What's up guys Evildeer here and today I'm gonna be playing this new game I just found it's currently in pre-release mode now It's called shark attack at death match 2 and it's a very simple concept.  Okay, so you're underwater. You're a diver You've got a spear gun you can collect other stuff and you just basically got a survive potential shark attack So and you can play it online when you play it online. You can take on other divers but at the moment I'm just gonna go into survival mode and Hopefully don't get smashed by sharks again because last time it was pretty crazy when I first gave it to try What's this we've got tsunami? Oh, I want to try this map. I have not tried this yet So yeah, it's got like the whole jaws type of theme to it when a shark gets close to you And before I just got totally munched a and I was like swearing left right in the center Because it's freaking scary as I hate sharks. Is that a giant friggin eel? Whoa, it's the oxygen tank that oxygen tank Me have us ox again punk.  You like that.  Come here come back here. I had something for you. You're gonna be really careful. I see that they just sneak up behind you I better reload Now I don't know about you guys like when I was growing up okay See I grew up actually on the coast in this like tiny little coastal town It was called it was it is called in your park. Oh One second, but I just get rid of this phone because my phone sitting right next to me So yeah, it's called in your park and it's like your typical little Australian coastal town There's not much to it. You know a couple of thousand people probably a bit more than that now I heard it actually went through some massive development recently But anyway like when I was there we used to go to the beach all the time because we're literally from walking distance of The beach me and my you know my house wasn't walking distance So we'd walk like through the sand dunes because we had the sand dunes like right out the back of our house Where are all the frigging sharks before I got totally smashed by shark attacks.   Do you want to get me more to take a win? Oh There's no one. Okay. I spoke way too soon.  I gotta get under cover man. I gotta get under cover But yeah We used to walk down the beach okay, and we'd go swimming and right out in the water with like these big nets Like I thought they were nets But actually found out later on that they're actually giant hooks and they had meat on it Just to attract the sharks away from the beach. So that was oh my cheese Brutal and I'm down to like less than half an oxygen tank. Oh So yeah, we had these like big amount of ammo dudes Oh God where's I can let some oxygen oxygen ox again on the bison of gin better Okay, okay, just be cool. Just be cool sharks can sense fear. I heard that I don't know if that's total life That's like something I heard on Jaws, but if it is don't believe me.  So yeah, we used to go down to the beach. Okay, and um, oh This guy's got it in for me. He wants my body. Oh, no now. I'm gonna die from lack of oxygen I've only just started this episode. I might have to like redo it Because it's just a massive fail on my part. I remember there was an oxygen tank around here Come on come come to Baba come to Baba.  So yeah, we used to go swim down the beach all the time. Okay, and I remember my mum She used to go out kayaking a lot And when she'd go out there She'd actually tell us like stories of these giant sharks swimming out there mainly like hammerheads and stuff like that Because Australia we have some freaking crazy sharks here. Okay, like massive sharks And I never really believed or as a kid not just going out of swimming and one day she caught a baby shark Okay, I don't know what the technical word is for a baby shark.  You can't see me. I'm not here. I'm not here. Oh Mother cheeseburgers, okay So yeah, um, she threw it out in the water and it swam towards us and then start doing these loops around us My mum's like calling out to us go get back to the action, but I haven't got a gun too. Whoa. Oh Look at that shadow man. Oh Cheeseburgers, oh better. Um, oh Oh, no, oh, no, they're everywhere. Oh, they're everywhere. That's scoping me man. Oh god.  Okay, um There's got to be something around here.  Oh I have a knife. I've been running around, but I don't want to take on a friggin shark with a knife Who does that except for Australians? Yeah Okay, I'm just going crazy now by gentlemen. Oh, I got it. I got you. I got you freaking good. Yeah, you won't mess with me Okay, let's go upwards because upwards seems like a good way to go Is there any more oxygen tanks around here because I and also ammo, but yeah Anyway, just randomly diverted from my story then so yeah This little shark comes swimming around us and me and my brother who was sitting in this little floaty We flip out.  Okay, and we're like My mom's like, don't worry. It's just a bit disorientated. It's just trying to find the surface Not the surface. It's just trying to find its way back out into the water. Just leave it be How cool is this game? I love it. Okay, this time I'm gonna be smarter though Don't pick up the oxygen tank, which I'm gonna use straight away Um, and yeah, just be generally more clever. Okay, so yeah, like this little shark It's swimming around us is doing these like little loops around us me and my brother like Like all terrified and stuff my mom's like, yeah, don't worry about it. It's cool. It's cool You'll find its way. Don't worry about it And finally enough it didn't eat our faces But there was so many times when we're swimming in the water there my dad see he never went out swimming with us Okay, he would never go swimming in the ocean because when he was a kid He actually went and snuck into Jaws the movie and you know back then man, Jaws is just brutal even now if you watch it It's terrifying when you think about it But back then with like special effects as it was Jaws was just a scary movie and he snuck in as a kid never since then he's always told us that he just never Would swim in the ocean and there was so many times where I'd go out swimming, okay? And you would actually see the little oh my cheeseburgers Manju Tion Manju Jin and Vian Bushon No, no, I think I've figured out this AI just swimming circles man, and you've got it. Oh, yeah, baby You got nothing on me. You got nothing. Okay, so I've got one there Got one bad boy over there. Take that Yeah, I really want to know where I can get more of these dark things. Oh Jesus. I didn't even see you Manju Tion Thank you Okay This is really sick man. This is like I guess this is the whole New York thing they've got going here Some reason I'm a diver and I'm swimming around New York, which is normal. I guess But yeah So my dad he would just never go out swimming and so many times I'd go out swimming We'd actually see like the little things of the sharks and when I think about it now It's amazing that I was not killed and eaten by something at least a hundred times I don't know why maybe because I'm just a dirty white guy and I don't taste good But I don't know why man because we had so many sharks around here. And when you think about it, I heard like I've read I heard that I heard you. Where are you? Come here.  Don't hide in the shadows. I know you're right here. Where are you? Where are you? I can hear the goddamn jaws music. Oh TVS does Take that the face Come here I've got you now. Who's the shark now? Come here come here. Come here I guess he doesn't want any of this that's understandable. What's this? Oh, I need oxygen. Yeah, that's probably an important thing I guess But when you think about it's pretty overrated in all honesty Then again life is important because you know, but yeah, so That's my experiences with sharks. They're just freaking everywhere here in Australia.   Oh Fudge. Oh, no, they're gonna have a feeding frenzy.  I am the shark of lords. Wait, no, that makes no sense.  I'm having so much fun guarding the shark.  Oh my god.   This is highly authentic AI and everything. Oh god It's that swimming me. How is the shark out swimming me? I'm evil dear come here Come here.   Oh my gods No, you don't know you don't I'll take you on freakin 300 star Spartacus star man. You're not that God, where are they all? Take that. Okay.


