Welcome to what the up is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, a popular resistance broadcast of hot news out of the region. In partnership with Black Alliance for Peace, Haiti, America's team, Code Pink, Common Frontiers, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Friends of Latin America, Central Religious Task Force on Central America, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Task Force on the Americas. We broadcast Thursdays at 430 p.m. Pacific, 730 p.m. Eastern right here on YouTube live, including channels for the Convo Couch, popular resistance and Code Pink. Post broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Telegram, redindymedia.com, and now under podcast at popularresistance.org. Today's episode, Columbia, total peace and the fight to free all political prisoners. I'm happy to have two fantastic guests join us today everyone and I'm sure you're going to really get a lot out of this conversation. Anthony Dest is joining us from New York. He is with the Colombian Freedom Collective and it is specifically his prisoner project that we're going to be talking about in this episode. And then joining us from Cali, Colombia is a Jamu Baraka of Black Alliance for Peace, Haiti actions team, and he is also the Black Alliance for Peace National Organizer. And he can talk to us about what full peace looks like in Colombia and what the hope is for the region. I should also just remind all of you that, and some of you have been following the program for several years, that I was in May of 2021 during the Pato Nacional on a human rights observation delegation so this is a really, really special episode for me on a very personal level to have this conversation with Anthony and a Jamu it's terrific follow up as to what's happened to some of the people since May of 2021. And so, let me, let me just start with a brief background some of you will be familiar with this and others of you are new to this subject so let me give a background starting in April 2021. In April 2021, 10s of thousands of people took to the streets in Colombia to demand change. They rejected decades of state violence and deepening inequality. Over the course of three months, the largest protest in Colombian history, spread to over 800 municipalities throughout the country. The months long protests played a huge role in creating the conditions for the election of Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez. Changes are afoot in Colombia and the inauguration of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Marquez on August 7, 2022, marked an important shift away from decades of political repression. More than 300 people accused of participating in the 2021 protests still remain incarcerated and or are facing harsh sentences on trumped up charges. Political prisoners from the 2021 national strike are currently on a hunger strike in four prisons around the country. Despite numerous promises from the Petro administration to address their situation, the prisoners continue to face dire conditions. The only demand that would bring an end to the hunger strike. A response from the national government regarding the December 22 proposal emerging from political prisoners in Palmyra for the creation of a table for dialogue. So let me introduce Anthony and Ajamu to all of you. And also Anthony asked that I share where to stream this. I'll put a couple links in the chat for you Anthony. So welcome gentlemen, really wonderful to have you both with us for this episode. It's really, as I mentioned earlier, it's a really important follow up to a number of our previous episodes regarding the Puerto Nacional in Colombia, as well as the presidential primaries and the presidential election. So, so this is a terrific opportunity to continue informing our audience about Colombia. So Anthony, why don't we start with you and what your project is and what the prisoners are demanding and why they are still imprisoned when the Colombian president is very vocal in the media, social media, particularly about countries throughout the region releasing all political prisoners. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting us on today. And it's great to raise these issues right now because I think it's more important than ever. To kind of begin, you know, as you mentioned in the intro there, the Colombian national strike in 2021 started on April 28, and it lasted for about three months. But it's for me pretty hard to put an end date on it, because the expressions of a struggle for dignity and resisting state violence and resisting capitalism continued long after whatever people tend to think of the like ending as as ending right that it didn't culminate at a specific date. So that resistance has continued and there's all kinds of vibrant expressions of where this is gone in in the last couple years and I think it's really important to highlight that another way that this strike hasn't ended is that there are still a lot of people doing time for expressing themselves for struggling for dignity during that national strike. And so the most recent numbers we have are upwards of 300 political prisoners from recent demonstrations for participating in social mobilizations currently in Colombia. And, you know, this project is not my project, it's a collective project where the Columbia Freedom Collective and it's a few different organizations here in the United States, including the Black Alliance for Peace, the US Peace Council, and the National Warriors Guild San Francisco chapter, as well as organizations in Colombia, like the Comisión Interexial de Justicia y Paz, and Trabajo y Dignidad, as well as the Punto de Resistencia en Paso del Aguante, which is the primary case that that we are working with. And basically, you know, I've been working on Colombia for many years now, I'm also Colombian, and I was inspired by what was happening during the National Strike in 2021. And, you know, during the strike I made it down to Colombia, established contact with several folks that had been involved, more towards the tail end of it after some of the most brutal state repression had ended. You know, I think it's really important to highlight that over 40 people were killed by police, and at least 80 people were killed during the protest. Dozens of folks were forcibly disappeared, many more were injured, there's at least, I think, 25 cases of sexual violence committed by police forces against participants in the National Strike. So, you know, that violence is really what kept people out in the street, and that's what people were resisting throughout the National Strike. And now, to see that the folks that really put their lives on the line to better their conditions have been facing time and really hard time for choosing to struggle. And like you said earlier, create the conditions for the election of the first progressive government in Colombian history, for me it was completely unacceptable. And, you know, I think that that is what inspires a lot of us that are part of this movement to demand the freedom of political prisoners in Colombia right now. Let me, regarding the violence for the audience, violence was like military style assault on people who were peacefully assembling and it hadn't, I mean, these were, well, what we came to know is the Esmad teams and this were full blown military style tactics and equipment that were used against civilians, it was, it was more than violent, it was warfare, I would argue, and just to paint a picture for the audience. And when people assemble, it had nothing to do with whether it was peaceful, whether it was art, whether it was for music, just flying Pancarta's banners, you know, against the duke government. These Esmad teams would break up an event. Once it lasted, what they deemed to be too long or got too large, whether it was peaceful or not, and that was done very, very, very violently with military style, style tactics, and it was pretty gruesome. The majority of the country is about 70 plus percent of the country that was protesting the government at that time, which was enormous. I mean the government had pretty much lost the people by then, which I would argue is why the repression was so strong. But let me ask you about these, these people who were arrested and so they were arrested under the duke government. They were arrested for protesting. Were they, why am I thinking that some were released at Christmas? Was that a holiday short term thing or was it actually Christmas of 2022, I'm thinking. No. So, as you mentioned, there, there, there've been a couple kind of false starts on addressing the issue of political prisoners from the uprising. From the moment Beto was elected, I think he had it very clear that the national strike played a huge role in getting him there. And he mentioned it during his victory speech in June, I think it was of 2022. Shortly after he was elected, there was talk about passing an amnesty law. And there were a lot of expectations around that, given, given Petro's governing coalition having a majority in the Congress. But because of reactionary political pressure, the, the governing, the Pacto historical pulled that part of the amnesty law out. And so there wasn't an amnesty law that passed in October. And then in December, Petro said that he was going to use a, this legal figure known as the agents of peace. Histores de paz, agentes de paz to release hundreds of political prisoners before Christmas Eve. To date, I think there have been only, I think 14 people that have been designated as agents of peace, and of those only four have been released. But I think for a lot of the folks that I work with, there were a lot of expectations about what that could mean for them, you know, because the political prisoners that many of whom were very vocal in their support for the new administration expected to, for that to go through, but it did not happen. Right. And shortly after the, the, the Christmas holiday passed, and it was clear that folks were not getting released from prison. Prisoners in Palmyra, the prison in Palmyra, which is outside of Cali went on strike, and they made demands about establishing a route for dialogue. And I just want to be clear about how modest the goal for that initial hunger strike was, right, they were just asking to establish a path to creating a formal space for dialogue, dialoguing directly with the government. And in December, there was talks with directly with the government, and they suspended the hunger strike. But then, again, now in February, 20th, they went on hunger strike again, because there was no advances in making that space for dialogue happen.  And it was suspended last Friday, because there were, again, meetings with the government, there has yet to be a formal space for dialogue established, yet the, the stipulations for, for lifting the strike or suspending the strike were because they had met with the government and there was enough reason to discontinue a hunger strike, which I should mention, is extremely onerous under the conditions of Colombian prisons, which are already overcrowded. But, you know, that hunger strike, not only was to establish that path for a space of dialogue with the national government, but it was also to call out how bad the conditions were in these prisons, right. They're, they're dealing with water that is not safe. You know, several of them want psychosocial support and they're not getting it.  