Proto-Indo-European comes up a lot in my videos. Peck, my very first two videos were both about PIE, but in case you don't know, linguists believe that a huge group of the world's languages are all descended from one common ancestor. This group includes almost all of the languages of Europe and like a third of the languages of Asia, mostly around Iran and India, so the group of languages are collectively called the Indo-European languages. And the language that they're all descended from is called Proto-Indo-European. Thing is, linguists don't believe any of this because we have written records of PIE. They believe it because and only because all of the languages of this region are so similar that it's the only reasonable explanation. The original Proto-Indo-Europeans didn't leave anything behind. Well, okay, they probably did, but they might have been any number of ancient groups of people who left behind a bunch of pottery and stuff. And all you have to do to start a fight between linguists is ask them whether the original Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in modern-day Russia or Turkey. And yet, that doesn't at all mean that we don't know anything about who these people were. Linguists will love telling you how important language is to culture and human society and how it's a reflection of how we see the world. But I don't think there's any better example of this than how we figured out so much about the Proto-Indo-European people just based on their language. For instance, if you remember my last video, you'll know that, in general, English words with an h-h-h sound tend to correspond to Spanish words with a k-k-th sound. Because early in the history of English, all k-k-th sounds turned into h-h-h sounds. But the word computer corresponds to the only barely different Spanish computadora, indicating that one language came up with the term and then it spread to the other after English went through that change. Which means the word computer had to be created after the change English went through, which means the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably didn't have computers. Meanwhile, the Spanish word casa corresponds to the English word house, suggesting that the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably did have a word for house and therefore probably had houses. Now, those two things are pretty obvious, but we can actually use similar strategies to figure out a lot about Proto-Indo-European culture. At the very least, we can figure out what kind of technology they had. We can successfully reconstruct PIE words for wheel, hub, and axle, indicating that they had wheeled vehicles like wagons and such. They also had words for yoke and fill, and also words for cow, steer, ox, and bull, indicating that they had domesticated cattle and that they used them to plow their fields. And yes, we also know that they could farm. They had words for field, for wheat, for barley, and also words for threshing and grinding grain. We also know that they used their cattle for dairy, as they had words for milk, butter, and curds. Although those dairy products might also have come from goats, because they also had a word for goat, as well as sheep, ram, lamb, dog, and horse. They also had words for wool, as well as a verb for to weave, indicating that they knew how to make their own textiles out of wool. We don't know too much about what they would have eaten, but they did have words for oven, to cook, to bake, and to boil, so we know they were making something out of something. They also had words for to brew and a word for mead, so we also know that they were definitely drinking something or another. Interestingly, they had a word for door, but in the daughter languages, the word door usually comes in the form that words take when you're talking about two of something, which indicates that their doors might have usually come in pairs of two. They definitely had words for houses and buildings, but we don't know much about what they would have been like. We do know one thing about them, though, because their word for roof also became verbs, meaning to thatch in some daughter languages, suggesting that they might have tended to have thatched roofs. Also, we can reconstruct two different PIE words that both meant to fart, one that meant to fart loudly, and the other that meant to fart softly. The last one doesn't actually have anything to do with anything. I just thought it was kind of funny. Okay, so we can learn about their material culture through the vocabulary, but can we also maybe learn about the way they saw the world through their language? The ancient Greeks had a word, I knew my, that meant to take, and it's pretty clearly a cognate with the Tocharian I to give.  You find examples of this kind of thing a fair amount in Indo-European languages, where words that mean to take in one language have a common ancestor with words that mean to give in another. This is pretty hard to explain until you consider one intriguing possibility. What if the Proto-Indo-Europeans thought of the two as the same? Many modern linguists believe that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had this idea of mutual gift-giving, the idea that when one person gives someone else something, both of them expect that the receiver will have to give something back to the giver in return, to the extent that neither action can really be viewed separately, and that they are, in fact, two aspects of the same event. But that's just the first thing we can figure out about how the Proto-Indo-Europeans envisioned their own society. The Proto-Indo-Europeans had words for close family relations, just like any other language. Father, mother, brother, sister, etc. They also had words that meant son's wife and brother's wife, but not words for daughter's husband or sister's husband. They also had words for husband's father, husband's mother, and husband's brother, but not words for wife's father, wife's mother, or wife's sister. All this indicates that the way they saw things, when a woman marries a man, she is now a family member to his whole family, but the husband isn't a family member to her family. But when a marriage occurs, the wife leaves her family to go to her husband's family, not the other way around. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that their society was incredibly patriarchal, or at least it wouldn't if not for the fact that there is a very clear, easily reconstructable Proto-Indo-European word for bride price. And when you combine that with the Proto-Indo-European idea of reciprocity and mutual gift-giving, you can kind of start to see the whole thing as two aspects of one exchange and get a bit of a sense for how the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably viewed women. On a less chauvinistic note, my favorite part of all this is how we can get an idea of how they viewed the place of humans in the universe. Many words for human and Indo-European languages originate from a Proto-Indo-European word, meaning earth or land, indicating that they thought of humans as fundamentally earthly. Furthermore, Indo-European cultures widely use the same word to mean both human and mortal, indicating that the Proto-Indo-Europeans thought of humans as also inherently mortal. Both of these things are likely meant to be in contrast with things that are neither mortal nor earthly, as in gods. Now, we can't reconstruct too much about Proto-Indo-European religion. Most Indo-European societies originally believed in a pantheon of many gods, so the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably did too. But beyond that, we don't have too much to go on. Here's one interesting tidbit, though. The speakers of Vedic Sanskrit believed in a powerful entity they called Dieus Peter. The Greeks originally referred to Zeus by the name Zeu-Pater, and the Romans originally called their god Jupiter by the name Eupeter. All of these phrases can confidently be said to have come from a single name for a supreme god in Proto-Indo-European religion, a god whose name literally translates as Skyfather. Keep in mind how patriarchal Proto-Indo-European society was. Given how they saw women, you can bet that the father of the household was the household's head, so the idea that the universe was headed by an entity who was a sort of father to the whole world and who resided in the sky must have made sense to them, as if the cosmos was a sort of macrocosm of the home. Now, if you take other stuff into account, you can infer even more about Proto-Indo-European society. For instance, many scholars have noticed how numerous Proto-Indo-European people divide their societies into three groups, the warriors, the priests, and the commoners, and have suggested that the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably also had such a division. However, others think that this division might have originally just been a sort of idea or a conceptualization of their own society, that at the time didn't actually affect their day-to-day behavior. Either way, though, I just think it's one of the coolest achievements of modern linguistics that we've managed to learn so much about these people. That despite the fact that we have almost no idea where they might have lived or when, despite the fact that we have no written records or pictures or even pottery or ruins that we can confidently associate with them, despite all that, we've managed to look only at the words they left behind for us, and we've used those words as a window into their thoughts and feelings in a way clay pots or brick houses never could have. Catch me later for more linguistics videos! Quiet, you get back...