We're going to be booking it. We're going to do things safely, but we're going to do it efficiently. So today's training is for B's company, BEB, to certify our 12 BRAVOs on demolitions and to improve lethality across the brigade by meeting our mobility and counter-mobility tasks. It's important to conduct training like this in Eastern Europe and Poland to improve familiarization with the terrain and our operating environment, working with Polish forces. This job entails a lot of pressures due to our operating environment and the complexity of the training that we try to conduct in order to improve our lethality across the brigade. Our team works well together due to our highly motivated soldiers and our NCOs that are experts in their field and are excellent in instructing others. None of this training would have been possible if not for my outstanding soldiers and the NCOs that lead them.  It helps us with being in Europe. It improves foreign relations with our allies, our NATO allies, and helps us get a better feel of their country and their homeland. It grows our confidence and our ability as 12 BRAVOs, and it assures and grows us into becoming a better unit. My team, absolutely phenomenal. We work constantly. We start in the crawl phase, and we work all the way up to run phase. I have great NCOs above me, teach me, constantly training, and everything helps us run more smoothly when we get out here on the ranges.


This program contains strong language from the outset and throughout. Welcome to Liverpool, home of the Beatles, the Grand National and people who live in Liverpool. Just here, eight refreshers are settling into their new swanky university digs and are about to meet their new dean. They'll be competing against each other to pass assignments and be in with a chance of graduating with a first-class 25 grand. This guy's here! Uh, who's this guy? My name is Tom. I am the Dean of Refreshers University. You are here in my establishment and I offer you a hearty welcome. Myself and my fellow faculty members will be setting you a series of assignments. The best competitor will win bucket loads of cash. A massive 25 grand to be precise, as I just said. Life change in amount of money. You'd be surprised what I'd do for 25 Gs. He really loves the letter G. So guys, it's the first night of university. We're all absolutely buzzed. As a treat, your dean is going to take you out for some fried chicken. Yes!  Come on. So, 25 K. Things just got serious. I can't believe that. 25 grand, though. What are you spending on? I already spent it on my head. What are you spending? Full rack of dolphin teeth. Really, I'm not just teeth, yeah, proper. And I want to go to Vegas for my 30s and I want to spray tang booze for my house. It's hardly an ice series today, me. Welcome, Refreshers. How was your evening? How was London? She's good. Speak up. Speak up in my class, please. She's good. She treated you well? Yeah. Welcome to your first proper day of university, where we are going to set you your first proper university Refreshers assignment. Pen's out, please. No pen, sir. No pen? No pen. Didn't have a pen.  It's going to be a long term. Well, you just think you can remember everything I say, do you guys? Depends what you say, sir. Stop answering, but I can bring a pen next time. I will. I like you guys. You're a good year group and I'm very, very excited to set your first assignment. But in order to do that, we are going to have to pick teams and to pick teams, we're going to have to pick captains. And I've picked two people who I want to be captains today. One is Chambers.  Please come and join me to select your teams. I have developed a very complex system to decide who is going to select first, which is known in academic circles as rock, paper, scissors. What does scissors beat? Paper. Yes! Gold. Star-chan. Are we going to do it? One, two, three. Go. One, two, three. Chambers gets the right to elect his team member. First team member. Gareth. Laura. Alicia. Amy. All right. Evan. A couple of people left. So I'm going to go for Shan. And she let me strip on her yesterday. That was the best night of my life. Finally, of course. I would absolutely love Jordan on my team. A little bit peeved off that I was chosen last, but I guess because I'm calm and I'm cool. You know, I'm not offended, so it's okay, I'm going to win anyway. Definitely offended. Refreshers, are you excited for your first assignment? Yes. Then let's give it to you, shall we? Really won't be me giving it to you. It is a fellow member of the Refreshers faculty.  It is Lady Alicia. I'm a huge, huge, huge fan. I've been watching her career for a long time. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, I rate. She's absolutely sick. Guys, are you ready for your first assignment? I have a rider of items that I need you guys to get for me. So you have a time limit of two hours to scour the city for as many as possible. So each item is worth one point. So number one, I need a wet nally. Number two, 158 jelly beans, but I only want green. Number three, a chicken burger, but I only want it from the legendary Nasbees. And last but not least, number four, I want photos of myself outside of some Liverpool landmarks. I mean, that's a pretty random rider, but it's all legal, so there's no problem procuring any of the things on there. Refreshers, are you ready for your first assignment? I've only ever been to Liverpool once, and it was about 10 years ago, and now I've got to go all around it hunting for things. Okay, refreshers. Three, two, one, go! Tickets on the door for me for your performance tonight? Can you put them on the list?


Hello, what's going on? My name is Mark and I thought I would take today to just talk about the Google earnings report Which came out last night, so I Thought I'd take a chance and I would hold hold over the earnings report and initially it looked like it was a pretty good decision Right because it's rallied from from where it closed yesterday. It pushed right up. I think the alphabet shares went to 109 free and Google went to about or like the the alpha shares went right up to like one Was it one one two three? So they rallied right up. So it jumped five percent straight away As soon as the only important earnings report came out right because it beat predictions They was looking for around 30 billion revenue. I'm pretty sure it was and the earnings per share to be around 928 And then it ended up they ended up reporting 31 billion. It was like 9 billion revenue 9 billion profit and what was the earnings per share was around $13 something like that Right and then once the dust settled and everyone kind of looked at what that the report was actually saying It didn't turn out after it still beat expectations But the the hype kind of died down right because there's a couple of things so first of all The the US dollar has been kind of rallying recently. So it's got a lot stronger. So what that means Is if the dollar's stronger? Companies that kind of deal in the dollar is bolstered their their earnings reports, right? So it's just just made it look better than then it actually is I guess I mean I guess it's sort of relative Right, but it just makes it look better on paper when the dollar's stronger because you're earning more So that that was something to take into consideration And there's also been some Accounting changes, right? So and as far as I understand the accounting changing basically means that they have to include The include private companies that they have shares in right and then they have to include That price as part of the revenue even though it hasn't been realized. So it's not actual revenue as such So it's it's it bolsters it in that way and a big one is uber, right, which Was it like 48 billion something crazy? And they got it for five billion. So it's just bolstered that the report I know that that was one in particular that was mentioned was uber but it did actually Beat beat the report still Also predictions or it did beat the prediction is still right because they were looking for 928 earning per share And it ended up doing 993 once you took into account the dollar and the the accounting changes So maybe hopefully when market opens that will be taken into consideration and We will see the price move up again. Hopefully a nice 5% jump would be splendid But apart from that Yeah, you can see it's bouncing off the emf. If you're familiar with my videos, it's still looking okay That's that's why I thought I would hold it and hopefully see it push up We'll see what happens when the market opens. I'll probably set a stop loss somewhere around here One of 48 in case it can like carries on this downtrend in which case I don't know part of that and then maybe look to get in if the earnings pick back up We'll see we'll see on the surface. I would say That it's been a good earnings report. Just there's just a couple of a couple of things to take into consideration I think everything that I've said has been right. I'm pretty sure that that was the outcome Let me know what your thoughts opinions are what you think it's gonna do Also, if you're familiar with the two and a half thousand to ten thousand challenge Do you want that to be? Two and a thousand to ten thousand does that is that was it if you do want that to be kind of every day I can do it every day of people interested in seeing it every day If not, I can do it maybe once a week or maybe a couple of times a week when I'm actually closing the trades because I Do a lot of swing trading, right? So Me keep talking about every day. It's just the same stuff But if people want to see it then I don't mind. I don't mind. But anyway, so that was that thanks for watching people and I'll catch up with you soon if you enjoyed the video make sure you like subscribe to friends to family spread the news and I'll catch you guys later