And even then, the government was not willing to meet with the political prisoners that put them in office on their terms, right. Just to put this in perspective, Gustavo Petro has met with former president Alvaro Uribe three times since he was elected, and he has yet to meet with the political prisoners. The people who helped put him in office, who helped get rid of Uribe. Let me, there's a couple of things I'd like to follow up on. To me, and we said this before, I mean the irony of not addressing these political prisoners when there is a call from the president of Colombia himself, you know, for other Latin American countries to release their political prisoners. It's, it's, it's hard to understand that, especially considering the fact that there is now a new vice ministry in Colombia that was specifically created and I believe it falls under the minister of the interior but I'm not 100% sure. But it's a new vice ministry of social dialogue and equality. They, he has a whole team of people prepared to talk and negotiate whenever and whoever is ready. And yet, the prisoners are ready, and you say it's modest demands, and yet that dialogue hasn't, hasn't happened. Are there legal issues? I mean, some of the, some of the crimes that have been put against the prisoners, is there a concern there with any of those? I mean, with any or all of them that some of them should remain in prison or is this just another form of political persecution? I mean, I think it's really important to point out that there are some very severe charges against some of the prisoners and you know, there's always going to be a legal question about in a full out amnesty versus a partial one or what constitutes that amnesty. But I think it's just again important to insist that the prisoners that were on hunger strike last month were not demanding amnesty. They were demanding a space for dialogue, a formal way of dialoguing directly with the government, right? Which the government has. And to your question, I mean, for me, what are the limits of that dialogue? What makes some sort of dialogue feasible while others are off the table? You know, it's a very difficult question to ask in Columbia right now too, because through the total peace policy of the government, they're currently embarking on negotiations with everything from left wing guerrilla groups to right wing paramilitary criminal groups, right? And I think a lot of us that are supporting the struggle of political prisoners right now, it's an unresolved question and we have not heard good answers from the state in regards to it. Let me, let me make a comment about that also. Sure. I think, what are the ways in which we can perhaps explain the slowness on the part of the government to address this issue of prisoners while we see that the government is attempting to address a number of different contradictions and in Columbia society by engaging in discussion with various forces might be because these issues that they seem to be, they seem to have prioritized more so than this issue of these young prisoners might be related to the kind of social pressure that they feel to address certain kinds of questions. The very fact that it appears that many people in Columbia sort of forgotten about these young people, it releases some of the pressure for them to really address this issue. The fact that they are engaged in advancing using the full weight of the legal system against these young folks, while not feeling any kind of pressure to address the issue of impunity. That is, who has, who was responsible for all of the people who died during the course of this rebellion. These questions have never been answered. Therefore, you know, they feel that they don't have the social pressure, the political pressure on them to really effectively address this. That's one piece of it. The other piece is that, you know, there are enormous political complexities in Columbia. Regarding the state Anthony alluded to that a moment ago, that there are certain questions that the government raised that they were going to attempt to address. But it appears that as a consequence of a reassessment of the balance of the forces in the Colombian state that the Patriot government backed away from we have to remember this is still a the the Patriot Marquez government. You know, they have latitude to do certain things, but the overall character of the state, and the forces are still control large chunks of it still resides with the the radical right wing. Does that to make, does that to attempt to apologize for some things that have not been done, but just to kind of, you know, pulling some elements and help us understand, you know, some of the complexities that people are facing here in this in this space. So that's true. I mean, this is, these are really good points you bring up because this is true for any new administration in any country, just because the presidency changes doesn't mean a lot of the other, the leadership management of other institution people are civilian employees, like the immigration services, for example, that have been there, you know, employees who have been there through multiple presidencies they don't they don't necessarily change just because they're because there's a new president has been elected. So, you can see how this would be a lot of things that have been inherited and aren't going to change overnight and that's not unique to Columbia. No, and that's why it's important, Terry, that that these kinds of discussions take place that the kind of work that that Anthony has helped to pull together and helping to bring attention to the situation that we support this and we help to amplify this because without the social and political pressure coming from inside and from external sources is to be very difficult for us to finally resolve this issue with the young people in prison. Are the majority of the 300 young, I guess I would say young like under 25 under 20, like, I don't have the ages I mean it's been extremely difficult to get good information about this, because it has not been systematized, and I just wanted to correct myself it is 17 people who are named to the streets and for who were released to that out of the more than 200 that better will promise. But yeah, no it's been extremely difficult to get good information but yes the majority are are young, young people and, and that was another remarkable part about this, this uprising right, and it was that young people came out into the streets people who were not necessarily part of trade unions, formerly members of social movements or political parties took politics into their own hands and struggled for dignity, where they lived. They became protagonists in their lives in a way that for a lot of people really rocked the boat. And I think that also has to do with why a lot of folks within the government are a little nervous about getting too deep with this right. What is on the table for dialogue under the better administration and you know for me I think that he kind of spelled it out a little bit during his victory speech after he was elected. When he said that we are going to develop capitalism in Columbia, not because we worship it, but because first we must overcome pre modernity in Columbia, and for me, I think, you know, when you're dealing with the questions of an uprising. And this kind of political activity that really rocks the status quo, people get a little bit nervous about it. But what is also clear to me is that the folks that were out there on the street were struggling for dignity they had a very clear mind. At least at first it was about reversing and protesting against a neoliberal tax reform. And then it became about resisting state violence and the endurance during legacy of colonial capitalism on Colombians. Right. And so, I, for me, I guess what what is, what are the limits to this dialogue are yet to be demonstrated right and I think as a jamu saying it's really important to put that political pressure on the new administration to see, you know, what what is possible, because, you know, the folks that we're working with from Basel at I wanted spent 15 months, at least in pre trial detention, despite maintaining their innocence. Right. For the crimes that they're accused of, and they're looking at spending up to 50 years in prison, if they're convicted. Right. These are entire people's lives entire families lives communities that are being affected by this and why. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's really listening to you describe who they are and and having been there during the power that it's it's heartbreaking on a certain level, because so it was the young people that took up the voice for the nation or the majority of the nation and I, you know, I remember talking to people's parents, grandparents, and the older population saying, we should have done this. It should, you know, we have left it up to the young people to make the change and it should have been us and a lot of guilt. And, and then of course that guilt turned in into enormous support for the movement that these young people were built and ultimately change the government. So it's heartbreaking to hear that the nation isn't behind them now. It's, it's heartbreaking. Now, just this week, several members of families that were affected by the violence families of political prisoners, former political prisoners themselves traveled to bullet once again to try and establish a meeting with the government, but they were unable to. And this is, this is, you know, I've met with family members of people who were forcibly disappeared, whose children were murdered during the protests and it honestly, I mean, it kind of feels like traveling into, I don't know, like 1979 Argentina or something. Like it, we're talking about that scope of, of state violence but it happens under the radar. And because it's become I guess so normalized in the eyes of a lot of the international community about Columbia that Columbia is a violent place or whatever. We don't necessarily hear about it as much but it does continue. So, you know, I think that's another part of what we're trying to raise here is, you know, like, we're here to support the political prisoners but we're also here to talk about the violence that occurred and the enduring impunity that Ajama mentioned, you know, just in late February, there's a popular tribunal in one of the neighborhoods in Cali called Siloé. And they found the state guilty of continuous genocide, right, because just in that neighborhood over 16 people were killed during the national strike. Right. And nobody really knows their names, besides the folks that work on this. But again, these are communities that are affected before it. And who is, who is perpetrating that violence and to what ends is, is again, the what what what status quo was being sought to be preserved through that violence. Well, and again it goes back to, you know, not all the institutions and leadership change just because the country gets a new president. What I mean, what do you do with the existing national police the existing military.  