Almost six years ago to the day American citizens were under attack in what came to be known as the Benghazi terror attack. Yesterday in Little Falls the American Legion post-255 honored the fallen heroes from that day in 2012. Anthony Scott has the story. That no one is truly gone until they are forgotten. And thanks to a memorial from the American Legion riders of post-255, retired Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glendority along with U.S. diplomat Sean Smith and U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens will never be forgotten. The four men were killed during the Benghazi terror attacks and on Sunday a memorial was unveiled celebrating and remembering their service. There was only one memorial in the entire country to that. So the four heroes at that day had been Benghazi and we felt like something had to be done to recognize them so they don't get forgotten along the way. On September 11th and 12th 2012 an Islamic militant group attacked the American diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in Benghazi. The attack killed Stevens, Woods, Smith and Doherty. However thanks to their sacrifice many others were able to evacuate and survive the attack. The nation that forgets it's fallen will itself be forgotten. And that's what it's all about. We need to remember those that have sacrificed for us. So it's right on the bench greater love, no man. The American Legion riders of post-255 felt as though it was their duty to have a memorial for the heroes of the Benghazi terror attack. That's what the Legion does. We support veterans. We support veterans' families. We support their children. Whether it's by writing for a fundraiser, standing here with this, holding a flag for a fallen comrade or whatever it is we do. We continue to serve. The result of the Legion's work is a granite bench memorial that is one of a kind. There is not another tribute to these for our public property anywhere in the United States except for the one you see here today. The ceremony for the unveiling was greeted with immense support from American Legion riders and many other members in the community. The flag line was just awesome to see that many flags. I don't even know how many there were but I assume there was 40 or 50 flags out there. It's just awesome to be part of that. The granite bench memorializes the four men who lost their life during the Benghazi terror attack in 2012 and it will continue to serve as a thank you to their service and sacrifice. Reporting from Little Falls, Anthony Scott, Lakeland News. The memorial can be viewed at the Minnesota State Veteran's Cemetery in Little Falls.


Um, I don't think so. I don't think, um, you know, as it stands now with the wills availability and you know, we'll get him back this week. Um, but I thought that Malik took a, took a big step yesterday. Unfortunately, you know, you have the, the turnovers, but again, there was, um, a lot of cool stuff that happened after that. And I wouldn't say that we were great, uh, in front of them. I thought our receivers, um, showed up and did, did a nice job. Most of the, most of the night, uh, Malik has to make some better decisions and then we'll see where wills out here this week. What's an opportunity for will just to not have had these last couple games?  Um, but for, for young quarterbacks, they have to be able to, to play in football games and whether that's preseason games, it's, it's where you develop. So, you know, we've got to try to get him, get him ready to go here, uh, through practice now. On Wednesday, but have you liked what you've seen from him, you know, outside of the practice field? Um, yeah.  I think that arm talent is there. It's, you know, but it's making decisions and knowing that you don't have, I think one thing that you learned or I saw last night is Malik was able to speed up his process. Probably a little bit too quick, I think on the one there to Wiley. Um, but he's kind of realizing that this is game speed. These guys are rushing and figuring out what's going on and looking and progressing one, two and getting out of pocket. Did a nice job keeping his eyes down the field. So I think that's the thing where we'll, uh, can get those throws, but that the actual live pass rush, uh, feeling that in practice is going to be different. I mean, in these releases, you intend to have everybody back on the practice field or, or what do you notify some guys before that? There may be some players that'll that that will let know before Tuesday, but you know, we'll practice and do some things tomorrow. We'll practice Monday and we'll have all four on Tuesday. And work our way through the claiming period, work our way through the practice squad and, you know, try to practice it, you know, 1230, uh, Wednesday, first time out since 2021, I guess. It was good to see him back out there. Did some things. You know, he's got focus on some pad level and it didn't have a ton of opportunities, but, you know, played hard. I thought he had good speed. It was you know, got him different spots and drop in and edge of the line of scrimmaging. So, but I thought that was good just to get him back out there. Just what did you see from those young guys, details last night? Is that kind of? Yeah, I think that's kind of still there. I think they all, you know, probably contributed to, you know, a mental mistake here and there, whether it was a route where there was a formation, but it was good to see them, you know, catch the ball. It was good to see Colton, you know, catch one in stride below his waist on third down. It was good to see, you know, Kiers, you know, kind of show up and, and playing fast and Tray Sean does some things. So they're all got some opportunities last night and I thought they improved from, from where we were in Minnesota. How far has Colton come from, from the beginning as a small school guy? Well, I kind of, I felt like it was coming along and then just kind of the setback, you know, would not be able to play in the game.  That's why these preseason opportunities are so important for, for these young guys and, but he's always willing. He's very coachable. You see him play with great effort in a run game and turn in and try to block guys and finish. So anytime that these guys can get opportunities out there and see different coverages, see different, you know, defenses, I think it's great. Justin Murray got a couple of series with the first group on the offensive line. How did he do and how's the right tackle position overall kind of shaping that? Well, I mean, I think just that group, you know, as a whole, you know, we have to, we have to start better and then we need to, you know, make sure that we're, we're improving and whether we game plan for the, what New England was in, that's, that doesn't matter. We need to go out and play better and use our rules and block better and, you know, finish better. So I would say that that entire group has to have a big week.  Quite a bit. You know, I mean, there's certainly things that we want to see coming out of each game or that I would like to see. And so we give him opportunities to do those things. Also, like you mentioned, you know, having played limited snaps last year, 47 or however many snaps that he played, certainly part of it. Did you see what you wanted to see?  And as we work through, you know, some different runs and being able to, you know, some of the stuff that I think we should be able to nail no matter what it is we've been running it since May. You know, we got to be able to get and get going and block it better. Some of the new ones I get. Okay, we see a different look and this happens, but I would just say that that group in general, like we have to have a great week. When you look at the wide receiver room and guys fighting for jobs, typically special teams is a huge priority there for those last few spots. With some of the guys banged up in the room, does it potentially shift what you value and guys that get elevated or land on the 53? There would be a lot of those things that we go through here in the next couple days with ran and myself and his staff and the coaching staff. But special teams is a critical element. You look at who you can develop. Where are they going to do on game day? Are they going to have a helmet? Do you feel like they can can have they continue to improve? And they do they make the same mistake twice? And you know, is this somebody that has continued to develop and you have a vision for so there's a lot of things that go to the last spot and, you know, trying to find some of those guys that do play special teams, Kiers had some returns. He didn't have an opportunity for a kickoff return. But you know, I had a couple part returns there. So okay, yeah, I mean, it hasn't been like, you know, I wouldn't say he's like one of our core special teams players right now. But, you know, sometimes for those players that didn't maybe play a lot of special teams in college and where it's a different, you know, we're asking them to do something different. He's you know, looking to try to find a role there as well. Autry is a guy you point to for the younger players. But alongside him, Jeffrey Simmons, like how much does he really embody? You know, what you guys want to do as a Titans player? Well, it makes my job easy.  Delaney Walker was here the other day.  And but Jeff is certainly on the field, off the field in the locker room, his presence and leadership. And yeah, it's you know, we ask a lot of them.  