t there has been a fair bit of concern raised here last week based on evidence and this week and there is a wider concern out there i think we would all take the issue seriously in terms of Scotland's rivers and the health in this salmon but i do think i do think that there needs to be far better engagement with anglers and the associations they cannot be seen as the problem they've got to be surely seen as part of the solution and i think there is a real weakness here i think it's important that we get that message out that's why i will support the the motion that's come brought forward today but either way no matter how that goes i do think there's a real message here and more needs to be done and if that means we need more resources then then you need to be saying so but but i think the committee generally has not been happy with the evidence last week and the discussions today thank you very much i've got a great deal of sympathy with anglin clubs around Scotland i've got a lot of anglers and other fishermen in my own area but as i said in my comments to the minister it works both ways that the nith has resulted in it's got a category one as a result of its catch and release policy and indeed i believe in terms of his improved modelling and counting methods and management and if this was annulled today the nith would go back to being a category two and i know that the a lot of the expectations of local people about the improvements in tourism and the strong message that being a category one sends out would be lost and it also seems to me that if you go back to the previous ssi if your arguments are that you have concerns about the data now why would you go back to the previous situation when you presumably by the same logic the data was worse i mean i accept that data needs to improve we've had a wide-ranging discussion around that today i don't think the way is to go back the way i think we need to continue the engagement continue to improve modelling but for those reasons i will be voting against the annullment today thank you john scott um thank you very much uh convener and i speaking support of the motion to annull this instrument i support the precautionary principle and all that mark ruskell has said in this regard but i'm afraid i don't feel that the science is sufficiently robust and it affects too many lives there's an awful lot of decisions and lives affected by this essentially almost arbitrary decision so in my view i think we should annull this instrument i think we should re-examine the data and come back with another instrument based on perhaps a different perhaps even a better interpretation of the science available to us but perhaps a more realistic understanding and evaluation of the inadequate science that's available to us thank you mr scott kate forbs just to add a few points um whilst i appreciate the evidence that jackie billiard and lis Smith have provided i think it's worth remembering that as somebody who represents quite a lot of rivers none of the well very few of whom have actually raised concerns that it is just a few rivers that have serious concerns about this or at least have flagged it which is why i would be far more in favour of tightening up the process for appeals and looking at the methodology for next year than supporting the motion to annull the legislation i think that those concerns that have been raised are legitimate and who knows what rivers will be concerned in subsequent years but as it stands i do think that it is a small number of rivers that have raised specific concerns that have been raised at this committee does any other member wish to comment finlay cars just want to put on record this this is a very difficult decision because obviously it will have an impact on some of my constituents both on the nith but equally so on the bladner where they're going to move to category three the status quo is absolutely not acceptable where we have angling clubs in effect almost competing for a river characterisation which is not based on what most angling and river boards consider as poor science something needs to change the difficult thing is how we send that message out i would like to have had some more guarantees from the scottish government of how we're going to move forward but on the basis of the evidence that i've heard from anglin associations and around the table today i'll be moving i'll be supporting the moment okay thank you okay um like like others i have concerns about the level of data informing these categorisations but i remind colleagues these are conservation measures one of a number being utilised and like mar crosco i i do believe the precautionary principle overrides everything the committee in its recent report on the environmental impacts of salmon farming bemoaned the apparent absence of the precautionary principle being at play as that sector expanded and called on that to be front and center going forward whatever legitimate reservations we have about the accuracy of some of the the basis for the decision contained in this instrument surely that approach needs to apply here also it's also the case that these proposals do not stop angling they merely stop the killing of fish pick up and keep forbes this point i note that there are a number of rivers that have gone from grade one to grade three and appear to have accepted this i think the vast majority of anglers get that these measures are needed given that and the commitments we've had around the changes in the approach to the science and around peer reviewing i would not support the motion to annul however picking up on alec rowley's point about if the decision of the committee is not to support the motion to annul we do need to see improvement in approach going forward and like Kate Forbes i would like to see and place us on the record as the science and the data improves so we eventually establish a formal right of appeal because i think that brings more equity greater equity to this whole process albeit it will have to be founded in the science so on that note cabinet secretary can i invite you to respond to the debate yes i don't want to rehearse all the discussions that have taken place about the development of the science over a number of years the development of the model over a number of years and both of those things will continue to to happen and i find it difficult don't come from the science background being drawn into discussions about science at this level i'm impressed and surprised at the level of scientific knowledge claimed by so many committee members can i just gently point out that with science other scientific opinions are always available and it is always a balance between those and and that is just that something that will never change i have indicated that i will provide the existing peer review data that we have for the generalized model that we use because we know that there is peer review data for that i hear and acknowledge and will make sure that peer review data for the more specific tweaked version is also available but i think having the background peer review information is also going to be very good i should say that i utterly refute the notion that somehow this is an arbitrary exercise there's nothing arbitrary about the exercise at all the decisions are are made on what we take to be the real understanding of what is happening in our rivers and the changes that are taking place in our rivers i'd just reiterate what i've said on a number of occasions this morning angling is not banned on any river angling can continue it is the taking of a fish and killing it that may be banned on some rivers so i think we just need to be clear what it is we're actually talking about i also want to confirm that if these regulations were to be annulled then we would simply revert to the position for the 2017 season and that would mean that the killing of fish could take place on 49 rivers where we believe that it is not sustainable and could damage the health of salmon on that river anglers would be able to kill and keep salmon caught in four special areas of conservation which we consider should be catch and release fisheries so there are some real issues there in terms of uh uh habitats directive and annullment would unfairly impact rivers systems where the gradings have risen for 2018 as they would remain catch and release despite the fact that our assessment is that the the health of those rivers had gotten to a point where they could go to a grade one and that's the river Clyde the north us lochs and we've already heard about the river Nith as well so people need to understand what the reality of this means if these regulations this year are annulled and i would strongly request that the committee do not proceed down that road. Liz Smith to wind up and indicate whether you wish to press or withdraw the motion. Thank you, convener. I would like to say that I think the first job of any committee in the Parliament is to ensure that we scrutinise policy decision making and that obviously the most important part of that is to ensure that we have a good evidence base and I must congratulate this committee on the fact that I think you have worked very hard to ensure that the evidence base is accurate. I followed this with considerable interest not just because of the approaches that I've had in the in my local area but like the cabinet secretary I'm not a scientist but I have gone into very considerable detail on some of the points that have been issued to me by people who I consider to be experts in the field and I think it's very clear that they are pointing out to very significant problems within the data that it is not sufficiently scientifically robust and I think whether or not the motion to annull is successful or not I think that's the key point there are very considerable issues about the data that is being used but I would like to press my annulment. The question therefore is that motion S5M-11020 in the name of Liz Smith is agreed are we all agreed we are not agreed there will therefore be a division all those in favour of the motion to annull indicate please those against the motion to annull has there any abstentions and no abstentions the result is five votes in favour for the motion to annull six votes against that's the result can I seek the agreement from the committee for the convener to approve the final report to parliament recording that thank you I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for their attendance at its next meeting on 27 March the committee will take oral evidence from the committee on climate change and we'll also hear from stakeholders on the Scottish Crown estate bill I the committee will now move into private session and I ask at the public gallery to be cleared


Porcupines are the prickliest of rodents, with their Latin name meaning quill pig. There are about two dozen species of porcupines, with all boasting a coat of needle-like quills. These quills give predators a sharp reminder that they are no easy meal. Porcupines are herbivores, preferring leaves, herbs, twigs, and green plants like skunk cabbage and clover. In the winter they may eat bark. The North American porcupine is nocturnal and rarely seen during the day. Because of its large incisors, porcupines can clip twigs and small branches off trees. Damage caused by porcupines is distinctive because of the 45-degree angle cut seen on fallen branches. Porcupines quills or spines take on various forms depending on the species, but all are modified hairs coated with thick plates of keratin. Wyoming porcupines have single quills, which are interspersed with bristles, underfur, and hair. Quills are released by contact with them, or they may drop when the porcupine shakes its body. New quills grow to replace the lost ones. Have you ever wondered if porcupines could actually attack you? From ancient times it was believed that porcupines could throw their quills at an enemy. However, this has long been refuted. From the University of Wyoming Extension, I'm Brian Sebade, Exploring the Nature of Wyoming.


