All right, all right. So, yeah, so quick introductions, right? So, Christian, my new Christian Hernandez again. So I am a product manager at Red Hat. I'm also a maintainer of open get-ups. So, if you see, you know, you see that QR code quote. Hello? There we go. If you see that QR code of getting involved, like if you wanna ask someone directly, you can ask me, you know, any questions about that as well. I'm also a contributor to the Argo project. And Nick, Nick's here. Hi, I'm Nick Schutz. I'm a field engineer at solo.io. My specialty is in application networking. Previous to this, I was at Red Hat for quite a few years practicing Kubernetes and OpenShift, helping enterprises all over the place. Now I do that with application networking. Sweet, sweet. And yeah, so take it away, talking about Service Mesh. So Istio, Istio is an open source Service Mesh. It's also a CNCF incubating project as of recently. So the common Service Mesh functions are things like enforced MTLS, application resilience, observability, granular policy access control. Those are just some things that you can allow via Service Mesh with people's applications without having them change their application at all, easily. So one of the challenges behind Service Mesh, or Istio as a Service Mesh is traditionally the deployment. And it's fine if you wanna do a Istio deployment on a single cluster perhaps in multiple namespaces and use their low level configurations to do so. But once you start getting into multi-cluster, you start to get some challenges. Things like communication between those clusters, root trust between those clusters. And when that starts to happen, what's missing in lacking is that MTLS between the clusters, like I was saying, an API that actually understands multi-cluster comprehensively and something that people consume at a higher level, a more comprehensive level. And that's where the GNU Mesh open source and enterprise product comes in. It allows for that abstraction at the multi-cluster layer or for multi-cluster deployments to a point where it makes it very easy to consume and also everything is done via declarative configs via CRDs. And that makes it perfect for things like GitOps. Yeah, and like you said, since all these configurations to manage your service mesh are all just like CRDs, YAML, that sort of thing, right? It's all Kubernetes native. It makes GitOps an Istio. I like to call it like peanut butter and chocolate, right? Goes better together, right? So as you can tell I'm a big candy guy. It just goes better together, right? And so if you are looking at your desired state, I'm gonna kind of use this term loosely. So if any security guys are here, don't get too mad at me, I'll get into that. But you can look at your desired state as almost like your policy, right? And when I say policy, I don't necessarily mean security. Obviously that's gonna be a big part of it. Part of the larger picture is security, but what I'm talking about policy is like your organizational policies, right? Like if you're thinking about, for instance, I'm just gonna get really, really simple, like your corporate standard build of your Linux VMs, right?  Those are actually policies, right? You have a policy that you want to apply to a system. So bringing that back up to GitOps is that you can view that source of truth, right? That Git that you want to apply, that you don't want it to drift as policy, right? And so that in kind of almost like a policy governor, almost right, you're thinking more, now you're thinking like kind of like more, as you can talk kind of like enterprise architect background, but like you think about more of it being like a generic governance model of like how you manage your system, right? So policy doesn't necessarily mean security, right? I'm not talking about like policy with respect to like authorization and authentication, although that's a bigger part of it. I'm talking about it being more like holistically about your systems, right? And service mesh is a powerful tool, right? And so as Nick was talking about, it's really there to help you scale and it's really, really powerful, but it gets really, really complex when you want to do it massively at scale is trying to look at it at a single pane of glass, right? And so that's kind of like where GitOps comes into play where you kind of want to like distribute that power and make sure you have that power and make sure you have ultimate control across all your systems there. And so which is why I kind of have that graphic is like GitOps and NSTO, you know, you, they work pretty well together, right? And this is, and when you're managing a large systems, right, you know, both Nick and I have like, we work with really, really large enterprises to try to like get some of this stuff out and observability becomes paramount. Very, it becomes really, especially with the distributed systems, right?  And you get, you have to use that data. Now that you have that data, you know, the, you know, the, someone once said that what's the difference between data and information, right, and just information to just process data. Now that you have the data, now you need to have the information you need in order to do things like policy enforcement, right? And so I try to get a better graphic than this. I don't know if that makes sense, right? You have an infinite loop going between your configuration and your, your clusters, but the idea there is that your Github's controller is kind of like your policy enforcer. Again, I'm kind of using these terms a little loosely because if there's any security guy there, it's like, well, it's not really enforcing any policy. I'll get to that in a second, but, but if you think about it, your Github's controller, whether you're using Flux or Argo or, you know, whatever, you, you know, you kind of think of it as like, you know, I have this policy that I want to be able to deploy massively across my cluster, right? Like I want to be able to, and then when I mean policy, I kind of like am eluding to some of the, the Istio primitives of how to, you know, traffic controlling, right? And so where Github's really comes into, comes into, into play with respect to like power is that it's, it's preventing that policy from drifting, right? It's one thing