Yeah, I don't know if proud is necessarily you know, I think I have a, you know, very good relationship with Jeff. Again, we all make mistakes. And so when you look at that, it's, you know, is it a mistake or are they a bad person? And I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that did Jeff Simmons is a is a great person. He cares about his teammates. He cares about our fans. He cares about this organization. So you know, we just have to continue to try to find players as many players like that as we can. Josh Wiley's camp, I guess, and the one pick last night, I don't know if you got another look at it. Is that one that he needs to have? Or is that behind him? I think I addressed that that's probably, you know, not where we want to put the football, probably progress on and throw to Nick Westbrook is 10 feet, 12 feet to his left with a lot of skill guys said they thought the turf was fast. A lot of skill guys said they thought the turf was was fast. Is there a question mark at the end of that? I can hear you. I can look at John and look at I could look and listen at the same time. A lot of skill guys said they thought the turf was fast. I'm wondering if you thought there was any difference to the way I felt when I had to run down here and get that time out called I felt faster than heck. So was it weird to step onto it after it was certainly different? I thought the field was great. I thought it was amazing. I thought it felt really good. Again, you know, I didn't time myself but I got down there. I got that time out called there at the end of the first half. You know, from a temperature standpoint, fantastic product to to be able to play games here when when it's 100 degrees and not have the field be, you know, 130 You get a lot of coconut shells in your shoes. I don't think so. What do you think your toughest decisions are most competitive positions where you're going to wrestle with decisions?  I'll show you these games are important. There's guys that you know, Steven Jones has showed up in the last two games, right? Where maybe in practice it was, you know, but then you go out and he puts his, you know, PBU's and keeps doing that thing or Anthony Kendall, they told you about the special team stuff that's hard to recreate.  It doesn't matter who we're playing or who's on the other side that there's certain things that we're looking for at each level. Aziz Alshair, how do you like the way he's come in and just kind of, you know, been able to take on a role on your defense? Well, looking for opportunity. He found one here and love his leadership and you know, he's got a play demeanor that I appreciate and he runs to the football and you know, so hopefully, you know, can continue to be productive for us and you know, but I like to love his leadership, love his, you know, demeanor around the building. The communication, you know, we always talk about the communication offense. Yeah, well, the linebackers have to be able to talk up front and then, you know, be able to relay things to the secondary or get a call from the secondary and tie that all in. So seemed, you know, I haven't seen any problem with it. I think it's good. I think those guys are all communicating and, you know, working with each other, whether it's a check or it's, you know, Gibby or anybody else that's in there with Aziz. Several of the guys who started last night on defense said it was important for them to play that game, to work on communication and kind of lay the foundation. How do you think they did in their time last night? I thought we did, you know, for what they did and what we asked them to do.  So I usually can find them. So we did and but I thought that there was some cool stuff that just in our base defenses and coverages that they recognized and, you know, did a nice job on third down or, you know, guys not getting picked going across the middle, playing to the leverage, you know, talk to SMB about the penalty, like the quarterbacks out of the pocket, you know, hit them, you can you can jam them more than five yards, but you can't hold them. Not missing that opportunity, just finding those things to try to coach from. But I thought that they all prepared to play in a football game and and went out with with the right attitude. Obviously next, and you got some guys now here that won't be around next week. What are you, how do you structure this week? Maybe how do you transition to to Saints? We'll probably do that here at the end of the week, you know, target that Wednesday and Thursday and try to, you know, compete still against us and get the roster where it needs to get to and then try to have a couple of days with with the Saints. Mike, Derek, how are you going into this season with what he's accomplished for you and for this team? What, what, you know, similar to what Jeff does on defense, what kind of tone has he helped set for this team as a whole, especially on offense? Well, I mean, we've relied, you know, on Derek is the large part of our offense and our success. And he's had a level of consistency, you know, to be able to handle a workload. Thought he had a good camp. We probably, you know, wanted to see him. I wanted to see him work a little bit and deal just within our offense and some of the changes and the terminology and some of the runs. So I thought he's continued to work, stay in shape and and then be able to work in our offense and, you know, some of the things that we've added. Yeah, I think so.  Going through a preseason and actually seeing how they work on the sideline or in the booth, you're pretty, pretty pleased with all the changes at this point?  You know, Justin's upstairs.  We got a long, long way to go. We prepare, but I'm so far, so good. How about you? How about check? Like you expecting to check back? Expect them all back at some point. I would imagine that chick will be with us this week. That's good. Thank you.


I think that's interesting though. I have never heard of that before. Always taught to find the scenes, right? I have never heard it. You almost do it on instinct when you catch the basketball. And that's what we heard Roger Wiley tell us. For the basket, Malaysia full Wiley. See the beautiful take. He said our team loved to put it on the floor. It just isn't. Donnie style. I think you can wear anything well my friend. Oh today. Yes, I mean anything. Let's get a shot of his shoes. Inside the aforementioned Jada win now up to 10 points in the tournament. She's averaged almost 13 points a game. And then full Wiley and other defensive play. She steals it. Full Wiley from Keeneley School in Columbia, South Carolina lays it in after the steals defense to offense. From them, how can they try and mix up the defense to still maintain what they're doing with their short bench? Jada win for three. Offensive rebound. Kaitlyn Dever taken away by Anila Nelson. Nelson. In transition. Great finish. Someone's got to stop the ball. I mean, I know it's it's easier said than done. Full Wiley. Down low two defenders collage on Watkins. She finds the open pair for a three true Alexander. Great read by Watkins, Donnie. Such a great pass. Nine point advantage. This is quarterfinal action. There will be a semi-finals. Both semi-finals and a final tomorrow. In the U.S. and the international girls' brackets. Harris Smith into the game for the first time. She just had a block shot inside. Number 19 for southeast. Northwest heads the other way. Taylor Campbell out in front. Campbell up. No good. A big moment could have trimmed it down to a seven point game. Centering to break here is Ty Meyers and she'll take it all the way there herself. Northwest have been using that a lot. They get the ball to the post and then a nice dive right up the gut by Jada Wynn. Paul King, big three. Every time that Northwest has had just a little flicker of hope here in the fourth quarter. I don't know how you have 22 turnovers and you overcome that and you win. Well, actually I do. You have one of the best shot blockers at this age. I think I've ever seen in my life. And offensively in transition the way they could push the tempo. This is a balanced team. Along with one of the best players in Ashland Watkins. And Ashland Watkins from Columbia, South Carolina and this team from Columbia, South Carolina is moving on.


Block Show America's 2018 kicked off in Las Vegas on August 20th, gathering over 1,500 attendees and 80 speakers from the blockchain industry, coming from more than 50 countries worldwide, to discuss the hottest topics that affect the blockchain community. The main stage brought into focus governmental initiatives, blockchain's impact on major industries, and the latest updates on technological and legal aspects. While the second stage provided a forum for ideas and conflicting opinions, our companies and global experts challenged each other's positions. The conference hosts industry leaders and professionals who shed light on the destructive nature of blockchain in the fields of AI, advertisement, real estate, and more. Johanna Masca, ex-head of the White House Press Advance for President Barack Obama, delivered a speech on the possibility of strengthening democracy with blockchain. In a panel discussion later on about this theme, Stevens, co-founder and treasurer at Democracy Earth Foundation, argued blockchain could be a way to curb corruption. While Dmitri Metzkiewicz, the CEO and co-founder of Dbrain, noted true democracy is about distributing power and how widespread access to technology could facilitate this. Bobby Lee, board member of the Bitcoin Foundation and co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange BTCC, spoke about how crypto could bring about the freedom of money and how, in the current centralized system, financial institutions and regulators are the ones in complete control. Lee went on to outline the top four mistakes to avoid in crypto investments, indecisiveness in investing, not buying enough, selling after a small gain and selling after a panic crash. The conference continued with debates on how proper regulation can foster blockchain development, featuring both industry players and tax, law, and accounting experts. Julian Siegelman, angel investor and founding partner at TMT Blockchain Fund, argued that the industry has been experiencing jurisdictional agnosticism, discussing challenges for initial coin offerings, Naim Aslam, CMA at Think Markets, columnist at Forbes, and moderator of the panel noted price stability as the key factor for the development of ICOs and regulations, while Andrew Rosso, attorney and adjunct law professor, reiterated the need for safety and due diligence. After a day full of speakers and panel discussions, BlockShow Day 2 promises to bring even more expert insight and intelligent dialogue.