Do you think that men can become women? Or women can become men? I don't. I think it's absolutely absurd. Now just as absurd is the notion that men should participate in women's sports. But absurd or not, that's what's happening. And in the Olympic Games in Tokyo the woke media is celebrating Laurel Hubbard taking part in the women's weightlifting contest. Hubbard claims to be a woman but is in fact male and used to compete in men's weightlifting. Despite the obvious unfairness resulting from size difference between men and women, more and more men are taking part in women's sports. It's becoming quite common. There is a backlash against this and many women are complaining but they are being ignored. Even worse, they risk being criminalised. I spoke to someone recently who told me that being transphobic can and does result in a record of what's known as a non-crime hate incident.  And this record can be made available to potential employers for example.  The police have no duty to tell you. And being transphobic by the way simply means that you don't agree that men are women or women are men. That's enough to get you accused of hate and enough to result in an unofficial record of hate kept by the police, a record you may not even know about. There are over 120,000 such records already in the UK. The police and media seem less concerned however about an even more disturbing reality. Men who identify as women are now able to freely access women's dressing rooms, toilets, prisons, even refuges. And just as surely as night follows day, women and girls have been assaulted and raped by these men. Abhorrent images can be found on social media of men spying on women in private spaces and boasting about it. If women complain as many have, the women are deemed to be the problem. Recently in the United States for example, a fully naked male entered a women's sauna in Los Angeles exposing himself to women and to children. When a group of people protested against this outside the sauna Antifa torn up and assaulted them. Here in the UK the Ministry of Justice claims that transgendered prisoners are raping women at a shocking rate. But still, housing males in women's prisons continues. Sexual assaults have also taken place in toilets and other enclosed places meant to keep women and girls safe. For Britain will bring an end to this. It is genuinely shocking that this is happening. We will end this stasi-like practice of non-crime hate incidents and all such records will be destroyed. Secondly, we will not allow men to enter women's sports contests and they certainly won't be allowed in women's prisons or toilets or changing rooms or anywhere else that was intended to keep women safe from sexual predators. There are groups fighting this, so let's give them our support. But politically for Britain is the only party to adopt these policies. If we want to change this permanently and restore fairness, safety, free speech and sanity, then join us. Thank you again for helping us to bring back Britain.


Hello and welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast. I'm your host, Aristide, from Metabolism of Cities. And in this podcast, we talk with researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to understand what makes urban metabolism and economies more circular. On this episode, I talk with Thomas Diaz. He's the director of the FABLAB Barcelona, the founder of some projects such as Smart Citizen and Studio P52. He's also one of the brains behind the FABCITY. And he has edited the book, FABCITY, the mass production of almost everything. Thomas, thanks you for accepting this invitation. Let's start the podcast. Thank you, Aristide. Let me know. Who are you? How do you describe yourself? Well, I am a curious person that is basically not believing everything that people tell me, and I don't just want to take for granted certain things. So out of that curiosity, I think I've always been contesting or kind of trying to challenge the way things are. And in one of those, I think out of that curiosity, I think it has come this, in this honor, I would say, to be part of the FABCITY Global Initiative and being one of the instigators of it, right? Because somehow it combines part of my life's journey. I was trained as an urbanist in Venezuela. I was born and raised in Venezuela. But I have a mixed background. My father is Spanish, so a lot of connections with Spain during all my life. I think the diaspora of Venezuelans, thanks to the collapse of our socioeconomic political system during the last, especially 15 years, is more accelerated. I ended up in Barcelona, where I found the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia as the place where I was going to do just an internship of five months. So many years later. Yeah, I mean, that was 2006. And I was supposed to be there for five months. Venezuela was going, you know, in totally worst in all the dimensions that you can imagine. But there was this day I still remember in which, you know, I have my tutor, Caroline Liechtenberg, a really nice architect from the Netherlands. She was supervising my work. I was editing a book about Taipei. And then she invited me to this lunch meeting where, you know, the board of directors were having pizzas. And she said, no, we have some extra pizza come and sit with us. By that time, there were more directors that employees at IAC. And I think that's why, you know, when there was a discussion about, you know, we have to set up these fab labs and we have this pile of papers with the inventory. We have this book from this guy called Neil Gershenfeld. But basically, we have a head of studies, a secretary, a maintenance guy, and an intern. So who's going to set up the fab lab? And then I say, I can do it.  Did you know anything about fab lab before? No, not at all. Not at all. Imagine like I was this was full discovery and full like it was revelation after revelation.  Not as an urban designer on the aesthetics of the city, but we were really doing like a deep studies on the socio-economical dynamics in the city, understanding like the urban economy, the urban ecology. And of course, the way we produce and consume was totally entrenched on the way that we live in cities, right? And it was for the first time that I read about someone proposing a different way of, you know, approaching the use of technology to transform the way we produce and consume. Neil, you know, his book is called, it's very focused on personal fabrication. And I think that's in a way, you know, the more American approach, like from the point of the individual, what can the individual do, right? But I think there is more, a lot of more collective fabrication than personal in the world of fab labs and in the transformation on the way cities, the its bioregions and even the rural spaces producing and consuming. And I will go back to what I think about the, for me, the obsolete difference between the rural and the urban areas, right? So anyways, like, you know, that's a big, very long answer about who I am, but a little bit of background on how I got to be involved. I think I am here because I'm involved in fab city, you know, that's why you invited me. Exactly. But this is more or less how I get to be part of fab city. There is a lot of things that happen afterwards. But I think that I keep it like this for now. So, okay, great. So you were part of this more or less, they were somehow interested into this fab lab movement. And they said, okay, let's put it there. Do you know why they were intrigued by by this or why did they wanted to explore this, this question? Well, there is, there is for sure, you know, a direct response to this is that the fact that by the time many architecture schools were incorporating digital tools in the in the design and production process, right? Especially the architectural association or the University of Pennsylvania, the Syark and the West Coast of the United States were always inspirational universities for for IAC for IAC. So of course, it was a big component of that. Okay, let's create a lab to provide our students, the students that go to do the different masters and that by that time there was just a master in architecture. Let's give them the platform and the tools for them to be at that level of the avant-garde or the top schools in the world, of course, including MIT. And there was also a previous connection with MIT, especially with the Center for Bits and Atoms. Thanks to a project that is called the Media House Project and that was done between our Institute and MIT and the CBA, back in the early 2000s, no, like the 2000, 2001. So that's what was one of the first projects done before the FABLA was established and I think that set up the collaboration between especially Neil and Vicente, right? So I think that that relationship evolved. And then when the FABLA came to IAC, I think that, you know, there was not just the interest of setting up like a workshop with machines for the students, but also, you know, held Neil to develop and really put our thinking into understanding how these FABLA's are going to change, you know, neighborhoods or the way that they're going to transform cities. So, you know, it was a natural connection. The truth is that the agenda