans were literally genetically modified to only have one personality trait apiece and they're called genetically damaged people which um yeah not touching that but then the genetically pure people are divergence who have more than one personality trait and they also were trying to breed more divergence by putting all the genetically damaged people into like big wall-off cities basically giant ghettos when you think about it and just letting them breed for a couple of generations and think and hoping they produced more genetically pure people which okay it's not that genetics don't play a role in your temperament and your personality and your intelligence and all that because it does we can argue about how much it does but I don't think me or the person watching this is qualified to do so so we're just we're gonna avoid that whenever possible but the thing is if someone has genetic traits which you view as undesirable and you want to you know you genics them out of existence wouldn't you want to make the genetically pure people try and breed a lot more and then like sterilize or otherwise prevent the genetically damaged people from breeding like you know because you're trying to get rid of them that's what eugenics basically is like wouldn't you like sterilize them or just kill them and then put the genetically pure people through like breeding programs to make force them to make as many kids as possible like I'm not saying this is right I'm saying that if you're in that mindset of trying to do something like that wouldn't you go all out with it this is one of those world-building details that really damages the story and the setting so and the characters actually nothing about it so it's just I don't know even though I forgotten a lot of details about those books over the years I still remember overall that I disliked them but even though I've forgotten a lot of details that one has always really stuck with me because it's just nonsensical on every level number three comes from Shadow of the Conqueror and this one is about how apparently everyone in this world is naturally good or evil and you can apparently cast a spell which tells you which one they are with 100% accuracy now this book was written by fellow youtuber Shadowversity and back when I first reviewed it I went a little easier on it than I maybe could have for a couple of reasons one being I thought it was his first book so I was like I will just leave it alone but it has turned out that apparently it was his 13th he's written like 12 others which were unpublished and now I'm just sitting here wondering okay if that was how bad were the first 12 because this one because this one really has a lot of severe issues and the other reason being that Shad is just kind of a cunt so I you know I don't feel bad being mean to him anymore when I learned that he likes to call trans women pedophiles and he likes to hang out with open fascists like Sargon of Akkad and stuff so like whatever I can I don't have to feel bad about being mean to him anymore but yes as I said in Shadow of the Conqueror apparently you can just tell if someone's naturally good or evil and there could be someone who's just a regular farmer and spent his whole life not hurting anybody not doing anything wrong but if protagonist Koon comes across him and casts his spell and sees oh okay he is naturally evil so then I guess it's fine to just kill him like that's a thing that happens here but at the same time there could be people who are just nasty pirates or dictators or something who have killed thousands or millions of people but they're naturally good so they're worth redeeming like that that doesn't make any sense and it ruins the whole story because the whole point of this story is that the main character used to be a nasty dictator and he's trying to make up for all the wrongs he did in his life he's trying to redeem himself so wouldn't he being naturally good or evil that doesn't make any sense the whole point of this is that even the worst people can be redeemed and you're just shitting all over that theme you're just shitting all over the story shitting all over the character shitting all over everything here is stupid and the thing is this whole book is filled with a lot of attempts to push Shad's personal beliefs which is annoying but not inherently bad except when he makes everyone who disagrees with him literal pedophiles and murderers but the thing is if he's going to do that it's going to make me think that this is what he actually believes so where the hell is he getting this idea that people are just naturally good or evil and you have to punish or reward them accordingly but also if they fall decide later in life to follow the correct ideology then even if they were evil before they can be good like where where's he getting this idea from oh okay yeah that that makes sense number two is from blood rose rebellion which is one of the first reviews I ever did on this channel and even the world-building analysis I did on it later is reasonably popular but okay this one might take a little bit of explaining so basically in this world magic is real but also the entire world and all of human history has gone exactly the same way it should it did in real life which is dumb for a lot of reasons like it's the mid 19th century and like all the empires and countries are still exactly the same which is kind of stupid and quite frankly I could have put that in this place but I wanted to talk instead about the magic because in this world only aristocrats have magic right