Well, Mickey bribes the crowd I will get started is that time We are talking about scaling community conversations and decision-making. I am Ben Mellonson and Mickey Mets is out giving out candy and We are with the agaric We are we're with a garic. We're a worker owned cooperative Which means we do make? Democratic decisions internally, but we most of this presentation will not be drawing on our own Experiences because it's about democracy at scale and decision-making at scale and we are a cooperative of six people Just so what where we're coming from? of sort of a founding principle for our our cooperative and You know in our lives is having the most power possible to all you know Get it giving the most power possible to all people over their own lives And you know from doing websites that people can actually edit and you know online and are free software So they can do whatever they want with is important and you know These are the concepts of justice and liberty which I like to say that's pretty to say But it's hard to make sure you're talking about the same thing that you know justice and liberty can be very flowery and squishy And there's whole you know terrible economists who make a career of arguing that you know Liberty is the freedom for someone to do whatever they want with their own property no matter if other people are being Completely denied any freedom because of that So we are talking about group decision-making and basic thesis of that we're gonna get to is that group decision-making requires Conversation to influence the decision you need to be part of the conversation Conversations with a large number of people need to be moderated And if you don't have equal access to the conversation a fair share that is a fair share of control over the moderation You don't have equal say in the decision so Power is organization We are developers and designers and are fairly famously in our own self conception hard to organize you may have seen the slide or Just heard people likening managing developers or designers to herding cats But doesn't change the fact that you know our power in our community is the level of organization. We've achieved Sometimes through the code And so just knowledge is not power is mayor and keba a great organizer and prison abolitionist He's been working for you know transformative justice for a long time says it's you know organization is power not not simply knowledge Which is why we're talking about how to work together as a community So inevitably In any any Any movement any formation of people Inevitably there is going to be informal communication networks. And so Joe Freeman wrote about this in 1970s in in the context of the women's liberation movement in our resources slide Which you'll well we linked to at the end so don't worry about any citations or notes will all be online You know I I've just taken her quotes about the women's liberation movement and just put in the open-source software movement As a as a thing and it just reads exactly the same, but the point is that inevitably Informal communication networks of friends are Elitist and exclusive and so that for everyone to have an opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in Next act in it in its activities. The structure must be explicit Not implicit that's why we're talking about it And then sort of the weakest reason for having some form of democratic governance is still a pretty big one It's people having a feeling of influence of being heard which Not gonna just go around there and ask But it's been something that's been on the decline and the wane in in the Drupal community not feeling a lot of control So going to Drupal Drupal is not a democracy Having a Benevolent dictator for life model You know doesn't work so a A Nedger Rogers of chocolate lily has involved in the Drupal Association when it started in Europe and Proposed that it have a genuinely democratic structure and That didn't happen and you know like 12 no 15 years later we are still Yeah, no that long We are we are still having those effects so the the Drupal governance task force Which did a lot of work over end of 2017 and and through to the end of 2018 their very first recommendation Is begins having a BDFL model benefit benevolent a dictator for life model Means loyalty time and attention are divided The there is often frustration is pressure for change and decisions reach an individual bottleneck There is a strong feeling that any community change or action requires Dries approval be for commencing let alone expanding The project is bigger than one individual It's time to recognize that and place a community group at the center and this is a group that was Authorized and chosen by Dries But you know that Suggestion hasn't gone anywhere in the five months since it was made so it's sort of in the same thing It's and they they talk about this a lot in their report that You know people don't want to put a lot of work into Improving governance if you don't feel that it's it's gonna get somewhere. It's one of the the least returns So what has Drupal been doing and how has it been? running its Decision-making internally So the one of the things we have going for ourselves. I feel is that we Do not generally self-identify as a meritocracy Which is a start because the word meritocracy comes from a political satire It was never meant to be something we should aspire to the opposite a warning about how we rationalize what we believe we've earned and If that sentence doesn't seem applicable to you from the tech industry in its cycle of discussion and sexism racism and Occasionally classism even gets talked about Please read Garen means blog post that I took that from and then yeah just cartoon about how The the the effects of institutional racism and every other sort of Institutional and Continuing thing doesn't just go away and that if we as a community are at all serious about fairness It means looking beyond what? You know we you know what? It means doing a little bit of our part to make the world more just which isn't just saying that well in our community We're not going to Discriminate it means that we actually have to go farther and and work towards justice and try to bring resources to those who don't And also a community of equals needs with the non-hierarchal method of communication needs to control harassment Or you will slam your computer and go away, and we lose lots of other people, and that's another thing that especially the Beak fengen feminism discussion of meritocracy covers so we Identify a little bit more as a duocracy Angie Byron likes to use the term duocracy. I'm Really proud that I Suggested it stealing from other communities back in like 2008 But the idea is that you know you can you know the decisions are mostly made actually by people who just Step up and do something and so I actually want to so any so half of all open-source projects have only one Committer according to Olo and I don't have I Don't have a And the numbers for Drupal modules, but I think it's similar like vast majority will be one active maintainer and These projects don't have to worry about scaling community decision-making. There's one decision-maker maybe two and that's actually fantastic You know as you know, there's a bad side of like that seems like you know That's not the community power. We generally think about but the good thing is that Anything you can do entirely on your own is Something that you can just go and do and so Drupal's modular architecture has Has been what's enabled to have such a large community without having strong decision-making tools And that's and that so it's not the idea that and this is not like Surprising to us and a worker on cooperative like we don't take everything to a democratic vote Whoever is most affected or has the most skill goes ahead and and makes the decision So I do we do want to emphasize that a large part of Drupal's decision-making has been solved by Devolving and I mean I should also mention that in free software the ultimate Up, you know freedom is to fork You know, that's the point of free software and that the backdrop community has done this and in fact has really interesting Governance of their own like so they forked a community as well as the code And and are a place to look for for governance. So the inherent Freedom in In free software has already been exercised in Drupal and it's it's no longer just theoretical about You know, how how do you still have the freedom to make decisions? It's actually happened. So, you know that That's that's an important structural thing underlying Our community also, but there's still lots of matters where We have the need to make collective decisions and the good news is that despite you know, many talking about how Participated democracy and social equality can only work in a small community or activist group historically Quoting David Graeber and David one grow on how to change the course of human history is that the gallantarian cities and regional Confederacies are historically quite commonplace and actually gallantarian families and households are not and this is the Air Corps Confederacy, which is a Very large very horizontal Confederacy other historical examples one of the major problems of There are several major problems With governing people is whom you get to do it or rather who manages to get people to let them do it to them And this is Douglas Adams to summarize It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are It's a fact of those least seated to do it to summarize the summary anyone who is capable of getting the cells made ruler President should on no account be allowed to do the job and Summarize the summary of the summary people are the problem So the good news is that people are problematic in sort of consistent ways And there's all sorts of things we can do to make ourselves better And so this is the point where systems matter is you they can never just say at the individual level And so it's not the problem of who is benevolent dictator for life The problem is having a benevolent dictator for life structure Or you know in anything else the problem is generally not the people It's how we've set up the systems for how people work and so we touch on a few tiny subsets of You know Regular problems that people have and how to fix them so One of the basic problems is that no one cares about decision-making processes until there's something they don't like And So we're just going to talk about you know what kind of democracy what kind of the community decision-making do we want in place for when there is a problem You know for inspiration The zapatista Caracol Networks is sort of a modern one that's taking lots of inspiration from long-standing indigenous communities in southern Mexico and Has some similarities to some of the stuff we're talking about as far as being very clear about nested levels of decision-making and spheres of influence But we might as well just don't have much time here get straight to the tools So Lumio is a tool that makes democrat decision-making yeah makes do you want