of the FABLA, Barcelona, which I have been lucky to develop, has been something that, you know, at the beginning with struggle to, especially in an architecture school that, you know, looks at these tools as a way to, you know, provide the students and the capacity to create better narratives about speculative approaches sometimes to cities and urban transformation. And it's the process, it's probably a process that you can see a lot quicker, some results, you know, like, okay, I do a mock-up of a city and I see these cocoons type of thing and I put some green and then suddenly you have an image of the future of cities, like, okay, great, but that's, you know, that kind of creates this kind of a, I would say dystopian visions, you know, it becomes more and more dystopic, the more you use these tools to create more and more and more dystopics that seem more and more advanced and I say, look at the way, you don't have to advance that much, we really need to look not to the next 100 years but we need to look to the next minute, right? Yeah. Then the agenda of FABLA, you know, has been basically looking at that as like, okay, yes, we have to enable a future. In enabling that future, it needs like a first of all patience and it's also invest in learning, invest in, you know, acquiring the skills and the knowledge and that's something that not many people is patient enough to see, right? And also it needs a vision as well, which is, you know, I had many times the discussion with some people in the institutes that, you know, at the beginning, of course, the FABLA was not generating income by itself, but it was providing a service to the programs, so in a way it was totally, I would say, justified the existence of a FABLA. But then in some point, you know, after three, four years, we started to gain projects and professional services and we started to be interested in research and developing the FABLA Academy and gain students for the FABLA Academy. So then suddenly the FABLA with that vision on, that slower vision on transforming the city and starting from the capacity building started to gain traction and to generate income. So the truth is now, I can say very happily that, you know, the FABLA funds the institute in some way, right? The way we organize ourselves is that we have independent budgets and our budget allows us to have 35 people in the team. And at the beginning it was me with a couple interns, you know, and I was doing everything, like the blogs, reducing the machines, helping the students, taking pictures, receiving politicians. So basically they're an orchestra man. So seeing that happening is like, you know, of course, it's easy to say like after the things happened that, okay, we were right, but it's not that we were right. I think like we were just following the intuition and also we, I think that we were able to identify the opportunities, which is super important. And that's why it somehow led the FABLA Barcelona to be, I think like now it's more than a FABLA, I love more than a FABLA. I think that's something where I wanted to ask you something. As you describe it, it seems that you're not just adhering to, let's say just to DIY with, with mechanic toys, right? I mean, it's, you have somehow included a political agenda into it. I don't know if that's the case everywhere. And I don't know, you know, I mean, perhaps, how would you describe the FABLA or the FABLA movement? Your personal point of view, I think.  And as you say, there are many FABLA's that operate so differently that I think like one of the common things that we have inside the FABLA network is understanding that we are very different from each other, right? There are FABLA's inside universities, there are FABLA's that are standalone, there are FABLA's that are more focused in the technology, there are FABLA's that are more focused in the social impact.  So it's difficult to say, okay, the FABLA movement is about this, right? No, no, that's why I'm asking your own interpretation, how, what do you use it for perhaps, that would be the more appropriate question. So the way I see FABLA's is that they play a role that could be compared, maybe not exactly the same, but similar to the role that, you know, 25 years ago had places where you would go to use computers, right? And providing the access to tools that they are, you know, they're either difficult to operate for some people or they are not that affordable or they're just complex or too complex for the way in which we operate now, right? I believe that FABLA's are the catalysts to transform the way we produce and consume. So they are these places that in which mainly you learn, you are inspired and you prototype.  I see it more as a cultural places and more like a social connection, which is true, but it's also true that they had a strong political agenda, absolutely. I think that just understanding that the FAB city emerged from the FABLA network tells you like how, you know, engage, you know, our movement quote unquote is with not just playing in the safe spaces inside the walls of the FABLA with the toys, but also committing to go outside and transform a neighborhood, cities and so on. And we are in the early days, so I think it's difficult to judge yet their impact. I would say let's wait another five years. And then also there's a strong technological agenda or a research agenda. And I think that here is quite impressive the work and the knowledge that Neil and his group at the Center for Bits and Atoms brings to the FABLA, which is understanding that this is not about the machines, but it's actually understanding that we are part of a research that is trying to change how we understand fabrication. We call it digital fabrication today, but the truth is that we have digital information that goes to analog machines that can process digital information and they use analog materials to create products in a way. So it's very analog, the process of fabrication as we understand it today. But what we're really looking forward is embed, you know, the information, the material and the machine in the same place. So it means that instead of, you know, designing something in a computer, turn that into the movement of a motor, and then of the actions of a tool that is going to modify the state of a material in the case of 3D printing, or it's going to cut another material in the case of laser cutting or computer or CNC machining. You basically introduce codes into materials. In these materials, they just follow the instructions and have the capacity to fabricate themselves. So this sounds very abstract, but the roadmap is going that direction and it starts from having off the shelf machines that you can buy. And then with these machines, we want to be able to make machines that make machines, right? So the moment that you are able to make your own tools and you are able to make tools that they don't repeat what the previous ones did, but actually they can evolve the capacity of those tools. So imagine having this at the same time that you're having this global collaboration and the capacity and I think like for me that it's also important is that fables are located in a context, in a territory. And I think that that's where the potential of not just waiting until we make the digital assembler or the digital materials, but actually we can start to transition now by connecting the capacity of these fab labs with what's happening around them in neighborhoods. I have to admit for me it's slightly scary this machine that builds its own machine and all of that. It's very skynet to me to be honest, but so what I like though is that you go from this digital library of the 21st century. We don't have books anymore. It's more the machine, the equipments and then you can really think about indeed changing the entire fabrication production and perhaps consumption as well. And for me at least the most interesting thing over there is that well the environmental impact of our word is based on is due to production and consumption activities. So there might be an extreme benefit by doing so. Of course, you always think about where is the AI where is the the moral grounds, who's going to decide what are the good tools, what is the moral judgment into should we do that or that you know where should we include a human judgment into that or machines will take care of better for us so what we should do but that's, I guess, these are things that you have thought already many times but yeah. No, I mean, when I talk about machines that make machines. I'm not thinking about out, you know, an automatic process of this happening I think that for me the machine and the machines and artificial intelligence are just extensions of our capacity. And I think that we should keep understanding them like that. The human is a lot, a lot more complex at just the logic intelligence that you can find in a computer that is able to process ones and zeros. And probably even if you talk about quantum computing with the capacity of handling more complex and larger data sets and make sense out of them. There are some other type of intelligence that the humans have that we will need to keep keep or take care of right.  