to, and I'm kind of, I'm kind of, kind of skip bullet points right here. It's one thing to use things like Kyverno and, and OPA and, you know, other security aspects of it, right? Because like, you know, when you're using stuff like Kyverno or OPA, that's really more on the, like traditional policy side aspect of it, where it's like you set something up and that controller is making sure that that is happening. However, there's nothing controlling if someone, some bad actor, someone that fingers a config, someone changes the Kyverno or OPA configuration on your cluster. Now all of a sudden it doesn't matter if you're running Kyverno, right? Like if someone's there changing the policy to something you don't want it to be, then, you know, how good is that policy, right? And so, you know, kind of jumping back up is like preventing that, that drift, right? You're gonna be using your get-offs controller to making sure that drift doesn't happen. You wanna set your policies and you wanna make sure that policy is always what you want it to be, right? And basically also you wanna automate those policy changes, right?  And so another aspect of get-offs is what I really like about Istio and what I really like about Service Mesh is that it puts in things like progressive rollouts into, it codifies them, right? So there's a challenge with that. So I find that if things are dynamic in a Service Mesh world, right? I want, you know, you want to be able to do something like canary deployments, right? I always talk about canary deployments. Those are really, really dynamic, right? You wanna, you know, release a new version of your application. You wanna release maybe some, like 10% of it. Okay, that's looking good. Maybe release another 10%, so now you're at 20%. Okay, that looks looking good. How does that look like in a get-offs world, right? Because is that a series of commits to a branch, right?  And approving, you have to go through that approval process. For every time you wanna increase that canary, that canary's gonna take forever. And another way to do this kind of ignore those differences, but then that kind of goes against the spirit of get-offs. You know, you really want to have, like, a policy around that, right? And so, if your source of truth is static, how do you do, like, a dynamic rollout, right? Really, like, embrace the power of a service mesh, right? And a lot of controllers, a lot of projects now have a controller for that. So, for instance, in the Argo world, that's Argo rollouts, and I know Flux has Flagger to do some of those things as well, but you have another controller, progressive, that is get-offs friendly, right? That is basically saying, hey, given these parameters, right, I want you to start at 10% and increase progressively to 100% and until that rollout is successful, right? And it works with your get-offs controller. What's really cool about using something like Argo rollouts or Flagger is that it's also policy-based with respect to metrics, right? So you can plug into things like Prometheus, right? So, like, I use this deal a lot, so I use, you know, Prometheus. You can tap into Prometheus and just run whatever query you want to in order to do the rollout. So now you kind of have, like, a policy, what's the word I'm looking for? You kind of have, like, a low-end, high-end sort of thing. I'm like, okay, well, given these parameters, do the rollout for me. And then it becomes, like, automatic, right? And get-offs friendly. And it has things like rollback and, yeah, so basically, like rollback, whereas, like, if something goes wrong, Prometheus is catching errors, like, 500s or whatever, you're able to do that as well. So the idea behind using something like Istio, service mesh, and get-offs together is, like, you really want to scale, right? So the idea is scaling.  You have, now you have, like, the tool sets to do it, and now you have the tool sets to do it automatically, right? And so we have, like, things like federated meshes, or multi-cluster, I forget, I don't know what the right term is, so it's called, federated message cluster, right? So, and, you know, you manage complexity exponentially, right? So once you add, like, another cluster, like an Istio cluster, the problem grows exponentially, not just, you know, incrementally. So your apps could be really anywhere, right? And so, get-offs basically just helps you manage that. Not only manage that complexity, it lets you do other cool things, like progressive delivery, in a get-offs-friendly way, right? And so, one of the things, so I have, I don't know if you've seen the back of my shirt, if you want to see it later, you can. The back of my shirt says, unless it's in git, it's only a rumor. Another thing I like to say, so that's kind of like one of my cash phrases, well, another thing I like saying is that automation does not mean automatic, either. So, you know, everything basically, that phrase just means that you are ultimately in control of how that rollout happens, is that, but what actually does the rollout is automatic. So that's kind of like what I mean from that aspect, right? And then, so you saw the image before, right? That kind of how it looks like here, where you are not only using the glue mesh to help your federated clusters, right? But now you have like a controller there, as well, to help you with the get-offs thing. I don't know if you have any. Yeah, so this isn't just theory. We have people, lots of companies in production today, implementing these patterns very effectively for hundreds of clusters at a time. So it's a proven methodology that large-scale companies use on a daily basis, and it's very effective and cost efficient. Sweet, sweet, yeah. And by the way, these slides, I just uploaded them to Sketch, so I see you taking pictures, which is fine, but just let you know we uploaded that there. So I guess with that, do we have time for, yeah, we have time for some questions here, if anyone has any questions? Anybody? Anyone?  