to Lumio is in a cooperative and they've just designed a wonderful tool for decision-making That allows everyone to either vote on it Yes, or no or to decide that they need more information before they can vote So it opens up a way you can discuss in a non-linear fashion and It because it's difficult how large can a group be before the design and format must change to accommodate a larger group The process for eight people to make a decision is Widely different than a process for 800,000 people to make a decision or for a whole Community that is a city to make a decision together So it must be modified and you have to realize when to modify that format When is it getting so exhaustive and complex that no one can understand the system? That is a real pitfall because people don't usually tell you that they just leave so Lumio.org and That that's in our resources links also And the people who made Lumio will be the first to tell you that there aren't technological fixes for human problems They have a great cooperative handbook and they're part of the Inspiral Network, which is a bunch of Cooperatives many of them cooperatives the network itself is not Formally cooperative, but that tries to solve a lot of community decision-making problems And they you know the bills of this software actually feel that it's you know best for you know groups of You know basically more than ten and less than a hundred And so one of the questions you know is you know when you have a large community is How do you make decisions and harkening back to Douglas Adams and you know, so Walt Kelly who always had his cartoon character? Declare that he wasn't didn't want to be president So that made everyone else want to make him elect them everywhere. Yeah, even more Every four years a series of cartoons about everyone else trying to get him elected while he tried to hide you know going to that there is a well-established approach to Making sure that those who seek power are not the ones you give power And the ancient Greeks Turned out thought about this and acted on it and it's called sortition in modern terms. It's usually meant Taking from the group of people in a community Just a random selection of them and giving them the time and the resources to make Decisions on behalf of the community So it's it's not, you know, whoever happens to volunteer. It's actually a random selection and Then giving people the skills and the time and the resources to make decisions and then at some point You know in a set time you change that and it's Got a lot of good approaches reducing corruption. I'm a lot of good Things for making sure you're inclusive and not just you know taking the people who have the most time and resources and another application of you know, so the same idea is You know just the technical hack to allow large To have us let us have large genuinely free and fair communities Is to have a randomly selected group of people make decision on whether a particular message should be pushed out the whole group So sort of sortition light in the sense that you know, it's not a lot of time and resources You're giving people but you're just sharing the work of deciding what communication goes out and That's fundamental level and we're going to try to go quickly. So there's time for questions here and Visions unite which is a project that I'm part of will be an incubator and ongoing communication tool set for all kinds of cooperative ventures that need or want to scale and want that you know kind of put the community in charge of the the Communication aspect of things sort of is the precursor to being able to have And then Another sort of modern twist on some of these ancient things of idea of nesting and there's done a good Job of defining it and I think is a really good fit for volunteer heavy projects like Drupal in that it's it's a lot easier to Yeah, to you know when when when your company or something it's like everyone's being paid everyone has time and So it's sort of sociocracy is basically sort of a balance between the or has potential for balancing between the self-selected aspect of of duocracy and Having some sort of representative democratic control. So it's just a structure You know and emphasizes learning and evolving clear just decisions and then a fractal circle structure Which is is sort of the key to devolving power And also, you know anyone actually doing the implementing has that Control so everyone gets a say in the direction condition of their work and you know No one I'll get to say they're just following orders the structure is a bunch of of circles each link to one or more Other circles by a double link side, you know groups connected There's in each group one person is representative to another group And not every group has to be connected only groups that generally have to work together and each group makes its own decisions and then You know that goes to the others and so it's not like a pure hierarchy It's whichever groups in their work relationships have to work together all decisions made within circles are made by consent Which is a term they use for consensus and it's basically the same thing, but they want to emphasize that not everyone You know has to be In chart, you know in in agreement with the collective decision. They're just not going to block it But as developers we need to understand that the decisions need to include The people who will be using this software or whatever it is that you're building Without them You're just back to a hierarchy of telling people what to do So setting up the structure for everyone to be able to participate is Important on going discussion Exactly has anyone heard of the platform cooperative ism movement No, there's a handbook about it It's about building platforms that are owned by the people that use them like an uber owned by the drivers and This is definitely a way of Getting everyone to put in their their ideas because the the platform is used by all So recently the platform cooperative Movement has gotten a million dollar grant to create a toolkit Platform cooperative toolkit, which does include some software, but it's mostly the resources a person would need to start a platform like they're Finding out about local government structures. What what forms do they need to fill what legal aid will they need? Those type of things that are scattered, you know, they're all publicly available, but it's so scattered It would take you maybe months to organize that and yeah, exactly a minute corollary of Making sure that everyone gets to be heard from is that not every decision Is one that everyone needs to weigh in and also that you need to actively include the Yeah, the users and the platform cooperative movement provides an approach to that Yeah, so all day long people technologists are demanding that people use our software use the software But I don't see anyone telling everyone to go meet their neighbors and find out what they need Which is where it should start From from the cooperative movement David Hammers states if we're not focused on building things that scale We're not building institutions that change society if we're not building institutions that change society We're not doing what we need to do at this historical moment in time So that's why we're both involved with Jutopia, which is like five people involved grander ideas and That has all kinds of big decisions to make and not all that much structure yet, so Secret plan to rule the world Build the web, you know for Jutopia's build a platform Serving sites for grassroots groups use the revenue to build make it the best platform and use that revenue to build a powerful communication network under democratic control, but you know, that's side project and there's lots of really exciting projects and Yeah, Mickey talks about the building blocks of freedom free software cooperative platform solidarity economy and personal power, but we'll Yeah, without personal power, none of this will work If you don't encourage other people to gain their personal power, they will not be putting in their vote They will be abstaining usually or like on the fringe of this So that's most important to encourage people to get their own personal power and to be able to use it And that takes a group effort. Yeah, so we see just intersections between Like our free software communities and all these other groups. They're working for a more just world and ultimately a more You know giving people more power for their own lives And this is a lot of exciting work in the solidarity economy too, but yes, we will go to questions Questions. Yes Sure. Yeah, it's being recorded So and we can't forget those without internet access too in this whole thing So we don't have time to talk about it, but please think that Hi, Wes from third and Grove. I'm just curious because some other open source projects have kind of a Commercial structure and then the open source version What are some of the pros and cons of that approach for an open source project? Yeah Revenue streams are really great But usually that that bifurcates Things so you essentially, you know have a commercial project that is not accountable to the community That's that's controlling things. So Yeah, what we're really talking about is how to have you know with the platform cooperatives is how to have a revenue stream that is accountable to the community and your Drupalus is I think it's better off in not having You know in that in that you could like take out the top 10 companies as big and concentrated as many mergers We know you could take out the top and companies and there's still be a huge Drupal ecosystem And that's a very very few projects of any kind that can say that So I think we actually benefit from the fact that it we didn't start with that model Dries was a PhD student Couldn't start a company for the first six years or so of Drupal and and we grew this huge ecosystem You know before there was Aquia so as much as you know some people outside Drupal think of aqua equal Drupal people in Drupal Don't really think of that because we we are familiar with it. And so Yeah, just real quickly, you know Drupal is this interesting thing and that's though that you know threes is You know it has control of the code and you know tries to separate that from his role at Aquia And again, I think he does that better than anybody Could but it's just not something that structurally you should have And then the Drupal association, you know, which you sort of think of as representing the community actually has sort of this narrow Charter to handle sort of the events and some of the infrastructure stuff and have no influence over the code So, you know, we sort of have like sort of a hole in In in sort of the heart of what we would have which where some other things would have a very similar split and that they'd have The Drupal association and then they just have a company basically that's making most decisions about the code And we have something that's sort of similar, but it's a little bit, you know, we We don't we keep it, you know conceptually separate, you