like regular peasant people never get it and partway through the first book the main character realizes that it's because the magic circles in every country are controlling who gets magic and the facts that no one noticed this earlier just blows my mind because first of all wouldn't somebody notice that no peasants ever get magic like wouldn't they notice that or wouldn't they at least notice that oh okay it's only in Europe that this happens like in America's or the Americas everyone just can't have magic you know it pops up randomly in the population and no one questions that either which also brings up the question of like okay how far does this control go because it's mentioned that Charlemagne cast a spell on it like a thousand years before the story began and that's what caused all this but like does it only apply to Europe does it also apply to Africa and Asia are there people in Japan that are dependent on their magic circles to get their power how does that work but also no one apparently noticed that only people that the magic circles like get access to magic and only people that they really like get access to powerful magic like no one ever noticed this ever you could maybe argue that a regular person who's not educated about magic and just isn't in that world would not be aware of any of this and that would make some sense but the main character Anna I still remember her name because she's terrible I hate her so much up until like the climax of the third book where she does some cool stuff but she has been learning about this her whole life she's been invested in this world of aristocrats and she's learned about how to use magic and stuff and she is taken aback when this happens like she goes oh my goodness what like even if they didn't specifically tell everybody about it which would kind of make sense because they want the secret getting out but even if they didn't tell them that how how would no one pick up on it how would Anna not pick up on it and it's not just her being an idiot it's like everyone she works with to blood rows rebellion that's just that's a really terrible book series I just want to complain about that for a minute go watch my world-building analysis on it if you want more but this is this one small thing is easily the biggest confusion that I've gotten while reading a fantasy series like maybe you could argue that it's not as big of an oversight or as big of a fuck-up as other things but just how confused it made me and how little sense it makes I have to put it at number two on this list and of course number one on this list the thing you've all obviously been waiting for this entire time is from the young world which I feel bad shitting on it because I did enjoy the first book but the second and third ones are utter just they're terrible but in the young world there is this virus that goes out and kills everybody except for teenagers and they mention it's something about like their hormones you know during puberty which beforehand you don't have enough so you die and then you're safe for years and years but then around the time you turn 18 and your hormone levels drop you die from the virus and like all of humanity has collapsed and it's post apocalypse yada yada all that stuff and there's some pseudoscience there but I'm willing to look past that for fun adventure stories but in the second book we learned that only the Americas died and the rest of the world is carrying on as normal okay okay okay okay so first of all they the rest of the world knows that the Americas died like they tell them a virus went and they tell them it killed everybody they didn't tell them that there are still millions of people that are still alive which okay that kind of makes sense they don't want people trying to rescue them or anything that that's fine that makes a bit of sense but I think if the last few years have taught us anything it's that you cannot quarantine something that spreads that easy or at least governments are not willing to take the needed precautions to quarantine that because we don't know exactly how this virus spreads but if it infected literally everybody then it's very infectious it must go through like the air or something and just passing by somebody on the street they'll they'll be infected and if they're not a teenager then they'll they'll die right away and they'll infect other people and all of that and maybe if this if we knew right away like how serious this was other governments all over the world be like okay close off the borders to all of them don't let them come here don't let our people go there and maybe sure but they would probably not know that right away and it would only take one or two people hopping on a plane or a boat and going to another country and then like oh look at that all of China is infected all of the United Kingdom is infected all of Egypt is infected and it would just grow exponentially from there that's like that's always been the danger of pandemics and plagues and as we've seen in the real world governments really aren't willing to you know shut down shipping and trade and travel and all that because you know the economy and not to discount that that is a big deal like you don't do that unless it's something serious but we know they're not going to do it unless it's life or death pretty much for them personally and if they didn't know that like from the instant this all happened and they didn't believe that from the instant that this all started then they would not have cut off the whole world so or they would not