Yes. That is a question, so I, let's do that. So I'll allow it, yes. Oh, there's a question back there. So if you do wanna learn more about Istio, just raw Istio, or even glue mesh, you can go to academy.solo.io, and we have some self-paced classes, or you can actually take a webinar-style class where it's interactive and you can have hands-on the technology. So please do come and join us. You do them quite frequently, and thank you guys. Oh yeah, got a question right here? Yeah, no, so please. Is it on? Yeah. Oh, sorry. So a quick question, we're also using Istio with Flagger, and one interesting problem we had to solve, I think, is when you have Flagger, or RGCD rollout, you have this internal state of the rollout which managed by Flagger, it is GitOps-friendly, but you still have, like, failure, you still need to handle failure states and failure conditions, and it can a little, so it goes a little bit in a different direction as a GitOps, so your GitOps repository drift from the source of truth, so you can have different workload and different version, and deploy it on your system, and a different version defined in the GitOps repository, so do you have any good cookbook solutions to solve it, or do you need to approach it yourself like we did, we had callbacks, automatic rollouts, and making sure we change the state inside the repository to reflect it correctly? Yeah, yeah, so I don't know for Flagger, I'm not sure, right, so I know for rollouts specifically that since it works hand in hand with RGCD, it'll mark the deployment as degraded, and so meaning that just your deployment is just degraded, so it's no longer in sync with Git, it's no longer, it's basically marking your app as it's not working, right, and so I should actually talk to someone once, I was like, well, that's not technically true because it rolled it back, so it is healthy, but technically, but it does show it, I do think though that there's room for improvement because to recover for something like that is very imperative, like right now, even with Argo rollouts, you have to do some imperative work, right, so to automate that, you may need another controller, but with... Also in GlueMesh, there's a validation webhook as well that won't allow you to apply configs that are bad, and you can set that to strict, and you can also use OPA policies to check your configs, et cetera, in tandem with that. So not sure if we answered your question other than I agree that there needs to be a better way to handle either rollbacks or remediation of that. Thank you. Just a quick question about the diagram, I guess, and maybe it kind of follows that question about whether things are really get-ups or not, but so the top part of the diagram shows GlueMesh being synced with Argo CD, I guess being synced with Git, those GlueMesh CRDs, I guess being synced with Git, but then there's the arrow about GlueMesh creating or translating Istia resources and the individual clusters, right? Are those Istia resources? Does their configuration ever show up in Git or is it only in the mind of GlueMesh, if you understand what I mean? It would be GlueMesh's abstraction of the Istia resources, yes. Okay. Yeah, and also it's very similar with Argo rollouts, right? So you see part of Argo rollouts, and again, I'm ignorant on Flagger, so I'm not sure if it's the same with Flagger, but with Argo rollouts, you're not actually even using the deployment either because you're using the aren't on Argo rollout specification, which has the same spec as a deployment, so it is like layers of abstraction because you have a rollout that controls your replica set versus a deployment, so very similar to Glue, whereas you're using the Glue translation of Glue will then create those resources. It's all about making the user experience easy and very readable in the end, to reduce human error, to allow replication easily, et cetera. So if I go back to an old version of the GlueMesh CRDs, it should put back the Istia resources I had before, but so in general, that's the GitOps idea, right? Yes, okay, thanks. Any other questions? Hi, it's pretty much related to the last question. It's about the sync or the drift detection on the Istio clusters, because in this case, if I understand, we are going to synchronize the Glue resources through Argo CD in this case, and GlueMesh is going to create the Istio cluster, right? But if there is some drift on the Istio clusters, like at the global failover or the WAF configuration or whatever, that drift is going to be picked up by the GlueMesh or the Argo CD sync. The Argo CD will detect that, the drift, right? I'm not sure if there's a tool in Glue that detects drift, but I think- So in this case, it wouldn't definitely be Argo looking after the resources that have been deployed, et cetera, for changes. Yeah, my question was because I really don't, I haven't used this combination, so I haven't seen how it looks on the Argo CD UI. Yeah, yeah, so in just to kind of pull the curtain back a little bit, in Argo CD, so I'll like for Istio, I'm gonna use some Istio nomenclature. You have like your virtual service, right? Usually you'll have like your virtual service like pointed certain percentages. You actually point at the stable, 100% at the stable release. So like in Git, it's more of like you're storing like your end state in Git for the virtual service. Now the Argo controller takes care of, sorry, the Argo rollout controller takes care of what points the stable, right? The stable, and I'm using stable in quotes because that's just like, they call it the stable release versus the canary release, right? It's an actual specification, it's actually called that. So, but the, yeah, so the Argo rollout itself is the one that looks at what your end state wants to be and then shifts the traffic accordingly, right? So it'll mark individual replicasets as stable versus canary, and you're kind of giving a lot more control over to the rollout controller, right? Versus, and in Argo, you just have your end state defined, like how, what do I wanna see as my end state? Yeah, and really GitOps is about, having a process behind it, right? Having that gateway into your configuration. So in an ideal world, you would have checks and balances before that drift can even happen. So theoretical question, doesn't this break the principles of GitOps in that Gluimesh translates the source of truth? Yeah, so it's, this is actually, and funny enough, there's a conversation I had with Christian Posta, who's at Solo as well. It's, so getting into just like the get-offs aspect of it, the, it's points of demarcation, as I always say, right? Because like if you technically think about it, a deployment isn't really your, right? Like isn't really what runs, right? It's the pods, right? So is storing pod definitions more get-offs than storing a deployment? Or are you just storing what your end state, what your end state wants to be, right? And so it's really your points of demarcation, right?  