know, it's not a company It's threes as an individual who then appoints the people who have a final say of the code. Yes, sorry What wanted to say, I really liked how you how you put it all together. Thanks Thank you. So beginning of the year I started to work for a company where we use holocracy, which is kind of similar Sociocracy but a license model What I really like is that With the consent over consensus approach, we can really take decisions fast and where where they matter Do you see us in the Drupal community being able to implement such practices or what would be your roadmap to Get better at those practices one of the things that we're doing in Boston is there's a wonderful group called Ujima The Ujima project is working to revitalize areas of town that have gone crazy and defunct And they're working with community members to actually rate the businesses as to whether they're good for the community or not Good for the community So this is a practice that should be put in place in every community where you are looking at are there extractive businesses Taking stuff out of the community or are they putting in so engaging with people who are not Drupal or anything nothing to do with Drupal but that are in your local government structure is extremely important Well, yeah the solidarity economy and so that we do trade we Do business with those that are doing good for the community and the extractive businesses we talked to them I do see that. Yeah, like Mickey said that some are better opportunities are probably outside of Drupal Mostly though, I think that you know, we don't have a lot of governance defined This is a do-walk or see moment where you know any individual Project within Drupal Can try to do that. So, you know with the Drotopia project we're building on Drupal 8 We're not forking the software, but we're trying to have a revenue model and the governance model that That allows for this. So I do think I think that the you know Yeah, I mean it makes sense. You don't expect something to just say well, I will go adopt this radical You know new approach, you know, even though like, you know Zappos does holocracy and stuff It's like it's not that radical, but it's still not done a lot. So there's not a lot of examples You know that people from Drupal's perspective can easily see and so, you know Why adopt something that's not tested it is sort of on us as the community to put into practice the things we want to see So I think that it's got to be from the ground up and we can start to do this in specific projects I mean, you know there's actually a lot of opportunity for this because like there's still a lot of unofficial infrastructure in Drupal a little less than historically, you know more is under the Drupal Association, but Like slack like all of that huge amount of community conversation that's going on is Completely outside the Drupal Association right now and the people who run the slacks are you know, you know, basically voluntarily trying to you know working with the community working group and working with all that too Which is again like in a weird space with the Not quite under the Drupal Association that thing which is again why we've proposed there is those proposed So anyhow, there's the Drupal governance issues link link from here and we'll we'll keep updating these with resources Since so yeah, please throw your mail in there if you want to keep getting updates. Trust us It'll be like every year and a half. We actually ever email anybody never happens But yeah, I do I do think there are there are opportunities and just quickly on sociocracy and holocracy Holocracy does yeah puts a few twists on sociocracy including putting a stronger emphasis on the organization So I actually do think holocracy might not in many case be a better fit for a company that has sort of a strong Specific mission and sociocracy might be a better option for communities that that you know is a bit more fractal Thank you for the question Great We're out time. Yes. So yeah, we are at time But any other questions, please come up. Thank you


Belarusian militants training in Poland for insurrection. Belarusian exiles in Poland are training for a future armed insurrection in their home nations, the Times has claimed. The militants may also play a key role in the Ukraine conflict, according to the British newspaper. The report focused on a camp near the Polish city of Poznan, operated by BIPOL, the group of former officers from Belarus security services, who fled the country following protests in 2020. Similar combat training sessions have been taking place in the NATO nation for months, with the number of recruits in the hundreds, BIPOL's leadership claim. The Times described the recruits at the boot camp as common Belarusians who want to topple the government of President Alexander Lukashenko in response to a Stalin-esque campaign of torture and detention that has all but silenced dissent in the country. Following the 2020 presidential election, Belarus saw mass protests against Lukashenko's new term, with people claiming that the poll had been rigged to deprive opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya of victory. Tikhanovskaya has since been treated as a representative of the Belarusian people by the US and its allies and is currently based in Lithuania. BIPOL claims to have carried out several combat missions on Belarusian soil, including a drone attack on a Russian A-50 airborne radar at Mashalishi airbase near Minsk. Lukashenko said the attackers involved in the February incident had been recruited by Kiev special services and branded his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky scum for presumably consenting to the operation. The Belarusian government claimed it was closely monitoring BIPOL's activities, including their training camps located in Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. We know particular recruitment posts, know who is involved, we know the training camps, the identities of instructors, who teaches which parts of the course. Belarus security chief Ivan Tertel claimed in April. The group is using terrorist tactics to pave the way for an instruction in Belarus and acts as a tool of foreign states, the senior official said. The same masterminds are the driving force in terms of geopolitical problems that our neighbours have, he added.


Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Spring Fever Garden Forums, where we connect you, the gardener, to the experts at North Dakota State University. And my name is Tom Cobb. I'm an Extension Horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences, and I'm joined with Scott Swanson. He's an electronic media specialist in the Department of Aeroculture Communications. Today is the last of our four Spring Fever Garden Forums, and tonight our theme is special topics. Now, the format that we use tonight is the one that we always use. We have a series of brief presentations. So we'll start with a 15 to 20 minute presentation, and then we'll follow that off with about 10 to 15 minutes of your questions. And we really do invite and we enjoy your participation in the forums. And if you have a question, make sure it's relevant to the topic, and then just slide your mouse down at the bottom of the screen, and you'll see a Q&A box appear. And you can type your question in the Q&A box, and we'll get to as many as we can, but we will stay on time. So let's get started with tonight. We're talking about bees. You know, bees are very common pollinators, and they are important in our gardens. And here to teach us how to identify bees and related insects is Jan Kanotl. Jan is the professor and extension entomologist at North Dakota State University. For the past 26 years, she provides leadership in extension entomology and the North Dakota Integrated Pest Management Program with an emphasis on field crop insect pests. Jan's an active gardener, and she enjoys studying pollinators. Jan, welcome to the forums. Thank you. Welcome. Okay, well, tonight we're going to learn a little bit about bee identification, but to be honest, I don't have time to cover all the different groups or anything, but I will mention a few of the most common ones. And then we'll talk about bee mimics that we see in the garden, and then also some of the flowers that bees love. And again, it's just going to be a brief overview of some of my favorites. So there's a lot of different bees. We have a total of 4,000 species in North Dakota. And I've seen estimates in North America, excuse me. And I've seen estimates in North Dakota of anywhere from 250 to 300 different species of bees. And there's about two different key groups. We can divide them into short-tongued bees, then dreadons, and the collidons, and then the long-tongued bees, the apidae, polysidae, and the megakioled. And you can see the difference in the length of the tongue. Let me bring up the laser pointer. And here you can see the short tongue. And again, these will be feeding from different types of flowers you might have in your garden. And then here's much longer the long-tongued bees here. And here's some of the flowers the two different groups feed on. I'll let you read the list here. But again, the nectar reserves in the pollen are generally in the short-tongued bees. It's very shallow. Whereas in the long-tongued bees, it has more of a tubular structure that they're going to be using to feed on for the flower. So some of my favorites are the Monarda, Pemstima, Salvia, and Snapdragon, Hosta. There's a lot of different ones that you can grow. And here's a few from my garden, these pictures. So what makes a bee a bee? Well, for identification, as far as an anemologist is concerned, there's four wings on a bee. There's a four wing that you see here. And then there's a hind wing. And they're attached together by some hooks that we call Hamuli. And under a microscope, you can see the hooks here. And it is attached to the hind wing. And then it will form to the front wing. So you have the wings kind of working in unison. Again, there's a key characteristic of bees that you'll notice. And you can see this under the microscope. It's that all the hairs on their body are very branched. And this is what they use for carrying the pollen. And also these branch hairs are one of the reason why there's successful pollinators. They are responsible for more pollination services than any other type of insect. So they're very efficient in pollination. In fact, some pollinators are very specific to just a small group of flowers or characteristic flowers. They don't pollinate everything, but they're specialists, some of them. And they only pollinate maybe one or two different species of plants. But again, there's different types of pollen collecting devices. One is the hairs like we talked about. And we call these Scopi. And over here on the right, you can see some hairs in the middle of sodies that are attached to the hind leg. Here under the megakylid, you can see the hairs are mainly on the underside of the abdomen. Then we also have the pollen baskets. We call them