You start working from the outside, from the outside in versus the inside out. And what you know it is it's extraordinarily complex it's just to me the big you know listening to you to me the biggest thing is what I'm hearing is that these young people have pretty much just been forgotten. Well, they have to certain extent and and that's why this issue is important because with Patriot commitment to this concept of total peace, in which they are attempting to engage some of the paramilitary forces and guerrilla groups to bring about a new environment in where there in fact is peace and the possibility of people to live with security and the implication of national reconciliation. But the question the question is when it comes to this situation where you have continued impunity coming out of the rebellion. We have these people young people refer to the young people because as Anthony said, most of the folks who was going to the streets and we're engaged directly with the authorities were youthful, if you will, so with these young people still in prison. How do you have total peace. You have national reconciliation when this situation continues to fester like this. So, that's why this has to be resolved has. Austin. Yeah, you froze.  You want to turn your video off and do audio only and see if that works. Maybe he doesn't know we froze. I think the jungles point is, is pretty clear though, I mean, it can there be total peace without the political prisoners. Right. And as you're asking how, if there is an infrastructure and the political will supposedly to dialogue. Well, these people are asking to dialogue. Now, why do they need to go on hunger strike to be heard that, you know, and we expected this to change but I also just want to mention to that like, I think, part of the decision that we made as a collective is, is to support, you know, raising funds for the legal defense of, of people facing charges, right because we know that we can't leave it up to the state to resolve this even if it is a progressive government, and, you know, a lot of the folks that have been able to get out of prison was thanks to a good legal defense but unfortunately, you know, a lot of people cannot afford it for numerous reasons. And, you know, that was the decision we made pretty early on that we wanted to find lawyers that were familiar with this, if they're from the committee and solidarity with political prisoners, or other folks that we've known over the years to to work with that representing defendants pro bono and, you know, anything we want to alleviate the material impediments to having a justifiable legal defense in the court of law. And so a lot of the fundraising that we've been doing is in regards to that. And can the fundraising be done through your website. Absolutely. Yeah, you can go to Columbia Freedom Collective.org. And there's the means all of the money goes directly to the legal defense, the pro bono legal defense of the people from Paso de la Guante, the resistance point. I can read more about the cases of the folks that that we are working with on on the website, but it's, it's a campaign that's growing and as I mentioned in the coming month, there are going to be several hearings that are taking off with the cases. There are several of the folks who are released, albeit after way too long in prison pre trial detention in December, but now the cases are picking up again, and we'd love to encourage folks to, you know, join us in packing the courts virtually because currently, all the hearings are online. And that means that we can sit in on the hearings and listen to the hearings and show not just the folks that are being tried the defendants that they have support that they're not alone but also demonstrate that people around the world care about what's going on. And so if you're interested in getting in touch with us there, you can also go to our website and get in touch with us and we can send you information about how to participate in these virtual hearings.  That would be great. That's a really great act of solidarity. That's really wonderful. I will share with the audience that all of the articles and links that we're talking about I have included in the program notes so if you are watching us on YouTube and just go into the program description for this episode, all of those links are there including articles and websites and all of that. So, so check those program notes and click and make your donation and then be sure to join the hearings that is really a fantastic global act of solidarity. And easy enough to do. Yeah, it's really great. And I wonder, you know, a genre as we're as if you, you know, you talked on about total peace, and that this piece and that this component with the political prisoners needs to get resolved in order, you know, for the new government to pursue total peace and reconciliation within the country, you have been involved with several delegations. And most recently on the Caribbean coast, one of them to I believe in that general vicinity. Why can you share with the audience what those delegations were created for and and what you saw and what the results. Or what the impending results are. Yeah. But thanks so much, Terry, and I'm hoping I was trying to share again, the report that I wrote on that mission that we were on a little bit over a month ago. That link your article link is in is that is in the program note. Hello. So now we lost his audio and everything. Let me see. Let's see if we can get him back otherwise. Let me pull up I want to pull up the article, because I want you all to see this and I'm sorry for the delay maybe we can get him back while I look for the article hold on just a second. Let me share that there is. Okay, I was trying to buy some time to pull up your article. This is what happens when you do a program with answer the desk. Why from Kali, Columbia, we are going on some now I went from my computer to my phone now I'm back on my computer so let's hopefully they give us at least five more minutes or so. But I was sharing that. Yeah, if you have that that link to the report that I wrote.  I think that was February 18th or so that would be great to share with the audience. It is in the program notes, but I'll put it in the chat as well. I think we lost him again. Yeah. Looks like it. Are you there? I'm here. Here's the but we lost a genre again. Fantastic. Actually, I have to as I will. I can hear you.   I think what the audience would be okay with that and that might. Because we really want to hear about this, this delegation. The delegation actually went to the Pacific Coast and visited a number of territories. The parts that we went to was is considered to be the rural parts of the one of into the one of into a district. We're losing you. We lost you again. Well, so one thing we know maybe Wi-Fi infrastructure is not so good. Or maybe not this time of day. Yeah, he's so let me I want to put this in the chat. And then maybe we should. We were hoping to talk with with a genre about was to was to kind of thread the needle between, you know, with what is happening with the political prisoners this call for total peace, and how that is unfolding and there have been several human rights delegations and observers who have gone into some of the particularly and via Calca and witnessed and taken testimony from what these communities need and a lot of the prisoners. A lot of these political prisoners a lot of these young people come from these exact communities. We had hope to talk about that delegation but Jean, who are you here. Yeah, okay so quickly while we have you. You can't stay connected. So, so is there anything else Anthony that we should I just would like to encourage folks to check out the website that's Columbia freedom collective.org. We're trying to put regular updates about issues facing political prisoners on the website as regularly as possible. There's also space for you to make a tax-adaptable donation if you're in the United States. We really appreciate that and we can ensure you that that's going to go directly into the legal defense of folks that are facing pretty steep charges. So, thank you so much Terry for inviting us it's too bad we didn't get to hear from a job about that delegation. I know it was a very intense but hopefully fruitful experience so the call for total peace and in its and in that total piece is peace for the entire region and creating a peace zone and so we'll we'll have a follow up conversation, but also Anthony for you and your work, just to remind the audience that all of you joining this can listen to the the the court proceedings for online. And so again it's just such a wonderful act of solidarity and that again is is on the website and again all of these links are in the program notes. So you can easily reference all of them. So thank you so much Anthony really wonderful to meet you and and a really important conversation I'm so glad you had time, time to join us. Thank you. And I just want to remind the audience that you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America in the Caribbean. Thank you so much to every Thursday 730pm Eastern on YouTube live YouTube channels for the Convo couch code pink and popular resistance.org and post broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so so thank you everyone thank you Anthony, and we'll see all of you next week. You


Our next speaker is is Sharon Hill the lovely Sharon Hill. She is doing a talk called the honest broker of doubtful news She is a geologist. She of course runs the great news blog doubtful news She's one of the few geologists that tuned into my podcast the geologic podcast thinking it was about geology And now she stuck around which is very nice Her talk like I said is called the honest broker of doubtful news her haiku is a geologist Walks out of a bar and says make mine on the rocks Please welcome Sharon Hill I did think it was a geologic podcast This is a talk about positive skepticism about feeling compelled to do things that hopefully make a difference and if not Yeah, at least I learned a little bit along the way. So back in August of 2011 I started the doubtful news website to tackle weird news stories from a skeptical angle And my goal for the project was to have a one-stop site for those who liked me like me loved weird and strange news stories and wanted to keep up on the latest pseudoscience and Paranormal and hoaxed information that was flying across the web. I'd already been following weird news sites But not one captured all the interesting stories and more importantly provided a forum to Discuss them or to discover if they were actually valid and we could all go wow, that's amazing So when I envisioned the the doubtful news project DN, I'll call it I saw it as an alternative to credulous or mystery mongering media sites When I see a paranormal or anomaly story, I'm curious about what actually happened Not many news outlets bother to explore that angle They hardly ever follow up on like what some mysterious phenomenon turned out to be like for example when when a UFO Turns out to be Chinese lanterns or hoax. I Try to do that. I try to find out what really happened and sometimes I can sometimes I can't So with one faithful co-editor editor, thanks T who incidentally I met here at TAM and A few others who volunteered their assistance supporters who spread the word and we're very encouraging and A lot of dedication and work to seek out this information day after day the site topped a million page views about a year later and We're on track to hit 4,500 posts at about the two-year mark, which is about six posts on average per day Thanks So it's always been an experiment and a valuable learning experience And there's there's always more to the story Then we're given in the media and it's not just about facts It's about people their perception Interpretation and about how the media packages this for the public And I learned how others of opposing view Look at these stories and and how they're packaged for the public and