cut off two entire continents so really in this situation the entire world should have been dead except maybe for a couple of isolated islands which managed to stop anyone from coming in and giving them the virus and maybe a couple of ships would be out and they'd hear about it and they'd say okay we're just gonna stay out here not docking in any ports or anything and they might be okay and there might be a couple of isolated really really isolated towns in like northern Siberia and Alaska and stuff which just say okay we're just gonna cut off all contact with the outside world and no one comes in no one comes out and that should have been the situation for this book and the fact that it wasn't is well I hate to just keep calling things dumb over and over again this is spectacularly stupid and I think that the last couple of years have really only driven that home for a lot of people but I think even if I had read this years ago when it first came out like even then I would have said that does not make any sense like something that's that easy to spread you just you can't stop it completely so yeah that that is the number one biggest world-building fuck-up that I have ever seen in my life it ruins the world that it takes place in it ruins the story because the later books it becomes more about stopping like a nuclear bomb from hitting them and stuff rather than trying to restore the world and save their tribe and it ruins a lot of the characters for various reasons that I don't feel like going into you can watch my top 10 worst endings video if you want more detail on that but man it it really went from one good book to two really shitty ones so yeah that's it though those are my top 10 world-building fuck-ups and I am genuinely curious to see what everyone else's are you know what what are some of the worst world-building fuck-ups you've ever seen not just in books but in all sorts of other things like just let me know comment below and all that bye if you watch this far thank you so much by this point most people have just taken to the comments section to tell me to kill myself I wouldn't be able to do videos like this without all my patrons whose names you see here and a special thanks to my $10 and up patrons oppo Savilainen, Aris Targaryen, Olivia Rayan, brother Santotys, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovich, Dark King, Echo, Great Griebo, Karkat Katsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tyebreaker, Madison Lewis Bennett, Marilyn Roxy, Matthew Bordrow, Michael Weingartner, microphone, Pete Patode, Return of Cardamom, Sad Martin, Celia the Vixen, Tom Beanie, and of course, Vaivictus all of you are just absolutely the best if you want to get your name on here consider becoming a patron if you don't want to do that you could always support the channel here on YouTube or just like the video comment and subscribe to my channel. All those are great and that's all for my takes for today. Goodbye.


Hey guys, it is Dr. Nathan Cashin at Natural Family Health Clinic again with another book review. This is gonna be a quick one, not a five lessons learned from the book. Because number one, this is a very short book and there's basically one lesson, but also because I just haven't had the time to prepare the five lessons from the book. So the book that I'm gonna talk about today has all to do with the low back pain and it is called Treat Your Own Back and it's by Robin McKenzie, and this is really a almost a patient handout. It's only a hundred pages and that's including all of the excess text, the appendix and everything else. But this is a book that really changed how I approach patients with low back pain and I'll just tell you the story of Robin McKenzie was a PT in, I want to say New Zealand, might be Australia, but pretty sure he's in New Zealand and he had a patient with acute low back pain who had been coming in and the routine was he'd be taken into room by one of the assistants laid on a table and then the PT and McKenzie would come in and in the rush of this particular day the patient was taken and laid down on the table and about five minutes later Robin McKenzie comes in horrified to see that the table, which was a what I'm assuming was a flexion distraction table, one of those tables that will bend in the middle was actually bent to where there was some lumbar extension and the patient was lying face down on this table with his low back arched like this for at least five minutes and when he checked in with the patient Robin McKenzie was surprised to find out that the patient said he'd never felt better that this was the best he had felt in months so this led to a curious question. Why would a patient with low back pain in such a position that was assumed at the time to cause problems be feeling so much better and led him to do some further kind of testing and playing around with this approach as well as quite a bit of research and so the McKenzie approaches a well researched and a technique supported by the evidence and the basic idea is what I've talked about a lot in some of these videos here at the clinic so if you're if you're watching on my page go head over to natural family health clinic and check out some of the videos I've done there where I've described the disc in between the bones of the low back How pressure on that disc can cause irritation leading to back pain and spasm and a number of those things so the approach with Treat your own back or McKenzie is to take pressure off of that with some very simple exercises But before I get to