corbiculi. And it's on the femur. And they have a kind of a smooth area. And then on the sides, you can see the hair, which helps form the pollen basket. And usually the pollen, they kind of make a pollen ball, which is, you know, both nectar and pollen together. And then they use that pollen ball to feed their young as they develop. Now bee eyes, obviously are different from our eyes. You may think they just have the two eyes, but that's not true. They actually have five eyes. Here is the large eye on the side of the head. This is called a compound eye. And it's made up of many little lenses to gather and hundreds of them. And that forms a complex image that the bee sees. And then on the top of the head is three simple eyes. They call Ocellae. And they're used to for specific function like detecting movements or the orientation of the sun. And all this helps the bee survive, you know, avoid predators and find the flowers that they need as a food source. And they don't see things like we do. They use ultraviolet wavelength. And that's how they find the flowers. So here this is the wavelength of a human eye. You can see it's anywhere from 400 to about 550 for a wavelength, which we see. But if you look at the bee's eye, you can see it has a wider range, anywhere from 300 to 650. And then the ultraviolet is in the 300 to 420 range. So what the flowers look like when you look under an ultraviolet light at a flower is this. You can see that the ultraviolet wavelengths kind of focus in on where the food source is here, the pollen and the nectar. So it really helps the bee find its food source. Now one of the most common bees we're all familiar with is the European honeybee. And this one is not native to North America. But it is very popular in North Dakota's number one in honeybee production. And we have more hives in the summer than any other state in the US. And we use it commonly today in our canola and sunflower crops are two of the key crops that are used. But they also use it in a lot of other crops as well. Aphis malifera, it's again, you know, we're all recognized this one. It's very easy to identify medium size, very hairy body, typical of the bee, you know, the pollen basket on the hind leg. And they can nest either in, you know, our man made boxes there in colonies, or they can use, you know, open structures and trees that are dying, for example, or an old woodpecker hole or anything like that. This is my favorite, the bumblebees also in the family apidae. And most of them are in the genus mambas. And we have in our area about 20 species. And they're pretty easy to identify to this group, you know, they're large, they make a buzzing sound. They're very hairy, usually black and yellow or just black. And then they also have, just like the honeybee, this pollen basket, and you can better see the structure of it with the hairs and everything in this picture. And the interesting thing about bumblebees is they're very specific in tomato production. They're very important because they do that buzz pollination where they grasp the tomato blossom and hold it with their forelegs. And then they vibrate at a certain wavelength to get the tomato plant to release the pollen, so it gets fertilized. And it can actually increase the production of tomatoes in your garden by about 45%. So it's significant. So make sure you plant some friendly flowers for the bumblebees. And here's a couple common ones that I have in my pollinator garden. I got the common eastern bumblebee, this one Impatiens, and then the western yellow banded bumblebee terracola. And this one's actually starting to go into decline. Most of our bees are solitary bees, 90% of them. And you can see here's where they nest in the ground. You can see it kind of looks like an earthward moan, but if you look closer and you watch it, you'll see a bee come out of it instead of an earthworm at night. So sometimes they're solitary or other times they'll nest in groups. So another family in the Ape Day is the Longhorn Bees and the Digger Bees. This includes the Melisotes, maculata, this one had the hairs for collecting pollen on the leg. And then here's your Digger Bee. The males have much longer antennae and the females have shorter antennae. And these Digger Bees are pretty common here and especially in areas where you have drier soil and sandy soils, they can be a past. I get quite a few calls from home owners saying they want to get rid of these bees because they're afraid of being stung or they have children that may get stung. But they're very docile bees and they won't really sting you and they don't have very big stingers like a hornet wood or a yellow jacket. They're much smaller, it's more like just a little pinch. So unless you're allergic to some of the venom that they inject, it's really not a big concern. And I just tell them to turn the sprinklers on. A lot of watering in the area where they're nesting, they usually nest together in large groups. So if you water that area frequently, you can discourage them and then they'll move out of that area. And moving on to the Megacalidae, the Leafcutter Bees. I just love these bees. They have the hairs on the underside for collecting pollen and you can tell when you have them because you'll see these circular holes on the edge of your leaves of some of your flowers. And they're generally nested in holes or cavities either natural or man-made. I had some nesting in a window that I had in the garage. There was like a hole where the screen fit in and they nested in there. It was kind of fun to watch them. But 30% of the bees that we have nest in cavities. Then the Osmia, which is pretty common, it's the Mason Bees and this one is well known for use in crops as well for pollination and fruits and vegetables and other states. But we've been using them in canola to help increase canola pollination and you can buy them even in these nesting materials and then they'll continue to nest in here throughout the summer. They're pretty easy to identify. They've got a metallic blue, purple or blue, coloring, green. They're very efficient. In fact, some of these native bees are more efficient than our European honeybee. They often collect, you can see some of the mud here, plugging up the holes and you can put those bee hotels in your garden to try and track different species of them. Sweat bees. Helic today. Again, these are another one of my favorites. And as the name Sweat Bees infers, they're attracted to your sweat and they feed on some of the nutrients that are in your sweat. And they're very beautiful. Agaposcommon is, you know, beautiful metallic green and it's really brilliant in the sun. And here's Agaposcommon for essence. They're very difficult to identify and the taxonomy of this group is not very well defined. So speaking of bee taxonomy before we move on, it's actually been changing quite a bit for bee identification. We used to use physical characteristics of the bees, but with the use of DNA typing and use and identification, we're seeing that everything is being kind of reorganized because we're finding new linkages within the bee groups. So we're having to redo some of the taxonomy. So some of it is sort of a mess right now, because a lot of folks are working on DNA coding of the bees. So that's sort of being revisited. There's many bee mimics out there that are also pollinators who hover fly in the surfidae family. Again, you can tell the difference by just looking at them out in the field. Again, the bees have two pairs of wings where a fly has one pair of wings. So you can see it has one pair here. And then the second pair has been made into a globular structure called the halters. And that's used in balancing. So the fly knows if it's right side up or upside down. And then bees generally have a more longer segmented antennae. And then flies have a very short three segmented antennae. So you can see how much shorter it is. And then bees have narrow eyes on the side of the head and then, you know, the three on the top of the head. Whereas the fly has huge eyes that take up just about the entire head. That's why they can see you coming with the fly spotter. And then the bees do not hover. Very rarely do they, they just go fly directly to the flower and land. Whereas the fly will hover above the flower and so forth. So that's how you can identify the difference. But other than that, the hoverfly gets a lot of benefit from mimicking being a bee. Again, the other one is the wasp, the family vetsma day. Again, you can tell the difference because the bees have many hairs on them. Whereas a wasp does not. You can see there's not any hairs, some up on the head there, but very few. This is a paper wasp and then this is a yellow jacket here. And then again, a bee has a waist, but it's very robust and not as well defined as a wasp is. Very narrow. A bee has pollen collecting hairs or a basket. And they don't have anything on a wasp. No pollen hairs or a basket. And then the coloring again is usually black and yellow or black or metallic green, blue. Whereas the wasps generally have bright colors, yellow and black or brown. So those are some of the characteristics you can use because I do get a lot of questions. Is it a bee or is it a wasp? So those are the characteristics that are easy to use to sell in the field. Incidentally, we give the hornets and yellow jackets a bad name a lot of times because we know that they sting us and they can sting us repeatedly versus a honeybee that will sting you. It injects its stinger into you and then it rips out of its body. So you it ends up dying from that. But a hornet is the complete opposite. It doesn't have a hook on the stinger like the honeybee. So it can sting you repeatedly. And it doesn't affect the vitality of the wasp. But anyway, wasps are actually beneficial in your garden. They eat many caterpillars. They're good predators and they furnish their nest with these prey that they capture. So they're actually good to have around. It's just that you don't want to nest near your house or anywhere that you walk frequently because they can get very agitated, especially in the late summer. So just to end here with some flowers that we did some work on with Dr. Esther McGinnis, the next speaker, and then my postdoc, Dr. Keles Torres. And we worked on looking at some different flowers in several different groups. And we tried to compare native versus cultivars and just see how common they were for attracting bees and honeybees and butterflies. So we have the whether it's native or cultivar here. And then in the next column, we have bumblebees, this icon here. And this is honeybees. And then I included butterfly just for your information. So if there's no icon, like here, you know, there was no visits. So the more icons, like three here, the more common it was. So two would be moderate, three is heavy and four very heavy. And it's based entirely on the number that we saw visiting these different varieties and or cultivars, I should say, and the native plants. So I looked at two natives, fissula and puntata here, and then several different