and I learned interacting with them I discovered the importance of effectively communicating a message and I'm not saying I always do it right But I understand some best practices and the message of this talk is that it's it's it's personal because our own Experiences are personal and complicated and I hope you take away. Whatever lessons are meaningful for you so DN thoughtful news is a news critique site as well as an aggregator and it's where you can go to find critical thinking take on these New stories where the readers can consider What is being presented in the news story and ask what might be wrong misleading intriguing or important about it? I'm not a journalist. I'm more like a content analyst media critic science advocate And in highlighting a news story on DN I often add supplementary information from reliable sources and The official news story often leaves leaves out that kind of information and sometimes I have contradictory information Or I have a say about how good or bad the piece is compared to what the rest of the evidence Suggests and how this particular portrayal might influence the public's perception When you begin a project along with having some clear goals and methods in mind You should think about the values you wish to promote. What are you advocating for? Why even do this project? I? value scientific skepticism and I didn't want to be misguided on that idea. So I researched it to get a handle on the concept and With the cooperation of several knowledgeable people. I ended up producing the Media guide to skepticism which spells it out in an easy grab easy to grasp language in a two-page takeaway And I encourage you to check that out. It's at the document at the top menu of doubtful news calm take it home Make it yours good for a handout if you had meetings or if you have a public event Feel free to use it however you wish and another thing I valued was to reach the public That's the audience I was going for I mean it comes with this own set of Considerations for one I couldn't just promote it in the skeptosphere That's a start but to expand I had to do more than just appeal to this circle So I looked for and connected with other populations such as the paranormal crowd and For the general web surfer I maximized best practices for search engines and my idea was that when people interested in any aspect of the story Googled it perhaps they came across the DN version of the story that provided additional information and unique angles that they Wouldn't see in the mainstream piece And I've heard from people to whom that has actually happened So that's rewarding like I'll put a link to science-based medicine in there And they'll actually click on the link and and go there to find out more about the subject and another important aspect I value is Civility and respect for people in the discussion so with the diverse audience the public It was necessary to keep an even tone not use derogatory words to describe people unless they actually Were convicted of fraud or exposed as an ethical and somewhere So I have this strict policy that states DN is not a forum for angry debate it is a discussion where knowledgeable input is requested and by the way the comments on the site are often spectacular because They are by people who are part of the news story or experts in the subject who find the site and come on to comment And the comments are also safe to read. They're not infuriating or nasty. So I'm proud of that When it was time to upgrade to DN 2.0, I Conducted a survey of my readers because feedback is important. Are you doing this right? Is there anything you can make better? And most of the people said they liked the way it was with a bit of commentary Not hard-hitting debunking but an understanding tone and some people thought I was too skeptical or too critical And others thought I was too soft So this led to some confusion like what what side was I on am I a skeptic and do I believe this stuff? You know, I'm I'm big bigfoot fans. So I like to talk about it a lot, but it's complicated When you're in between what looks like feuding factions say skeptics and believers not quite fitting in either place That's not necessarily a bad thing You avoid group think Let's call it a unique voice and I look at lots of views and That I think is the under the key to understanding a subject. You have to see all sides There's not just two. There's usually more than two and I'm okay with being in the middle ground I'm sympathetic to people who believe in stuff that perhaps I don't believe in so I'll come back to voice and of Why it's of great importance in activism, but first I'd like to address objectivity We all think that's a great thing, but it can go wrong in the 19th century the idea of Objective news caught on stories from the big media sources became less biased and more neutral in order to track new readers and Advertisers you can imagine that when there's this limited set of viewers And choices this makes sense because it's best the product not be controversial and opinionated news was facts and history Was very straightforward. Well times have changed Today, there's so much choice and so many viewers that it makes sense to actually tailor your feed to certain niches and News is now more entertainment and punditry emotional outbursts controversy sensationalism cells and We have this polarized media in the US liberal and conservative for example And we have these media sources that often only present their discreet view and because of this polarization We often lack the opportunity to actually consider the issue fully from all sides So objectivity was a clever business move back in the day and it became easy and cheaper as in-depth Investigations look like bias So just give the facts as you find them and then you the reader decide Problem with you decide is that you can only choose based on what is given and Asking the audience to decide is only fair if all the options are represented honestly and completely And this is hard to do in the space of today's media Landscape because such such a time constraint of a TV show For example, it's and it's deliberately not done if the aim is towards pleasing an audience with a specific ideology so the you decide gambit is Sounds great, but it's it's not all that great and it can be played using false balance as well Which is giving equal weight to things that don't really have Equal supporting evidence.  It'd be a lot less work But it would also be boring and pointless relating to my goals So objectivity is a good premise most of the time just like scientific skepticism It keeps us out of trouble, but when we talk about inspiring change, which is what activism is You can't be positive or negative if you wish if you're neutral You don't move forward very fast sitting in neutral. You have to put it in gear and give it some gas So for my purposes Objectivity is used with regards to the evidence, but being objective without adding content Context and color commentary Would not be a force for change Although some people would like to see DN just give the facts and point out errors in the news that's presented That's not my vision My aim is to get people thinking and hopefully to change minds about harmful things are nonsense And this is really important people need to know what you are saying and why they should care You can gather all the facts and information in the world But if no one is going to get the message or pay attention to it, you might as well not have bothered I mean if I tell the facts about vaccination rates going down without any context That doesn't grab the average person The human element the emotion of parents who have faced their child's illness or death is the gripping part of the story It's the dramatic consequence The vehement anti-vaccinationists grasp this concept the anti-science lobbyists Effectively use emotion often in place of good evidence and they certainly don't keep their opinions to themselves They are raving and passionate and you can find thousands of examples every day of news stories that pander to the way people feel and To their fears because it's effective and Skeptical thinking is void of sensationalism and that's commendable But the unfortunate outcome may be a less than gripping presentation of pretty serious stuff that may not reach the people it needs to reach When objectivity ends up looking like apathy readers may completely miss the point Or misinterpret the message if you help the audience see what's important to them They are more likely to follow along with the idea you are attempting to put across So use your values to enhance the message Because if I'm gonna put this much effort into a project I want people to find it and pay attention if I just wrote objective facts that be dull and people would pass it by So this is where the voice of my site comes in now because of my personal interest in subject area I already which is like the paranormal I already curate DN in a particular way. It already has a lean to it The default take on extraordinary claims is is not going to be one of hype and mystery mongering It's going to be doubt with emphasis on the evidence and what it tells us Like I said, I'm okay with people's beliefs even if they're odd as long as they don't affect others But I do feel humans would benefit if we were less credulous About the world within reason, but I don't want to bash people over the head with this concept I try to convey the message that I wanted people to come to the site and talk to contact me tell me what they think We can have a civil discussion. It can happen I've had many discussions with paranormal believers and those still on the proverbial fence and I think it's critical to engage with those of different views and I deliberately reached out to the Paranormal sites asking them to come to my site Share it and see what their readers thought Some of them came and someone liked it There were some disputes intense moments but I thought I was making progress and I tried to maintain the site voice as one of openness and curiosity getting to the bottom of the mystery Or question and I made inroads with some pro-paranormal people who saw me as the hey, you're okay kind of reasonable skeptic and if I like their stuff I Cross referenced it. I cross promoted some of their sites as well and I Didn't view DN as a competitor to them, but more like complimentary No, one site was like mine. So I thought no harm no foul. I'm just a different perspective yet The strong man of skepticism made an appearance blatant prejudice against the stereotypical idea of skepticism is rampant in the paranormal community So the tint of skepticism no matter how slight Was enough for a doubtful news to be pigeonholed as a skeptic blog And this is partially my fault. It's the way I marketed it for a while. It's even mirrored on skeptic comm But I like the big tent. I have room for all I'm trying to expand my audience not narrow it and I hope the paranormal crowd will feel the same way Maybe we can have this cross pollination and some discussion. It's challenging. Yes to engage with opposite views But it's usually pretty rewarding and enlightening When DN started to become more popular Where references to my site were side-by-side with their sites and I was commenting on their sites with additional information I had Contrary to their information Trouble began DN wasn't being promoted on some paranormal sites anymore They criticized the site as being a skeptic site capital S as if that's a bad word. I Clearly intruded on