It's something we've actually discussed at the get-offs working group, right? The, this concept of like soft get-offs and hard get-offs where, and where that point of demarcation is, where I come, where my point of view is like your point of demarcation and where the controller lets go of that and where another controller picks it up, right? And where do you want those to be? Yeah, I mean, where I'm coming from is more in terms of repeatability and consistency. So to me, if glumash changes in a future release, it might change your end service. True, but that would be the same with Istio in general. That abstraction is needed. I mean, really it comes down to, are people gonna use it, right? Are they gonna be able to consume it? And in the end, we're trying to make that easier. Cool, we have about two more minutes. So if there's any more questions, comments, concerns. Awesome. Thank you. Cool, thank you everyone.


Ok, now we are starting with firmware architecture, how to use our library, for me important part and at the end of the day we will finish with some tips and tricks etc. Or you can have a look to the document. Part about firmware architecture, firmware structure, firmware organization. It's a bit change from the previous library because now we are based on the AHL library and our software development team define some different way how to look to the application. We have this part when it's a user interface library, it's mean some user communication with the protocol LCD display or DAC output. That's some debug functionality which is not really necessary to use in real application. That's our part of user interface. Then they name the control like cockpit and the last one is motor control library. The motor control cockpit, the most important part is and contains also is three parts, first it's some interface. Motor control interface, we have two motors, we need start bows etc. Then we have some configuration part, small part but important we have to set up somehow our library, our peripheries. And last part it's some dynamics with some loops and it's handled with some FOC task, high frequency, motor control medium and some safety part. That's all about the structure, that's quite simplify and now we switch to the API application programming interface. What is the application programming interface? Setup of functions, some definition of some structure or some variables etc. Some interaction between your code and our library. It's exactly what is in this slide, we have some motor control, firmware, our library and we have to send some command, receive some information, some data from the application. We can split to two sections, one is some motor control user interface, that's some basic level how to start the motor etc. And second one is some lower level programming interface. For example, we can start motor, stop motor, we already know that inside the library it's some RAM generator for the speed. And we can program, set up some parameters of this speed RAM controller. And then we can go deeply to some a bit hidden stuff like PID regulators and we can set up some parameter of this regulator, that's necessary interface for that. Motor control interface contains two types of functions and it's good to know it. One it's buffered, that's first part and second one it's non-buffered. And different it's simply if we run buffered command for example execute, no execute. Program speed RAM, that's not execution, let's prepare some condition about the required RAM. We want to be at the exact speed defined in this function after some time. And that's our definition, it will be stored and in the time where it's possible use it. If it's motor running, not in the open loop, in closed loop we can use it. It is buffered and we use this value when it's possible. And second one react quite immediately, that it's start motor, stop motor. But to be sure that it's not react exactly immediately, maybe acknowledge react immediately because it's clear some flag, which define that something happen that could be immediately. But start motor define some flag that after this command the library which is running on the interrupt service routine initiate the section what is necessary, switch on the PWM generation etc. That it takes some time and for that it's not reaction immediately but it's executed immediately. Then one part with example of interface, motor control interface, which is the top level. We have received request mostly from China that our code is quite complex, it's difficult to use it. And for that our development team define this level of programming interface, which is quite similar. And define it like this one that contains only the necessary parameters. Finale, speed and ramp duration and rest is described in the name. That's the different. And second group is quite in the old start, but it is again quite simplified. And it's contains also some pointer to some structure, which is used inside. It's running on some structures, which is used in this case for the PI speed regulator and you have for that handle. You can find what is possible use inside in some mcconfig.h file. There is list definition because it's header file of the external variables and you can use it. There is about speed regulator, current regulator, temperature sensing, bus voltage, all stuff it's inside. And you can find what can you use inside. And it's this one, please don't forget use this one, because if you don't use include, you don't know this link and you have to type this include of this header. OK, again highlight variable formats, because in most cases customer forgot it and make it some disadvantage for that. Two formats for the speed in zero point hertz or in pulse per PWM cycle. And you have to recalculate through this equal at the end, it's multiplying, dividing by six, that's simple calculation. And for the speed