those There's a good section about myths about back pain where he talks about how acute back pain is short term now The evidence shows us two things number one patients with first time acute low back pain tend to get better in about two to three weeks doing nothing at all Patients with low back pain whether it's the first time or not about 85% of them get better within six weeks so the truth is that this aggressive care that we're so used to Isn't really necessary to get rid of that first bout of back pain however We do find is that this type of pain is likely to come back and so it oftentimes I think it's somewhere about 50% of patients with acute in About of acute low back pain about 50% of them Could go on to have chronic pain So why does that happen and how can we fix it? That's Part of the issue about seeing a specialist a PT or a chiropractor who's well trained It's really about producing stabilization in the low back and learning how to move properly But we do want to treat those acute cases even though They're likely to get better on their own within two to six weeks There are things that we can do to still get you back to activity More quickly than just sitting and waiting and potentially Make it move a little bit faster Myth number two spinal manipulation is the best and most effective treatment for back pain And this is a myth because it depends on the type of back pain in most cases Well, I guess you could say about 40% of cases manipulation is not needed There are basically four types of back pain or for causes. There's disc nerve joint and muscle and so it's only that joint cause that really needs the manipulation The other issues can take the approach found in treat your own back So just quickly show you some of the examples here of the exercises that you can do He talks a lot about posture talks a lot about What the goals are? Which is when you have that pain that goes down to the leg commonly known as sciatica It may not go all the way down the leg may go just to the thigh or the buttock And you may not have that at all But when you do have that pain we call that peripheralization of pain So it's pain that goes peripheral to the low back and the ultimate goal is to bring that pain back up towards the low back so there's a nice diagram here if I can find it that shows the concept of Peripheralization as you go down the leg and then Centralization is when that pain comes back up to be centralized in the low back and so Really what this book shows you is how you can? test your own back and how you can find out whether you would respond to this approach and I'm just trying to get to the good stuff here So there's an exercise program and it starts out with this simple movement of lying face down and Pressing up to create that extension like Robin McKinsey found his patient On your own and you can do this at home as long as you don't have Shooting pain down to the foot or the leg that's causing any muscle weakness Or loss of sensation if you do have those please come into the clinic and go find a Physiotherapist or a medical doctor But if it's pain this was localized that's right in the low back or maybe down to the buttocks This is something you can try at home. You can do it standing as well and what you might find is that you need to start With a little bit of a side bend and I'm just trying to find here so if it is a Lateral disc problem, then you might need a side bend to achieve the same effect And again the whole goal as you do this and the picture of that side bend There or there The whole goal as you do this is to pay attention to the sensations that you are feeling and so if you have Achydole pain or if you have shooting pain down to the thigh or the buttocks pay attention to where that pain or that Sensation is whether it comes closer to the back Whether decreases in intensity what you might find is the low back pain increases, but as long as we're getting that centralization Then we're making an effect Another thing that I really like about this book is that at the very back? There is an emergency back pain page, and so this is what you should do if you have a flare up if you have an acute onset some things that you can do on your own to Get that to settle down and to take care of it in the short term if you're not able to get into the clinic during that time Again, this really changed my approach really changed how I look at patients with acute low back pain and How I can help them to find solutions that they can treat their own back pain So the link is down below. I hope you enjoy this review of the book, and I hope it's helpful It's actually quite affordable. I believe it's less than ten dollars on Amazon So the link below will take you to Amazon where you can purchase it I recommend it definitely for patients because it's written for patients, but again for me as a budding clinician at the time it really changed my approach so even chiropractors and Students should really check out the Mackenzie approach because we hear a lot about it But oftentimes we don't get the description of the how and the why and what is going on so that we can think about it Clinically that is my book review for this week if you enjoy this Please give me thumbs up like it down below share your comments. Let me know if there's a book that you think I should review I'm going to be adding this to a list on the web page of recommended books for patients about low back pain So thank you very much for following click the follow button down below so you get notifications when I go live Thanks a lot