their turf and they weren't happy about that Hey, guess what? Not everybody interested in these subjects really wants to know the truth about their pet subject area Many just want validation of what they believe is true They'd rather live with their beloved ideas intact than pick them apart as I get that I understand I knew this about the public in general, but it can be considerably worse for those who consider themselves Experts are knowledgeable and they're invested in it They actually lack a huge chunk of knowledge the the skeptical literature that don't read it and Sadly, they revel in that ignorance at times and I think that's a shame You know if you really want an answer that that feels intellectually dishonest to me Some paranormalists, you know the ghost hunters and the Bigfoot chasers came right out and told me Why don't you skeptics go cure cancer or something? Leave us alone? Yeah, I don't think so I Realized two important things about this particular population niche that the paranormal crowd one They aren't used to or comfortable with people Knowledgeably engaging them face-to-face about problems with their findings or philosophy, you know, I got a question about this What are you talking about? To there is no discreet middle to occupy in some of these areas. It's curious It's a sliding scale not two sides with the fence in the middle and people move across that scale depending upon the subject area Paranormalist love when you advocate against alt med and bad consumer products They hate when you tell them to stop it with the pseudoscience and produce some real evidence and For as irritated as I get when they tell me how to do science They get peeved when I tell them I have an alternate explanation for the phenomenon and you're likely mistaken So there was some drama and and I was making some paranormal people angry by calling them out on stuff And and I was going through a phase where I was feeling frustrated with them and perhaps I was poking the dragon a bit But drama happens So what life goes on live and learn don't get bogged down in the drama But the drama prompted me to evaluate what I wanted Did I want to continue the effort to be on good terms with both sides? Because it was draining It's difficult. Did I want to be a popular site? Or did I want to stick to my original task and was that those two things exclusive? I didn't want to compromise me or my original goals And I wasn't going to conform to what others wanted because it would be impossible to please everyone. I Was going to be myself They can engage with me or not whatever they wanted and that's what I decided and in short order the prickly portion of my Audience fell away. That's okay You know, it's worthwhile to listen to constructive criticism and adjust your actions accordingly But I can only go so far So this brings me to two very important concepts that I learned that really helped me understand information and communication The first is worldview Worldview is important to remember when you're talking to another person about a disputed subjects Realize that their vision of the world is very different than yours Depending on the journey to get to where they are right now Information we get every day is just bits and pieces often it has no context no meaning to you or anyone else unless you give it meaning and Think about how we can have the same exact data set and give it to two different people And they come up with different conclusions about it depending on many personal factors biases Experience training values, you know, etc We saw this happen with climate data with parapsychology results and in this case with sonar data because I see a log and The tourists both both caps captain sees the Loch Ness monster But we take this information we get and fit it into our worldview and our preconceptions And that's how we make sense of it and if it doesn't fit we usually discard it and the experts at this are conspiracy theorists So here's an example an interesting example that reflects the media behavior as well as a worldview There was a news story not too long ago about a Chinese plane that experienced this sudden thud at 26,000 feet in The air and the pilots were having trouble at that point They made an emergency landing to find that the nose of the plane was pushed in As if they ran into something but they didn't see anything at the time and there was no indication of what could have hit the plane So the ever-vigilant tabloids knew a great story when they saw it and filled in the knowledge gap with the extraordinary The plane had an encounter with the UFO That became the story air China plane hits UFO Since UFO automatically translates as alien spacecraft. Oh my gosh, there airspace is unsafe. They're attacking our planes It was a plane with a dent. I Reminded people it was a plane with a dent. It's an interesting story and unsolved mystery. Yes Let's find out what happened not jumped to unwarranted conclusions But for those who have room in their worldview for alien spacecraft This story can be placed right in and taken the way it was delivered without any critical thought now It bolsters their worldview another piece in their puzzle And I can't be thinking back to what I find to be a slightly disturbing quote by Darwin who said how odd is it that? Anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any surface It'd be nice to think that at least some observations are objective, but are they really I mean? Observations are made by people and we all have our framework of interpretation Even a mundane observations and we can't help it So some people think I should stick with the facts the plane has a dent That's the story, but don't call attention to the fringe aspect, but it doesn't work. There has to be context. I Must be upfront in saying I'm telling another part of the story I take these pieces of information I find from various sources Look at different angles and based on fact and evidence provide alternative options For explanation and I'm not the cynic or contrarian even though some people assume this My role is not to dismiss my role is to be the honest broker of potential options And this is the second important concept That I learned Resonated with me from studying science and policy The honest broker is a concept taken from a book by Roger Pellke It integrates knowledge with public concern to provide possible alternatives It's a policy role that I adopted from my writing that provides alternatives and potential outcomes based on what factors We choose to apply to the issue and considering that things are complex in the world You have disparate audiences with different values among them. It's the role. I see is the most socially conscious Human decisions are best informed by science, but we have to take into account social issues emotions ethics Humanity perceptions fact and feeling or else it won't be broadly accepted So as an honest broker the options are expanded not restricted the thinking is open-minded not closed And it's a positive role Given array of options to think about one which may be accepting that we don't know and it's a good start towards compromise the honest broker role requires Experience and informed opinion about what is credible and valid or nonsense and if I don't have that experience for the subject I'll be honest. I Asked that others help me out crowdsourcing works We often get fantastic and informed input on DN stories and this additional input offers Those looking to decide for themselves a better array of options to consider based on science reason and sound evidence You aren't being food spoon-fed a story. You're being presented with the options. Should you choose to consider them? So it's not been easy to take this role Like I said many in the audience prefer only their confirmation of their beliefs And they don't want to hear anything that messes with their worldview and threatens their outlook. I Don't think that's honest, but I think this is the reasonable approach and it's right for me So with a voice of scientific skepticism and a role of honest broker here. I am doing my thing Why do it? Is it worth it? Those who advocate contrarian ideas or fringe views are actively seeking fertile ground for their seeds or weeds To germinate pseudoscience conspiracy junk science scams and hoaxes are being pushed on us every day all the time and many people fall for them And they sacrifice their health or mental well-being their money and their hope And I don't see how we can afford to just sit around and be neutral or passive about science and critical thinking It needs supporters and cheerleaders And I choose to be an advocate for critical thinking because I love the subject areas And I want to get the best answer and I don't want people to be fooled. I Think it's better for all of us in society if we don't buy into things that are untrue I mean how angry do you get when people aren't giving their children modern health care? You have two children die in a faith-healing family because their parents belong to a church that believed in God's will to heal What's it matter to you? They're not your kids It matters. I care about society as a whole What about when rhinos are killed for their horns and other animals are tortured or butchered to produce nonsense Chinese medicine treatments It matters. We're citizens of earth We have a responsibility and I get angry when people brush off those responsibilities for their own ends or market it with mistaken ideas Even just being the one to explain that a perceived experience with demons or ghosts or bigfoot may have an alternate Explanation is part of a responsibility If you know something about this topic Share it share the science-based alternative. They may choose to consider it or not And I wonder it like how many people would have been helped if they knew that Sleep paralysis was real. You know, they probably would have been less traumatized from their personal events So taking the skeptical perspective looking at the evidence is not one that will make you beloved or popular No matter how tactful you try to be you will make enemies of people who are just angry that you disagreed with them Or mad that the evidence you put out there undermines their claim that happens to me a lot like every day You'll get threats from those who think that disagreeing or uncovering errors and pointing out bad science is personal defamation They're afraid of losing their ground. So they attack you And you may become so outraged that you want to attack them Instead of the claim and that usually doesn't work out very well There's too much outrage theater in the world today.  We'd all do well to learn Okay, so time to wrap this up in a neat package for you to take home Your unique voice is important find what voice suits you and how to best use it and I advocate Demonstrating to the world that skeptic need not be the heartless mean Vemently objective slave to reason you are human you have feelings and values Acknowledge others values and worldview Let them have their own voice and they might be more willing to listen to yours Think about your goals and be true to yourself Not what someone else says you should be Be the honest broker and serve up multiple options in an understanding way and Provide a positive path with critical thinking and skeptical activism.  Thank you Sharon Hill ladies and gentlemen. Yes be inspired Congratulations