I think there are multiple intelligences first of all and I don't think that we should give all our fate and our destiny to one type of intelligence that that's stupid.  I think like a humanity we are really, really testing the limits of a stupidity. And unfortunately, I think like we are going even, you know, for sci-fi. Yeah, exactly.  But, you know, the, I think like they should be like an approaching which we understand that our, you know, that our existence in this planet is not just depending on the products we consume or having the convenience of living with a, you know, at least in which the Western modern society has shown us, right?  I mean Bali now. And for instance, you know, property, social organization and even ownership is very complex. It's not as rational as we understand in the West. So I think like we need to accept that there are other ways of organizing society. And it's also another way of relating ourselves with the resources that we consume in order to keep the life of this planet. I think that we would yet need to discover alternatives to all the dependency that we have on oil and all that because it's not just the energy that we generate with oil or the how we fuel our mobility, infrastructure or mobility devices, you know, cars, airplanes, etc. But it's actually, you know, the materials embedded in the what we wear, how our computers are made, what we eat, you know, this salt, the salt is kind of like most of our salt is made out of oil. So it's like it's ridiculous not like we're eating oil. So I think I can understand it like we need to change the material ecology that surrounds us is fundamental. Okay, so how do we go then from these labs which seem to be, you know, here and there into what you call the fab city then which is, I guess, because before you said, fab labs are not necessarily, you know, micro factories and it's not necessarily the something that you want to change the entire manufacturing system but I guess in fab city, you take a much bolder step or stance and use you say that you want to transform how cities are there at least their global network of production and consumption are they should change through fab city engagements or promises. So basically, like what the approach that we're taking is, and it's in the product, I think it's in the page six of the book, it's a of the fab city book is, I don't know if it's the six, I might be mistaken, it's the full stack approach. So with the full stack, we're trying to unfold this complex mission which is saying, Oh, we're going to transform the way cities producing consume. And it's going to happen thanks to distributed design and manufacturing and open source collaboration is like, Okay, but how do you actually, you know, you do it so. Okay, and we're working that this is working progress so that version that you see in the book is really alpha version of the full stack, but then the full stack is to be that way in which we unpack the problem into smaller pieces. And also the way in which we articulate the research and also the implementation agenda of city. So what we're trying to do is for the 34 cities that are part of the city network now to have a minimum framework for them to identify where they need to invest where we need to put efforts what kind of organizations we need to support and then we put it in. And right now you will see six layers, but we're working on a seventh one. But it comes from, you know, from the infrastructure to new forms of learning, and new forms of innovation, the way that this land into the urban environment, how they become into policy, and how they're sharing two platforms with the global city network. Right. So that's more or less a very simple description of the stack. When you talk about the infrastructure, I think that there is something that it's needed to be said like a for the last three centuries, more or less, most of the investment of infrastructure has gone into the capacity of of moving atoms, either people or materials The global economy we created, which actually, you know, has its roots in the Dutch in West Indies companies established just around the corner here in Indonesia are following this idea of, you know, being able to move materials in which you have a competitive advantage of control over in order to put it in another place of the world. Right. So that applies with oil and how dictatorships and totalitarian regimes control oil, or how, you know, we have Elon Musk accepting that yes we can make a coup d'etat in Bolivia. And because of course, you know, it's for the interest of a company like Tesla to have the control of the lithium. And if you follow, you know, probably Australia is the only country that probably has certain stability where a lot of like a raw materials that we use today are needed in the world. But, you know, without trying to lose the line of thought, what I'm saying is that when we look at the infrastructure is, you know, airports, ports, bigger vessels, better airplanes, faster cars, amazing trucks. So we put a lot of intelligence and resources to develop the most advanced technologies around moving things using oil, which is not cheap by the way. We do have the sense of cheap oil and cheap raw materials, but they are not cheap. So what we need to think about is like, does it make sense really to move that much that many materials around the world does it make sense to cultivate shrimps in the UK. Send them to Thailand to take the pillow and send them back to the UK for you to make your shrimp cocktail at night.  Can maybe I can invest time on taking the pillow off the shrimp or should I just burn, you know, a lot of fossil fuels just to have the convenience on buying it. So the infrastructure layer is super important. And what I'm going to, what I'm trying to point my point is that the fab labs are part of that infrastructure today, right? You're saying how we go from the fab labs to fab cities. So fab labs is an infrastructure that is already in place. So they are like a Trojan horses that are already in, you know, all over the world, but they are not enough at the same time. What we're trying to do is to, you know, influence, convince cities, organizations to allow us to test new forms of production in with the fab lab can serve as an articulator. But at the end we use that what the city has in place, which most of the times is abandoned factories, which most of the time is underused infrastructure, because basically Amazon has been taken over all the production of these people, right? So there is an infrastructure in place. So what we're trying to do also is articulate that local infrastructure for production that is in place with the creativity or the applications that can come out of places like fab labs, but it could be anything else. And connect the supply and demand and understand that at a local level, we need to have that capacity of resilience. And this was tested with us without anyone planning it during the worst heat of the worst moment of a pandemic. When makers started like at the first response is like, okay, I have a 3d printer in my house, there is a fab lab in the corner, how we can start to produce masks and distributed everybody start to do it out of altruism. But then when the demand started to increase, a lot of fab labs and people were starting to connect with factories, local factories and the factories were able to take hundreds to thousands, right? And then there is the case of this ventilator in Barcelona, really nice case in which a factory of cars, they changed their assembly line in order to even reduce a motor for the cleaners of the clean. The wipers exactly and adapted to the motor of the ventilator. And then what you see this case also is that this is still under or waiting the approval from the very slow, you know, bureaucratic process of getting an invention out in the world. Of course, in this case is delicate because we're talking about lives. Now the corona outbreak is really, it's a political, it's a very politically sensitive subject. But it's showing the first of all the needs of ours for our systems to be more resilient and being able to produce locally, not only products but also food and energy in the case of a global catastrophe as it's happening, which is compromising supply chains. But also the other side is like we are actually designed for not having the capacity to respond quickly to these things, right? And then all the economic efforts are basically benefiting the big capitals and to really move, keep moving materials.  But in a way, like this is like a keeping the same extractive model on places that produces the raw materials. So they will, they will always be underdeveloped because they never develop a local capacity. And I talk from, I'm being from one of them from Venezuela. So let's not develop a local industry because we can sell oil and import everything.  