ramp you have to remember taking account that we use milliseconds. And last one is digital per PWM. And last one, we maybe touch some time with the playing in the, with the workbench that our torque current inside the online tool, it's in some units that's not current in milliamps or amps. That's in the some internal unit that's signet, signet integer. And you can calculate from the definition from power stage, which is contains shunt value gain of the network and the VDD of micro. That's all you have to take in account. In our case it's good luck because we have power stage with current range, which is up to 3.268 and the range of 16 bit integer, it's 32, 76 and etc. That's only decimal point, that's good luck that we can imagine current really directly from the number. But in real life you will have bad luck and you have to calculate. But for today we have this case. Ok, there is some example of code, you see some not logic step in this code. What will be happen? Then stop, immediately cancel the start. Then it's nice in this example, it's that there is a possible see what we have inside that the NTC star, the all functionality about NTC start with NTC underscore about the PID regulator again. The common functions it start with MC, bus voltage sensing and etc. That's good to know and you can easily find it. Ok, we have some help file, which is in the section documentation and you have find all functions in the library with the description. This file is generated from the source code, you can find the same command in the source code and it is on your decision if you want to use help file or search in the project. Both is possible and you will find the same information. Ok, then we have about 2 hours and because we usually have lunch at 12 o'clock and we start with first part. We will see what is your possibility, how fast we can go through the examples and we will start now with the examples. We have just before, we have some slides about hands-on and example projects. First part it's because it's usually engineers learn from examples and copy-paste. It's a nice way to make own code but to be sure to make some not good step. For the learning it's good to have example, try play with them, modify. For that we have examples in the structure which is the same folder like installation folder in program files. We can find there some examples. First example it's quite similar to our first testing example but a bit simpler. It's use speed ramp and repeatedly start the motor with some slope and after some time stop the motor. Example it's prepared for combination Nucleo 303RE with our power stage AHM 07 with bulk running motor. That's only control part, it's different but I think it's easy to take the C code and use it also with this board. Then we have second example which is most close to our testing firmware with the potentiometer. And with this example you can find some technique how to use some state machine, how to take value information from the system state that it's running or something else. And this example simply use analog input, that's good information from this example that we can use the same ADC converter for the user channel. It's necessary to take micro with more ADCs if I want to define through the potentiometer position my speed. I can use the same, use only different input and my motor control library on the background take care about this one which is not time critical. And in this example it's how to handle reading of the bus voltage that we have to define some channel and then we can take result of the conversion.


Are Asian men, and particularly Chinese men, more effeminate than Western men? And is there a historical context for it? This YouTuber seems to think so, David. Andrew, today we are reviewing a video called Exploring Chinese Masculinity and China's Band on Affeminate Men. It is by a brand new YouTuber called Aini. Like, well, Aini, I love you. I think that she is a girl that, I wanna say was raised half in China, half in Australia, and she's dropping a lot of stuff that is relevant to Chinese dudes. And I know a lot of, like, fellow Chinese diasporic, you know, international students are commenting on it, but Andrew, we're here to give the ABC perspective. All right, everybody, we're gonna break down our video. We're gonna tell you what we agree with and what we also disagree with and also give you our perspective. So let's get into it. Last year, China decided to ban effeminate men from TV. What does this mean and why might they have done this? With the recent popularity of East Asian media, I think the divide between East Asian masculine ideals and Western ideals are becoming more and more apparent. The ideal man from the West is often represented through Captain America or Jason Momoa. And in East Asia, the ideal man is reflected through celebrities and idols like BTS, Chan Woo and Lu Han. Now this can be- Oh my gosh, Aini, why do you make us look like that? You compare a guy who put on makeup with like The Rock and Jason Momoa, Aquaman. It's not fair comparison. Why don't you compare him to Timothy Chalamet, David Bowie? Yeah, I mean, I think when she says ideal Western man, she's actually saying like the extremely Western man, like the man who almost only exists in the West. I mean, actually there's buff guys like that in China, but they're not really movie stars. There's probably not as many of them. That's not as big of a percentage. Well, they just exist in like pro lifting or like pro fighting. Let's just say more guys in America want to be like Jason Momoa than guys in China, I would say that. No, so basically, you know, to her point, there's some truthiness to it. But I think her examples were a little bit too extreme and handpicked. Hey, is it kind of funny that The Rock and Jason Momoa are like kind of Asian? All right, moving on to the next clip. That it is penetrated, silenced and possessed. Because of what we said above and how often when we look at masculinity, we're always using the Western idea as a norm. We're always thinking about default masculinity as men who are really macho, who are really aggressive or assertive, they're bold, they're dominant, especially amongst other men. We need to kind of step back from that sort of thinking and really look at masculinity