Hello and welcome to this session in which we will discuss the concept of standing data or data controls. What is this concept standing data controls? Well, it's a mechanism or policies and procedures that are put in place to manage and control the integrity, accuracy and consistency of something we call standing data within an organization information system. Now, what is data by itself data is any type of information that is collected and stored. It can take many forms. You can have numbers, text, images, videos, any form of digital or analog representation. However, standing data, also known as master data, refer to the core and persistent data element that are essential for business operation and decision making process. What would they include? This information include this data or the standing that standing data include information about customers, which is vital to the operation, suppliers, product, employees, financial account and other critical entities. This is what we mean by standing data. Think of it as the master data or data that's critical to the core operation of the business. What do we need to learn about the standing data controls? Well, we need to know what for what purpose do we have this controls? Why do we have to have controls and what type of controls do we have to have since this data is important? Now, overall, this topic is important for the CPA exam because every time you hear the word data, the CPA exam is covering data from different perspectives. So everything that you will see in this recording, you might touch upon in different sessions as we talk about data security, as we talk about change management. So some of it will be repeat of little bit before we proceed any further. I have a public announcement about my company, farhatlectures.com. Farhat Accounting Lectures is a supplemental educational tool that's going to help you with your CPA exam preparation as well as your accounting courses. My CPA material is aligned with your CPA review course, such as Becker, Roger, Wiley, Gleam, Miles. My accounting courses are aligned with your accounting courses broken down by chapter and topics. My resources consist of lectures, multiple choice questions, true-false questions, as well as exercises. Go ahead, start your free trial today. Let's go ahead and get started. So what is the purpose of the standing data controls? Well, it's to make sure the master data, that important data, remain reliable, up-to-date and consistent across different system and business units, especially if we have different system and they are not integrated, if we don't have an ERM, where we have different system, we have different business units. We want to make sure they're all up-to-date. It's easier when we have one integrated system. And these controls help maintain data quality. We want to have good data and prevent errors, mistake, duplication, inconsistencies that can occur during the manual data entry or system integration issues. Now, how can we have this standing data controls? What can we do? Well, we could have few tools. We could have data validation or steps. We could have data standardization. We could have data governance. We could have data security. We could have data integration, data management, change management, data auditing. And if you know anything about FARHAT, every time I have a list, what am I going to do? I'm going to go through each step in this list. Again, you're going to see, we already learned about some of those. Yes, we did. Repetition is important. Starting with data validation. What do we mean by data validation as part of the control? We want to make sure that the input is proper. Whatever we are adding to our data is proper. Implementing data validation checks for data entry or import processes to verify the accuracy, completeness and integrity. Is it accurate? Did we have everything? Is it integrity? Is it truthful data? Okay, this can include validating format, ranges, relationship between data elements. So simply put, for example, when a new customer is added to the database, we could have a data validation control to check to see if all the required fields are there. The name of the person, their address, their contact information, their tax ID, so on and so forth. It can also verify that the email follow a format, a specific format. For example, someone's name at a server.com or .edu or .gov that matches the address also matches the postal code of the selected country. This is data validation. And we talked about input data validation in another session, but same thing when we're verifying the data, that's part of it. Data standardization, establishing and enforcing data standard and naming conventions to ensure consistent and uniform representation of standing data across organization. Well, for example, an organization, it can be implemented through by, by naming everything the same. I'll give you a simple example. It's a really simple example. Nevertheless, it's a powerful example. For example, where I used to work at the university, the way we name a syllabus has to have the course code. It has to have the semester. It has to have this, you know, fall or spring. It has to have the year. So it's the course code semester year. Then the course ID. There's a course ID as well. So this is how then you'll have your initial in the name of the syllabus. So this is a naming convention. For example, all product names could be required to follow a specific format. For example, capital letters, followed by lowercase, no special character ensuring uniformity across different systems and department. That could be an example of data standardization. Another form of control is data governance. And we have a separate recording for this, but this is part of data control, implementing data governance practices and policies to the fine ownership, responsibilities and processes. Who's responsible for what? Who's responsible for this data? It's called a stewardship. Okay. Data governance control me assigning data steward responsible for maintaining and managing the accuracy. For example, of employee record, the data steward can oversee the processes such as verifying employees information during onboarding, making sure we have their full name, their address, their social security, emergency contact, updating records for job position changes, ensuring data quality by resolving any inconsistency inconsistencies or errors. So part of data governance, we have an individual responsible for making sure everything is, is proper security data security. Those two topics are very important data by itself and security by itself, but combining data and security and you know, cyber security data, it's even more important. So implementing access control, not giving access to data, but to anyone and data security measures to protect. That's the whole purpose, standing data from unauthorized access. Remember, we want to protect this standing data from modification or disclosure. Again, this here we might involve defining users role who are responsible for what, who can access what, implementing encryption techniques, which we'll talk about that's in a separate session. When we talk about security, monitoring data access and changes. So to protect financial accounting information, data security control can be implemented such as role based access control. What does that mean? It means only the people responsible should be able to view the data or change the data only authorized finance personnel should have access to the sensitive financial data while other employees are restricted from viewing or modifying that data. Another, another, another procedure is data integration. This is establishing mechanism to integrate standing data across all across the organization through different systems and application, because in a company, again, they might have different system, company A might buy company B, C and D, and they have different system, but now they have to be part of the same company. So they have to communicate. This is to ensure consistency and eliminate duplication. This involved data integration tools, data mapping, we talk about this in a separate session, data synchronization processes. For example, an organization uses a different software system for their CRM and accounting system. Well, data integration can be established to synchronize customer data between these system. So if they are using, you know, different CRM, customer, the way they maintain the database and of their customers and the accounting system may not be the same. Therefore, they have to find a way to integrate this data. Therefore, they are synchronized. So whenever a new customer is added or existing customer details are updated in the CRM, the integration control ensures that the changes are reflected accurately as well in the accounting system. Change management. That's a big topic. We have, you know, separate recording about change management, but we're talking about change management within data, data control, implementing a change management processes to control and document changes to standing data. Who can, who can change the standing data? We should have a policy change management. This includes defining change request procedures. Who can request how much they can change conducting impact assessment? If we make a change, what is the impact? What's the impact on other parts of the data, obtaining proper approval before modifying standing data? This is, this is all about change management. You cannot make a change unless we have proper procedure. So not everyone is changing the data whenever they want to. So for example, when a product's price is updated, change management control can be implemented to ensure proper handling of the change. For example, a change request must be submitted, including detail of the price update and its effective date. That request will go through an approval process. And once approved, the change implemented systematically across a relevant system. This is part of change management. Changing a price is very simple. Sometime you might have to change the software or some features in the software and that's required more security procedures and approval. Data auditing while conducting regular audits and reviews of the standing data to make sure everything is good, to identify and resolve data quality issues, inconsistencies or anomalies. Just take a look at the data every once in a while, run through it, run some statistics to see everything looks good. This help ensure ongoing data accuracy and integrity. Okay, your regular data update can be conducted to ensure accuracy and integrity. That says it's always good if the system is working. Regular audit, go back and review, make sure it's still working. For instance, an audit might involve comparing customer records across different databases or system to identify and resolve any discrepancies or duplicate entries. Well, you're saying, you know, we should have the same information across the system. Well, let's test this. Let's make sure it's working as you are claiming it's working. So all of those are tools for what purpose to protect the purpose of this whole session is to ensure that master data, that important data remain reliable, up-to-date and consistent across organization by implementing data validation, data standardization, data governance, data security, data integration, change management and data auditing. What should you do now? Go to far hat lectures, practice some MCQs just to kind of know the difference between data validation versus data integration, which will help you do what do better on the CPA exam. Good luck, study hard. I'm always here for you and stay safe.