That's what Venezuela does. But then you need to have people working for a lot of hours, 16 hours a day in China, 16 hours a day. They live in the factories. And well, actually in China, people are starting to move to Vietnam and Cambodia because the Chinese are moving classes, right? And then there's going to start to be a lot of pressure. So China is moving their factories to Southeast Asia and then they're going to move it to Africa. So it's going to keep cheap labor perpetually. Then let's try to keep, let's try to make sure like the kings of the Middle East keep the oil under control and let's support them. So we keep the prices down so we can keep moving all these things and just perpetuating this really perverse system of taking advantage of the world's resources. Okay, but so we have, let's say, the open component, right? We have the platforms to exchange. We have the fab labs. We have now those 37 cities. Was it 34? 34. Maybe we'll be in October. We have the fab city summit, hopefully close to 40. Okay, so we have 40 cities that commit by 2050. What is it? 2054. 2054 to become, what was it? Produce almost everything that they consume locally. Right. So ideally, as we have seen with this external shock, this could happen, you know, in a much shorter time span. What is... Oh no, I don't think so. I think that we are so attached because that entails... No, but I mean, with shocks, right? I mean, be it climate change, be it resource scarcity, be it health issues, be it, you know, a lot of elements which... Absolutely. Now we're in a pressure cooker. We have all of the external things that are pushing us. We could go much, much faster. What is holding us back, do you think? Yeah, I think that's why I was saying no. I don't think that we are ready because I think that we are still too attached to this way of organizing our economy, which is sort of a way of organizing our society and what really, really connected to it. And I don't want to be hypocritical, you know. I'm connecting with you from an Apple computer. I have Coltan from Congo and my aluminum is from, I don't know, from somewhere in Australia and the copper of the battery of my... Of the lithium, sorry, of the battery is taken from Bolivia and the copper from Chile. I don't know, right? Yeah. So we are part of the paradox in a way. We live in a constant paradox because we are trying to praise all of this and at the same time we are deeply inside it, right? I think there is, first of all, I think that there is no will from any side to transform this. You know, from the ones... It's a very simple way of organizing a very complex world and usually the people that wants to be up in power, they don't want complexity. They want to have things very simple, keep things very simple. And then in the other end, it's us. And I include myself on it, which we live trapped in our own convenience. The convenience of having things, you know, to want a couple of clicks away and I have it delivered to my house. Of course, that's better for me to get dressed, go out, walk or drive to the closest store, talk with a grumpy guy that will, you know, try to be as unhelpful as possible and then finally get something that I was trying to get. So of course, you buy what you see in the screen and that's more convenient. So that's basically, it's a double trap. There's a few of us that understand the paradox. We keep living inside the paradox and it's hard to detach from it, I have to say. And it was under the pandemic that, you know, it was epiphany after epiphany moment again. It's like, I don't know if it happened to you, but I can't imagine that you have this feeling that, oh God, I thought it was going to be like in 10 years, but it's happening now. So basically we had like, we were, you know, sometimes we do this kind of a strategic plan of think about 10 years. And these 10 years now they are, there are 10 years that we need to accelerate the process to increase the capacity of cities and the regions to be able to provide the city sense and anyone that lives inside those limits, whatever they need. But I don't think that's going to happen soon at the same time. Yeah, this pandemic was really a study for me. I was just looking how things were happened because I was, in my mind, this is how it's going to be very soon. Yeah, all of the time, more or less, we're going to have emergencies left and right and one more urgent that the other and we'll have to deal with, you know, panicking and all of that. Really trying to look at all of this and say, okay, either it might be good that all of the, you know, hellstorm comes to us. So we get done with it once and for all, and we get rid with what is happening here. But I was very curious like, okay, apparently it's feasible to prohibit taking claims. Apparently it's feasible to work all from home, not all social strata, but anyhow. Apparently, many norms are not there. So I was, that was really a study element for me very, very interesting. Yeah, sorry. No, no, no, I wanted to say something which is a thing that knowing that things are not going to change doesn't mean that you don't, you know, you need to stay still and do nothing. I, what the approach that we're taking, though, is not trying to wait for everything to change, but understand the power of the small interventions of this or the small scale. So even the city is to be to think about making transformation in it.  When we're talking about less than 10,000 people where you can articulate communities and start to, you know, test experiment with new forms of producing energy and new forms of distributed energy, or also with food and just hacking, for instance, the material flows at that scale. So that's the approach that we're taking. And also I wanted to mention that, you know, going back to the discussion I was saying before about the stack, you know, from infrastructure to learning to innovation and to urban strategies. And those are really fast, right, like the fast, fast layers of the stack. The slow ones are the policy, et cetera, et cetera. Right. But, you know, since we have already infrastructure in place like fab labs, and also underused or, you know, or almost dead infrastructure in cities. We can reactivate those it's kind of relatively quick. But I think we need also to invest a lot into learning into new forms of learning and meaning that, you know, this is, it is possible to articulate all the layers of educational systems, like, you know, from high school to universities to PhDs. If you put them all together on their common mission, right, of really trying to resolve the trap in which we are getting towards which is we are putting in risk around our own existence and also the existence of life in this planet. I am sure that we have that capacity. So I believe that we need to keep influencing and that's something that we should not stop. And I guess that that's the work that you guys are doing as well is making noise and making this very visible and show how idiotic we are as much as we can. That's a great segue to the two final questions I had for you. What are you going to do this next year or what should we focus on this next year you mentioned education. And the last one was what are the books, videos, articles, films that you would recommend to anyone to start right now. Um, or music or yeah. Yeah, well, let me start from the last one. This is a nice documentary in Netflix that is called Banda, B, A, N, D, A is about the Banda Islands in Indonesia. And I think that explains a lot the roots of capitalism and in global in globalization. I highly recommend it because basically the market of the nutmeg and clothe and the conquer of the West Indies, the East Indies sorry, led to the discovery of America, first of all, by accident, well the discovery by Europe, especially. And also it was the established the foundations of a current global extractive colonialist capitalist system. And again, I'm not saying it is as a somewhat that needs to pretend that it's not capitalist and part of the system. I'm not trying to be hypocritical here. I recommend an article which for me is super key is the the tyranny of convenience. It's a New York time articles. Have you read it? No. Oh, it's pure gold. Okay, I'm noting this down. Thanks. Pure gold. Definitely. I think also, you know, of course, and this is, you know, it sounds like an opera Winfrey. It's a mainstream but you will know how to. It's probably one of the most interesting historian philosophers that is that is explaining us where we come from in a in a different person with a different perspective and where we might go and which are the things that we need to be aware of. You know, he talks a lot about AI, but you were right. It's scary also to think about when AI is also able to manipulate the physical world with machines that are ruled by AI. So definitely you will know how to.  Yeah. Oh man. It's so refreshing. I'm not, I'm not tired of retweeting him and then people like Indy Johar as well. Kate Rower is people that, you know, we need to look closer, follow and support as well, you know, understand that the way we support them is also a way to to introduce a new way of thinking about our economy and about the world. Yeah, I have a lot more things, but yeah, read for the non Latin Americans. I think it's beautiful to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Yeah. So that's out of the topic, but I think that I love, I love the fantasy of it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and also, I think that's one of the challenges we have right now probably is not that much technical. I think it's also cultural. And I think that cultural diversity in the world and then understanding that that's actually what make us rich. It's really important to keep now because in the context in the current context of polarization. We are at the risk of having this, again, to keep living under this imposed. You know, we want colonialist way of distributing the world. I'm sorry. And I can say this because I am a colonizer and I am a colonizer. Exactly. So I am allowed.  