specific to different cultures because masculinity is a cultural construct. Andrew, I need made a pretty general statement here that I think actually a lot of people, like in a way, agree with in the most general sense. What do you think about it? She said, right now, the globe is going by Western male standards. And that's the only reason why juxtaposed against that, Chinese men seem more effeminate. Yeah, I mean, it kind of makes sense because the Western culture has kind of dominated the world, you know, and also right now, as we speak, we are in a Western country. And she's, I believe, also in Australia, which is also a Western country. It's an Anglo country. So of course it makes sense to go by those standards. Of course, but yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, should it always be like that? I do think even the standards in America are changing, right? You got Timothy Chalamet, you got Tom Holland, you got kind of these softer guys who are also very desirable. And like we said, what about David Bowie? What about Prince? What about Lionel Richie? When before hip hop came in, they had all these black guys dressed in like crushed velvet suits with like perms. That was like.  But those people, I guess, to be fair, they were being juxtaposed, I think at the same time those guys were popular, Stallone was popular, Arnold Schwarzenegger was popular. So America has always had like a hyper wide spectrum. And I think that that's something that we're gonna address. It is true, China in particular, even more than Japan and Korea has a very, very narrow spectrum that they're willing to accept. But the whole spectrum has always existed in both societies. I will say this though. One thing that I do not like is saying that testosterone-filled masculinity never existed in Asia. How was Genghis Khan? How were the Manchurians, the Jurchins, able to conquer China? You know what I mean? Like China always had more advanced like poetry and like, you know, soft skills. But at the end of the day, wars back then were fought on horseback by sword, by arrows. And the conventionally testosterone-filled nomadics, like the Mongolians, they had it. No, I mean at the end of the day, listen, there's always been like masculine farmers in China. They're just not getting the media coverage. They're not getting the stories, the movies, or even the poems are not about them. Yeah, and you could argue in 2022, Andrew Guy's like, Pongtai. You know, we follow some like masculine farmer gnomes that are hilarious. They're getting there like day in the sun more than they ever had because if you guys know about Chinese history, it is very scholar-centric due to the language being so complicated and a lot of people being illiterate. Like it's not like the lower class people could like tell their own glorious stories. All right, so in this next clip, she actually introduces the two main types of masculinity in China, which is actually something we've talked about on our channel before. We mean like totally opposite things. Gwyn is like the literary side referring to cultural attainment, so he thinks scholars. And the second masculine ideal is relating to martial valor. So this is in a classical sense all about military achievements. So we can think soldiers here. Straight away, we can see that these two ideals are pretty much on opposite sides of the spectrum. One side, it's all about being cultured, well-versed in the classics and educated through books, poetry, and the likes. And the other is related to martial valor and military achievements. And so we can see already the existence of a masculine ideal that we don't really see in the West. Yeah, Andrew, this is a subject that we brought up before and I think it's really, really difficult to cover in a short period of time. But Wen and Wu are like she described. One is more like Q from James Bond and one is like James Bond himself, even though James Bond has some suave aspects of him. Like, one is like the brute guy who carries out the gadgets, IRL. And the other guy is the genius who invented it. Yeah, and I do think that great leaders and great generals, you need both. That in Chinese society, that's what they say, right? You should have both Wu and Wen. But I think that it's not as simple and I think people get Wu and Wen mixed up with like Wu just being Jason Momoa and then Wen being Timothy Chalamet. Like, it's actually not so much based only in physicality because like, if you look at old Chinese leaders, they weren't always like the most cut, buffest, biggest guys. Like, you didn't need to do that to win wars. You just had to have that mind for dominating your opponent and that could happen in so many different ways rather than just like arm wrestling. Yeah, it's very difficult to compare it to the Western image because you've got like Conan the Barbarian and all these guys with like eight packs that look like bodybuilders but also good at fighting. Whereas like, obviously in the older Chinese era films, I believe it's called Meng Fu, these guys actually kind of have like pop bellies and they actually more represent like, if you look at up photos of actually how real navy seals that go on a lot of missions and like nowadays look, they don't necessarily look all super cut like fitness models. They look more like beefy dudes. Yeah, they're super fake. They're goofy dudes, but they're not like aesthetic. Yeah, they're some thick dudes. Yeah, so it's already becoming kind of like difficult to compare the East and the West because they've never had like the lifting culture over there. Representing, look at the early years of the People's Republic of China. You have Liu Shaoqi being the administrator, representing Wen and Zhu De being the general representing Wu and above the birth of them was Mao Zedong, the chairman. So even though Chinese masculine ideals can be split between Wen and Wu, what's interesting is that the leader is usually said to possess both. So we can see that the idea of Wen and Wu are crucial to understanding traditional Chinese masculinity. But what's interesting about this is that though well documented, these ideals only represent what men thought the ideal man was. So does this change if we bring women into the picture? So of course, Andrew, the most