Yeah, so our next speaker is Gautam. So we'll be talking about, it has a journey to generate you, and we can work with Matt luckily. So what do you Gautam know? Great, thank you, Gayan, and thank you to all of the volunteers for putting this conference on. I caught a little bit of the last talk. It sounded absolutely fascinating and reminded me that I need to work on the documentation for this project. But I'm happy to talk to you today about a haphazard journey I've taken to a generative art Twitter bot using Mattplotlib. It's work that's been sort of two years in the making and still somewhat a work in progress, but this animation that you see on the screen is an example of one of the pieces that the Twitter bot has created. So a little bit about myself. My name's Gautam Cisodia. I live and work in New York City. I'm a six-year-old data scientist and a two-and-a-half-year-old parent, and the parent part is relevant as you'll see in a couple of slides. I work for the state of New York, but all of the work that I'll show here was done purely in a personal capacity. An outline of talk, so I'll start with what it is I'm talking about, move on to why I created these things and then a bit about how I did so, the up-and-down journey to getting to where I am, some examples of the pieces that the bot has created and a bit about the code. Okay, so first of all, what am I talking about? A bit of some background terminology. So when I say tiling, I mean a collection of shapes which I call tiles that fit together with no gaps and no overlaps, so this picture here is an example of that. I'm gonna be completely focused on the tidings that are made up of square and equilateral triangle tiles and the ones that are symmetric. And by symmetric, I mean in the center, there's either gonna be a single tile square or triangle or six triangles together as a hexagon, which is here, and then all of the tiles around it are symmetric around that center tile. So what is it that I've built here? So one is a Python library to make and draw these tidings. Here's an example of the code to actually build one of these things. You specify a tiling sequence and I'll talk more about what that is. And then there's a function for adding tidings and it spits out things like animations of that tiling being built. And then a Twitter bot that posts an animation of such a tiling daily. So here's an example from August 11th of this year. So that's what it is onto why so as I mentioned, I'm a two and a half year old parent first couple of years of childcare I found where often it was a mix of both being trying to be very alert because I was always afraid that my kid was gonna hurt himself somehow, but then also somewhat being bored because he wasn't doing too much. He was sort of exploring the world around him, the toys and the books, but in practicality that meant that he was sort of picking up a toy and throwing it against the wall and then picking up another toy. You're asking me to read the same book over and over and over and over again. So in that strange mix of feelings that became fascinated by this, this toy that he has which is a set of these plastic shapes that are magnetic on the edges. And so they fit together and you can make all sorts of really interesting things with it. It became fascinated by just how many different ways that we're of putting, or actually it was like one way that I kept going back to, to putting these squares and these triangles together to make a tiling. And it wasn't obvious to me that there should be any way to put squares and triangles together to make a tiling. I understood you can put all squares together and make a grid and you can do a similar thing with all triangles, but the fact that you can have like both of them together and to fit together and no gaps and overlaps and to cover a large space that was really fascinating to me. And it may be wondered just how many different ways are there to tile with squares and triangles. And around the same time, I stumbled across Twitter accounts slash bots that created this generative art. This is one of my favorite accounts, it's not a bot. As far as I know, it seems like a real person who creates these generative art pieces. And by generative art, I mean any sort of visual graphical thing that's created by code. Okay, so some points about how. So my first attempt, so I have got this question. How many different ways are there of tiling with squares and triangles? My first attempt, I was thinking about it, okay, I'm gonna try and code something up in Python. Do you try and answer this? Maybe come up with all the different ways of tiling with squares and triangles. My first attempt, I turned Shapely, which is a Python library open source for geometric manipulations. It's an incredible library. You can do things like define really complicated shapes. You can put shapes together and union them to create new shapes. You can take the intersection of two shapes, so the shape that's sort of the shared area. And you can do things like how can I area and calculate the edge of a shape. There's quite a lot that you can do with this library and it seems like something that should work here. So given the tiling, it tells me what the edges are. I pick an edge, I add a new tile, so on and so forth. And that worked up to a point. So on the left is an example of a tiling that I used creating this sort of heavily relying on Shapely. On the right is, well, the green is sort of the interior of the shape as Shapely understands it to be and the black line is the edge of the full tiling as Shapely understands it to be. And you may notice that these triangle tiles are actually Shapely believes they're separated from the tiling, which is indicated by this black line here. And this really throws off my algorithm because now it thinks that, hey, there's an edge here to the tiling. I can try and add a shape here or it tries to add a shape and now it overlaps with the shape that's already there. You can understand that. This can throw off a naive algorithm like the one I wrote. I don't know exactly why that's happening. I believe it's because when Shapely is making its calculations for where the edge is or when it adds a new tile to its tiling, it's making floating point calculations, which have slight errors that sort of add up as the tiling gets larger and eventually lead to situations where it adds a tile but not quite exactly where the shape is and then that throws off my algorithm. I tried a few different things to try to address this. Nothing really worked and became pretty frustrated and put this aside for months. But I kept thinking about it a few months later. I had this idea. Maybe Shapely wasn't the right tool for the job here. Shapely is generally used, well, it's often used for mapping. It's used to define more complicated shapes like the boundaries of countries and to do intersections and unions of those pretty complicated shapes. That's not really the situation I'm in here. It's not complicated in that same kind of way. Triangles can only be adjacent to, and by adjacent I mean two tiles that are attached that share an edge. Triangle can only be adjacent to three other tiles. A square tile can only be adjacent to four other tiles and there's very specific ways in which they can be adjacent. It got me thinking of an approach that was perhaps more discrete than Shapely. The idea is something like think of each tile as a vertex in a graph and the adjacent tiles. Two vertices are connected by an edge if they're adjacent. The animation on the left shows a picture of what that would look like. Each tile is a vertex, one of these purple dots and then the pink line connects two tiles that are adjacent to each other. The thinking is, well, if I can define what these discrete graphs could possibly be, then maybe I can take a graph and then from the graph actually draw the tiling. Then it became a matter of understanding, well, what are all of the constraints on such a graph? One would be, if you've got a square tile, it can only connect to four other tiles, which is what this diagram here represents. Just to know about what the vertices here, the way I'm calling them, there's a letter S or T, which means square or triangle, which indicates the different tiles. This is an okay situation. Similarly for a triangle connected to three other tiles, that's an okay situation. This, however, is not okay. Here I've got one square that's connected to four other squares. That's fine, but those four other squares are connected to another tile and that's not possible. There are situations like this which I just couldn't wrap my head around. What is a nice, clean way to denote that there are these constraints on the graph? I couldn't think of ways to do that and got frustrated again, put it aside, thought that maybe I was a data scientist because I wasn't good enough at the math or the computer science. I left it for a few months and then came back to it with another idea. I thought maybe I could do some sort of combination of approaches, the discrete and the continuous. The idea is that to define a tile, what the tile is, how to exactly draw it. I'm only using squares and triangles. You need to know where the center is. You need to know what kind of tile it is, a square or a triangle. You need to know where one of the vertices is of the points on the edge of the tile. That's enough to define how to exactly draw that tile. For two adjacent tiles, the centers of the tiles can only be in very specific configurations. If you know if you have a square, then if it's adjacent to another square or another triangle, the centers are exact distances apart and same with two triangles. Given a square, you can figure out where all of the possible centers are of all the possible adjacent tiles. Given a tile or a tiling, all the possible adjacent tiles, I call those child tiles. The approach is something like, you start with a tile, where its center is in the edges. It's what you use to define the tile. You can figure out all the possible child tiles by calculating where all of the possible centers are for the adjacent tiles.  