But it's really difficult to think about the next year. And, you know, I'm putting a lot of my energy in, in, in creating a learning environments. I want to create, I think like we need to create learning environments rather than create more pre-established programs, theories, or follow the, we need to really transform a little bit the scientific method and then understand that it's not about us developing a theory and trying to prove that theory in an experiment. And that can be also taken to the city scale. And sometimes it's very dramatic when that happens because it affects a lot of people. It's not the same as doing an experiment in the laboratory, but creating learning environments in which we can, you know, challenge almost everything is super important. And, you know, I direct a master that is now based in Barcelona. It's a master in the time for emerging futures. But I'm going to work in the next year on trying to make it distributed around the world and allow people to be part of it without having to go to Barcelona necessarily. And that's how we do, how we do with the FABA Academy.  So that's the other part that we're going to do next year as well. Inside FAPCITY, the FAPCITY Global Initiative is to go deeper into the stack and make it more understandable and useful and as much as comprehensive as possible. And finally, this next year is going to be the year of infrastructuring or kind of a giving a minimum structure to the FAPCITY Foundation, which is one of the three components of the whole FAPCITY Global Initiative. FAPCITY Foundation, given the organizational support and providing some funding sources, the FAPCITY Network is the second one, which is the 34 cities, hopefully 40 by the end of the year, that are somehow supporting actively and some passively, to be honest, but at least that we managed to convince to join this crazy idea. And then the FAPCITY Collective, which is around 100 individuals that as, you know, we were talking before we started recording, they are still in time from their organizations to work on supporting the FAPCITY in many ways. So that's next year. I'm very, very much looking forward then for the next year. Thanks so much, Thomas, for your time. And yeah, let's find things to collaborate on and let's get things moving. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Aristide, and thanks to Metabolism of Cities for inviting me to this. Thank you. Great.


You know, many people that have chronic illnesses have a cyclical quality to those conditions or to those symptoms. Like for example, sinusitis and sinus infections, swollen glands, tonsillitis, strep throat and other conditions like that have a very common cyclical quality, including ear infections you see in children as well. But I thought this would be a very good point to illustrate a basic concept in Chinese medicine. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hein, Chinese medicine doctor and author of the health book, Master the Day. Now before we jump in, there are two very important links right below this video. The first is for a free guide for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. And the second link is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or virtually via telemedicine, the link to my private practice and contact info is right below this video. So this is very interesting undercurrent of people in natural medicine or I guess you could say lay practitioners who believe that the body always heals. There's this idea that the body always heals and it just fixes itself. But my clinical experience kind of suggests otherwise that there are quite a few substantial reasons and barriers to healing that we see clinically. I mean if the body always healed then everyone who ate healthy and took care of themselves would heal and feel better, right? But that's often not the case. And why that is, is as important of a question as why the person got sick in the first place. So why don't some people heal? And why don't some conditions heal? That's a very important question and not always so easy to answer. Now these conditions, for example sinus conditions, sinusitis, they're often treated pretty barbarically in conventional care. And you often see as repeated antibiotic usage and then they keep coming back still. And then these pseudo surgical procedures like where the balloon is inflated and the sinuses get, you know, there's a little bit of minor fracturing there. But none of these really address why it's happening in the first place. And I wouldn't say that we would need to address the root cause unless I thought that fixing the root cause would also solve other issues. And these people almost always have other things going on because it is a physiological issue, but it is treated as something structural. So let's talk about this idea of yangqi and constitutional healing, because this is something we have chatted about quite a few times in my videos because it is absolutely essential to healing. And I do not see a lot of medical practitioners discuss it. Even a lot of alternative practitioners, you know, there's the tendency to just practice green medicine as it's called, they're using just supplements instead of a pharmaceutical effectively in the same exact way of clinical thinking. Chinese medicine is very, very different. So yangqi is not so easy to explain. But one layer of it is we could just say yangqi is your healing force, your immune system, your general vitality, whatever word you want to use. And it is also the body's ability to heal itself. Now, the problem is that for so many people, the yangqi is what is weak in the first place. And so a chronic low grade sinus infection for months is only a branch manifestation. That is only a symptom of the yangqi being weak. Now, often what we see is that there are certain constitutions, people with certain genetic makeups, it often runs in families, sometimes it's post illness, sometimes it's post antibiotic usage, sometimes it's post medical interventions. But for whatever reason, you're looking at a person with a weak yangqi constitution, the yangqi is weak. And so what happens is with sinusitis, for example, this is only one kind of sinusitis, mind you, more of the deficient side, is that you see these people manifest these low grade sinusitis conditions, they undulate, it dances up and down and it never fully resolves. So when it gets bad again, it's this low grade thing potentially for weeks or months, and then they're good for a while, and then it comes back. And what you're looking at is that the person's body is not manifesting a strong enough yangqi response to fully kick out this infection. And so it festers at this low grade area, and the sinuses just really stay occluded and they stay clogged. And then eventually infections can breed from there. But this idea of it is the weak yangqi that often predisposes a certain percentage of sinusitis patients to that. But weak yangqi also predisposes you to potentially insomnia and mood problems and gut problems for a lot of people, especially with sinus conditions, almost always have something going on in the gut as well. So understanding that the sinus infection that is recurrent is only a symptom of this weak yang pattern. And weak yang predisposes you to a whole host of other things, not just the sinus condition. And again, in my experience, these conditions are depressingly almost always treated with repeated antibiotic usage, and you know what is one of the strongest, most consistent ways to damage yang in Chinese medicine antibiotics. And they're wildly overprescribed for chronic diseases. And you can even read research papers suggesting that the number of times a person has taken antibiotics is correlated with certain kinds of cancer. I've seen colon and breast cancer correlated with anxiety and depression rates going up. But the most base level is from our diagnostic intake side, the pulse diagnosis, the symptom picture, abdominal diagnosis. What we see is that it damages the Yang. It impedes the body's ability to permanently heal in the future. I'm not saying that to scare you. I'm just sharing this video to illustrate another side that I don't hear even in other natural medicine modalities. I've only seen this explained in Chinese medicine, and this is obviously the medicine that has humbled me the most and helped me as a patient the most. So that is just one way to look at a certain percentage of the population with chronic sinusitis and why it keeps happening and it never fully goes away. All right, you guys, that's all I have for today for you. Again, remember right below this video, if you'd like to become a patient of my locally or online via telemedicine, check out the link, contact info from my private practice is right below. And I have two related videos for you right there.