successful person in anything is a guy who got both bars up, right? It's kind of like LeBron. LeBron is revered for his physicality, but there's a ton of other players who have had somewhat similar physicality in his life, right? In the NBA careers. However, they have never had the skill and basketball IQ that LeBron has. LeBron almost has the IQ of like a John Stockton, but he got the body of Carl Malone and the hops of Jordan. That's why LeBron is considered like a top three player of all time. And one thing I always find interesting is like Chinese culture, man, it's always about the balance, right? Like, oh, you got to balance Wu and Wen and then you're the greatest. You got to balance your yin and your yang. And then, you know, it's like all about balance. And I think that is something that is not always talked about as much in the West. I think the West understands it too. It's kind of like a general idea, right? That you want good and bad. The Renaissance man, right? Renaissance kind of indicating you have no real weaknesses. Almost like Kobe's game, Kobe had no weaknesses. But I almost feel like, like what's the ideal percentage breakdown? Like is it 50-50? 50% Wu, 50% Wen? Is that the best guy? Or is it like some people will be like, oh yeah, for a leader you want 70-30? I don't know. Maybe it's 50-50. That's how Chinese kind of see it in my opinion. And Wu. Don't really reflect what females thought the ideal man should be like. However, this all changes in 1978 when China's economic reform happens. Two things became different. First, China went from a centrally planned economy to a market-based one. And second, women joined the workforce. So they actually have purchasing power now because they have money. And so there are entire markets out there now with just the female demographic in mind. So what happens to depictions of men when there are genres that are targeted to women and made by women? One such genre that took off was a portrayal of Bishonen from Japanese Mengus. Bishonen, meaning beautiful youth, generally featured boys that were, as the name suggests, beautiful. Now this whole idea of beauty and men wasn't a foreign concept in China. In the Beijing opera, more effeminate men had traditionally been casted to play female roles. First off, I gotta give I Need Props because she really knows a lot about history, clearly reads way more books than I do, way more books than a lot of people. I will say this, the sort of the connection between the Cultural Revolution and then the economic reopening and then the catering of the economic market and then the influence with the Bishonen from Japan. I'm not saying all those things didn't happen, but the connection to Chinese women liking the real flower by Shonen Pretty Boys, it seems like kind of a reach to me. Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying. I think that a better comparison between Western masculinity and Eastern masculinity is actually just British and French masculinity versus instead of American. Right, more of the imperial societies that have maintained the royal families, also very old countries, a love of the Xinhua and the love of the Pusselin. Guys, we're talking about societies that had emperors and kings. I think you have to look at those kinds of societies because what, who was the most sought after man? That was a bachelor. The prince and the princes always generally, I mean, at least in media in our minds was like soft looking. I think a lot of the appeal of this effeminate look is that they look rich and they look like royalty. Like they look like upper class because maybe if you're buff and you got a beard and stuff like that, then you're probably from a blue collar family, you know? And then obviously these societies are very hierarchical and based around dynasties and royalties. I will say that one thing that I noticed, and I'm not criticizing Aini, like I said, she knows a lot more about Chinese history than I did. She did a great job. But like, there is a certain level of inevitable hyperclunkiness when you compare China, the oldest country in the world to America, the newest country in the world. And America is like a really crazy mix of a lot of things with a lot of rebel spirit and a lot of hyperdiversity in thought and religion and everything layered on top of it. China essentially has very little of that in comparison on a per capita ratio basis. So any comparison, I'm just like, yeah, it's tough. Like you said, much better to compare it to other ancient imperial civilizations around the world because America's like a new country. It's almost like an expansion team. You can't compare that to the legacy of the Celtics and the Lakers. This next clip is about whether we should blame Japan and Korea for this effeminate image. I think this really shows the transnational trend that are forming and the crossover of different ideals. So with the rise of Pichonin and Flower Boys in the 1990s, we saw a softer, prettier masculine ideal emerge. Two quick notes on this. First, though Japan and Korea had a big influence on this portrayal of softer masculinity, it's not like this ideal didn't exist in China before. Depictions of Taizi from the Taizi family literary genre popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties would feature this sort of softer masculine ideal. And second, because we've been talking about beauty so much, it's not that beauty has always been separate from masculinity, but rather it's just a more important trend now than it was before. And this sort of beauty is part of a transnational trend coined as the Pant East Asian soft masculinity. And this period of time was when depictions of masculinity across China, Japan and Korea was viewed as exceptionally feminine to the West. I mean, I would essentially agree with her theory right here that there was a historical basis to like really flowery pretty boys even dating back to the Peking opera. Like she said, the Ming and Qing dynasties, we could point back to paintings from various dynasties. I think it shifted. Somebody told me actually that Wen and Wu shifted every 500 years. And it had to do with like whether you are at war with the nomads from the North or obviously the Mongolians and stuff like that that are way more conventionally masculine. So it kind of like made everybody boss up at that moment. It also varied per province. I know she didn't mention that the Northern provinces typically have been more masculine than like Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Watertown regions because they're more like I guess free from war or whatever.  