cultivars that we tested. And the best ones were the wild bergamot spotted bee bum, which is absolutely gorgeous. It's here, but it's so small. It's hard to see how beautiful it is. And then grand parade, Marshall Delight, purple, purple mildew resistant and raspberry wine. So they all did quite well. And they were twos for the honeybees. So you can use this information to select varieties that are more popular. Okay, moving on to the tall sedums. We had just cultivars here on different ones. The most common one that was liked by the bumblebee and the honeybee was autumn fire or autumn joy and night embers. Mr. Goodbud had some trouble. It ended up not standing very well and didn't do quite as well. But any of the tall sedums is great for a late flowering food source for all pollinators. And Aster, again, we tested some native one, the New England and the oblong depholium and the smooth blue Aster. And the top ones are at the top here with the New England and all my posts. I'm not sure how to say that one, Aster. But those did the best and they also did really good with the honeybees. So October skies and smooth blue Aster also did fairly well. The ones with the red star indicated that they weren't able to bloom before we had our first fall hard frost. So that's part of the problem we have with some of the Asters. It takes them quite a bit of time to get all their flowering done. So anyway, I think everyone knows that, you know, our bees in general are having trouble. We really need to help save them. A lot of it's due to the lack of habitat and food sources. You know, we have a lot of lawn out there. And if people would be willing to put in a pollinator garden or switch over to natural prairie grass with flowers, that would help a lot. If we could get some more patches of native habitat for them. It's due to a lot of different reasons, but the lack of food and habitat I think is number one. And of course, there's always disease issues out there and then pesticide use. I don't recommend spraying pesticides at all, unless you absolutely have to and then spraying late at night and avoiding any spray on the flowers. But I don't spray my pollinator gardens at all. I prefer to just dig a plant up. It's really heavily infested.  So they're, I guess, fighting against uphill battles. So everything we can do to help save them is needed. We have a number of extension publications. This summarizes our research that we did with the postdoc of Veronica. And you can download this as a PDF free and then print it out for your information if you're interested. And then there's the beautiful landscapes and then the bees that insects that look like bees and then pollination fact sheet. And then also, I'd like to thank all of my collaborators. Pat Bosay is an expert bee identification taxonomous and then Dr. McGinnis and Dr. Torres. And then we had several hourly workers that helped us and did all the pinning and preparation for the bee specimens. They have to be actually blown their hair with a blow dryer to get them to stand up correctly for identification. I know there's apps out there for bee identification, but I think they'll work for some species and groups. But other groups are very difficult to do. And you really need a specialist in that area for identification. And our work was funded through the USDA North Dakota Department of Ag Specialty Crop Block Grant. So that ends my talking. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. We've got a few already. One is, you mentioned how bumblebees are important for tomato flowers. But this person asked, can I tap tomato flowers with a pencil to make the flower to release pollen? Never tried that. But it's a certain wavelength that releases the vibration is a certain wavelength that is special for tomatoes that releases the pollen for the fertilization process. So I'm not sure if tapping on would work. Has anyone else tried it? I remember you can use like a vibrator. There's a vibrator that you can use to just near the flower to just shake the flowers a little bit. And it kind of reminds me of an electric toothbrush type of thing. That was very similar to electric toothbrush. So that would be like many. Yeah, that would make more sense. Yeah. And wind. Wind can also pollinate two minutes a little bit. And of course, we never have a wind in North Dakota. So we're going to be okay with that. But okay, this, you did talk about a few good points about wasps. But there's a question about what good are wasps anyhow? Well, I did mention, you know, the predator is a good role. And then they do some pollination as well. But they're not as efficient as a bee or honeybee or a bumblebee. But they're beautiful. There's birds that eat them. I've seen birds eating. So they're important food source for other animals. And just got to stay in your ground in the fall. Just be careful. Know your enemy. Right. Yeah, in the fall, they do get a little agitated. And that's because they know they're all going to die. Everyone dies except for the queen that overwinters. And then she's the one who emerges in the spring the following year to start the new colony. Like in a hornet's nest, like for example, doesn't that the old queen's been there all summer? She dies with her daughters, right? And but before the winter comes, she releases a new brood of like a new group of queens.  Yeah, the females, the new females that are born get fertilized by the males in the fall. And those are the ones that survive. Yeah. How about speaking of fall? Do you have a strategy about cleaning perennial flower beds? Like how soon can we clean them without harming the insect habitat? Do we have to wait till a hard frost or? Well, it depends on what types of bees you have. A lot of them are, you know, 90% are ground nesting bees. There's only a few that are nesting in the stems. So it depends what species of bees and the types of bees you have. Any hollow stems, those would be the ones that you might have some stem nesting bees in. If it's a solid stem, they're not going to be tunneling in there. So it depends on the plant and what the stem is like. If it's a hollow stem, you could have some nesting in the stems. If you get in those bee hotels, if you get some bees in those, that means you probably have some stem nesters around. Okay, speaking of bee hotels, how about bee houses? Is there a recommendation for how close the ground should they be located? Yes, it's generally, I think it's about four feet to five feet. Again, it depends which species you're trying to attract. But I put mine up about four feet high and I have it facing the east. So it gets the morning sun. How about cleaning out the bee houses? Do you have to clean them out on a regular basis? Yeah, I use tubes and I just buy them from a supplier gardening supply place. And I'll, after they emerge in the spring, right now I have the old tubes up and the ones that are fall all take out. Once they emerge, they give them, you know, maybe a month or more to emerge. And then I take the emerged ones and put them somewhere in the back of my garden in case there's a few late emerges. And then I'll put new ones into the, I got the little round tubes, big round tubes, that all the little tubes go in. And then the bees like different sizes of tubes too. So you can buy, you know, different sizes, you know, for the small bees, they need the smaller tubes. And so yeah, you do have, there's some maintenance. You got to, you know, make sure you put new tubes out for them. They only last usually they like cardboard ones made a cardboard and so they're only going to last so long. Okay. How about our bees attracted to some collars more than others as far as flowers?  They do like I have this in the faxing. I should have mentioned that. Make sure I get it right here. Yeah, they like the purple, blue, pink, yellow flowers. So but yeah, the wait is usually more for flies, attracting flies and butterflies. That's interesting. So, okay, there's so many species of bees and flies. Do you have any idea about what percentage of flies actually do any pollinating? Yeah, they do as much because they don't have the hairs and the hairs are really key for being an efficient pollinator. But they will pick up, you know, they do have some hairs on their feet and their legs. So they will pick up some pollen, but they're, I don't know what the percentage is for how efficient they are. Okay, let's see if we got any more about the bees. You know, I never knew where there was green bees, green metallic bees. That's that was different. Yeah, I've seen some of the black and drennen bees out already. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. Well, I hope this garden this weekend, so they're starting to emerge. Jan, like you talked about with bees, you need to provide them with the food source through the whole growing season. Do you have any certain flowers that you really recommend for the early season or maybe the late in the season? Yes. All the bulbs are good, like crocuses, and then also oh, I kind of think it's a real pretty little white purpleish flower hyacinths. Oh, the native one, the red one that It's red? Yeah, it's a little red little bell. It hangs down. There's many shrubs too, choked cherry, lead plant, but that's later on. Let me get the pollinator back sheet. I'm a little rusty. Ellie's at the beginning of the season. Right. You have to shake off that winter rust. I know. Yeah, I don't know about a little red hanging one. It's like, like there's a glory in the snow, Siberian squill, but they're bluish. Yes. Yeah, squill is what I was thinking of. Yeah. Okay. I got some white ones with the little bluish type on them. Sure. They're very good. Oh, here we go. Crocuses hyacinths, squill, past flower, pretty small because that's what I was trying to think of. Mine are just starting to, they're up and they have the buds on them, but they're not open. Columbine is really important. And of course, the dandelion is actually, but unfortunately thing with the dandelion is the nectar and pollen is not very nutritional for bees. Okay. We just got a time for a couple more questions here. When in the season do people put out a bee house? Well, you could put it out anytime, but it's best to get them out in the early spring before the bees emerge. And then when they do emerge, they'll start looking around for a place to, you know, they bring their new brood for the next summer. How does a bee survive winter? Well, most of them over winter in the nest, in a lot of them are in the ground. Others are in tree structures. So most of them will just create a chemical that is, you know, similar to our antifreeze in our cars that prevent things from freezing up. So most of them do that and then they're in the ground. So they're insulated. Okay. All right. That's good. That's, I think that's all the questions about bees that we have tonight. And Jan, that was so fascinating. I did. No idea. There's so many different kinds of bees and all their special qualities. That was really great. So thank you so much for your presentation today. Thank you, Jan. I appreciate it.