I think of this as a hybrid approach between the continuous and the discrete. It's not purely discrete, because it's not just thinking about the graph. I'm actually calculating geometric things, distances between centers, but it's not a purely continuous thing, because I'm only using the center and the edge, those two points, and what type of tile it is to draw the tile. The animation is something like some depiction of that approach. Here's an example, again, of how you can use this library to create the tiling. One of the interesting things that happens here, is that there are configurations where you can't actually continue the tiling. Here's an example of that. If you've got this configuration of four tiles here, these three squares, and then a triangle, and then a square, this area here, there's actually no way to fill that in with no gaps and overlaps, with just squares and triangles. If we just take this part here, these four squares, to fill this part in, you need a square, but to fill this part in with this triangle and two squares, you need two triangles. There's no way to fill that in, so the algorithm gets stuck at something like this. The algorithm is recursive, so if it does get stuck, it'll go back to a previous step and try and add a different tile to get past this block. In practice, that can actually take a long time. What the algorithm does, and now it's slight modification, is that it actually looks forward a little bit and makes sure that if there's a prospective tile that it wants to add to the sequence, for all of the edges of that tile, is there a potential tile that will fit in the tiling? It does a bit of a look ahead, but this situation here, you can actually extend sort of as arbitrarily long as you want. If you just keep adding squares here and then one square down like that, that's also a configuration that will be stuck. You can't fill that area in with just squares and triangles. This is just one example of a situation which you can actually extend to be arbitrarily long. Some examples of the Twitter bot in action, this was the animation for August 9th. The way the Twitter bot works is it uses this library to create an animation post it to Twitter, and it does it once a day roughly. This is an example of where it got stuck. The animation is showing the tiling being built in sequence, sort of the algorithm in action, and you'll notice that here it gets stuck and then it's trying different tiles to see what works. You can perhaps notice from this that it's actually going to take a little while to figure it out. This is an example of the most squares. This was on July 16th. As I mentioned, you can actually tile with just squares and just triangles. It's never so far down just squares or just triangles. This is the time where it got closest to most squares and this is the time it got closest to all triangles on May 20th of this year, which got me interested. I look for the most balanced one, balanced in terms of a close to equal number of squares and triangles. What's interesting about this though is that it actually looks visually that there's more squares, but I think that's because squares are actually larger in area than triangles. I wonder if I should actually look for more balanced in terms of area, not number of tiles. This was on May 17th. I also got me wondering, I was actually thinking about what are sort of the most visually attractive tilings or appealing. This is interesting, but it's not really visually appealing to me. I couldn't really put my hands on what it really means in a practical sense or in a very concrete sense, what it means to be visually appealing. Maybe I can use the Twitter stats somehow. Take a look at which of the tweets were most favorited or retweeted, maybe that'll give a sense of what people think is the most visually attractive or appealing. Some stats. When did it go viral? From April 24th to August 26th this year, there's been 141 tweets, there's been zero retweets, and only one was favorited, and that was by a friend who was amused by the example where it was almost all squares. Has not gone viral yet, maybe one of these days it will, but the easiest data science questions are the ones where there's no data at all. Just a little bit about the code. The way the code is set up is there's different levels of abstraction at the lowest level is a point. I actually sort of define a point just from the very basics from the coordinates. There are, of course, many libraries, including Shapely that define points that I could have used, but sometimes it's fun to define things from the ground up by yourself. So there's a couple of different kinds of points here. There's a Cartesian way of defining the point x and y coordinates. You can calculate the distance to some other point. You can convert it to polar, which is useful when you're doing things like rotating a point around to find all of the vertex points of a tile. It has a Shapely geometry point, a representation that you can access. You can work with Shapely. The next level up is a tile, and you can define a tile based on the center and the vertex points, as I mentioned. It's got a list of child tiles. This is for this example. This is the first child tile in the list. It's got a polygon representation. That's a Shapely geometry polygon, so you can work with Shapely with these tiles. The next level up is a tiling. This is essentially just a sequence of tiles. In this example, I take the tile example I had before, plus the first child tile of that and the first child tile of that, as my list of tiles here, and then you can do things like plot it. It's got functions that you try to figure out if you have some other tile in the tiling. Is it compatible with the tiling? Are there no gaps and overlaps if you were to add it to the tiling? Things like that. The highest level up is a sequence of tiles. I've shown you this example before of what the code looks like. This is the tiling sequence. It also has the code for tweeting out the animation. I note on some of the libraries used, so all open source mapplotlib used for plotting. Hopefully, your mapplotlib is maybe the most standard library used for data visualization. Hopefully, this gives you a sense of a way that you can use mapplotlib that's out of that normal use case. Shapely for defining shapes. As I mentioned, Descartes is a library for plotting shapely objects in mapplotlib. NumPy for the numerical calculations. Tweepy is the library I use for tweeting, which requires a Twitter API key. And Google Cloud Storage, a Python library for interacting with Google Cloud. I use Google Cloud just to store the tweets and the metadata that the bots created. That requires a Google Cloud key to use. All of these are open source and heavily relied upon. Just a quick note about hardware requirements. The daily pipeline takes about three minutes on GitLab shared runners. And these are computers with 3.75 gigabytes of RAM. And the pipeline does a few things. It clones the repo, installs a package, makes a tiling, runs the algorithm for 70 steps or so, makes an animation post that saves it to Google Cloud Storage. So it's doing quite a few things. Just to give you a sense of how long it actually takes. And the generated animations are about two megabytes in size. So not particularly expensive. Okay. Thank you. So yeah, I think, you know, one of my takeaways here is that Python is a pretty incredible tool for just answering questions that just come from my curiosity. So the original question was how many tiles are there? How many tidings are there? I haven't answered that question yet. I know that there's a whole subject in math around tidings, but I never bothered to pick up a textbook. I just thought it would be more fun to code it. But what the Twitter bot, I think, has shown is that there are many, many more ways of tiling with squares and triangles than I imagined. So thank you again for the volunteers, and thank you all for listening to the talk. I'm happy to take any questions.


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