But yeah, I generally would agree with her. Like there was a historical basis and then obviously China economically lagged behind Japan and Korea. So when they were able to import their stuff it like filled the gap that China wasn't even able to fill but they had the desire for it. Right.  So it's a lot of the, a certain class of person is creating all this media back then. It's not necessarily like we said like the poor athletic strong farmer is not painting and writing his own history. We're talking about the educated scholar class that is writing and painting history. So of course they're going to paint people probably more in their image which I don't fully blame them because the winners or the educated class always write history. Whether it's the people who can actually write Chinese back then which not everybody could. I would say. Or the people who had the skills to paint. So who had the skills to paint? It was the painters and the artists and the painters and artists they're not the most maybe typically masculine. And I've read about this before. Chinese history specifically does have a strong bias towards the scholars and the learned class. And Chinese are very difficult language. So at a time like you know it's more opened up over time but for the most part it was more like the top end people writing history for everybody. All right let's play it. Post was making with that the men in this picture were both 19 years old but somehow there was such a big difference because Mbappe being a real man led France to victory whilst in China you have youths like the TF boys and that just leads to an effeminate China or a weak China. You know something tells me that the original commenter was just salty that China hasn't made a single world cup since 2002 but yeah sure blame it on effeminate men. What's most interesting about these nationalist remarks though is how paradoxical these sentiments are. You're fueled by nationalism, you're making a post on wanting to make China great again but there's a clear sense of self-orientalism because in the same post you're making Western masculine ideals as a norm and you're pitting Chinese masculinity or yourself against it and posing it as inferior. So that's just one side of the coin with the government straight up denouncing effeminate depictions of men. However on the other side as you might have already picked up on has a lot to do with nationalism. So I agree and disagree with Inie here but I'll just start with what I disagree with because that's you know how you do an analysis of something basically she's saying that that juxtaposition of Mbappe and TF boys is wrong. Obviously- She says it's unfair.  It's not about the existence of this thing. It's about what's getting props and what's getting props is a mix right? And when an archetype of a personality set or a aesthetic sets gets props is it the government pushing it or is it more market driven from the citizens? Right I don't know but I will tell you this if China wants like guys to weight lift more they need to promote and pay more money to the Olympic weight lifters because China had a lot of great weight lifters men and women. And they probably need to focus on the guys that are like maybe a weight lifter is particularly like good looking so he kind of has the when face but like a Wu body. That's gonna be like the transition point like I'm not by the way I'm not supporting this I'm just saying if the government was really interested in increasing like shifting it from when to Wu because you know it splits every 500 years and they're feeling like they're entering a period when they're gonna need more Wu you would like want to incentivize it with people who are hybrids. Yeah and also you want to incentivize people with money let's be honest. So I'm saying like Sue Bing Tian the Chinese sprinter who's kind of a stocky dude. No more Wu. You got to make him a star. I'm just saying these are the types of things that I think America already did partially because America already saw the blue collar market in America and America is kind of a blue collar country. Anyways, they saw that's blue collar even though the money is very white collar here. Yeah the money's white collar but actually the audience for entertainment is often very blue collar. So they saw like the blue collar market and they were like oh we'll give a Mark Wahlberg. Oh we'll give them like Chris Pratt. Like these are guys who kind of appealed to both sides. Who are more blue collar though. Yeah more blue collar but I'm saying you know they are a little bit appealed. Yeah yeah because Mark Wahlberg for example he runs all his businesses. A white collar guy can appreciate how empire minded he is. Exactly. Alright everybody this is going to be our last clip from her video. If you guys want to watch the whole thing I'll leave a link down below but we're about to give you our final analysis and takeaways after this. Nearly not the be all end all at all. So I thought that was a really good comment to keep in mind and also a great kick starter to this conversation. Next we have a comment from Yin who says true but I also think that feminine type men are becoming more popular in the West like Timothy Charlemy. I think women in general feel more safe than being with this macho type of guy that could kill you with one strangle. I mean if we look at all the assaults done to women we want a more kinder, softer looking guy. And there's a lot to unpack there but it's a great comment. First of all we're seeing more diversity in terms of how masculinity is expressed in the West as well. Yin is spot on by saying that there are more feminine depictions of masculinity come through. And some great examples are celebrities like Zayn, Harry Styles and Timothy Charlemy who kind of embody a softer masculine appeal. I think the West has always been hyper diverse in what it liked and what it didn't like. There's always been a lot of lanes open. Honestly, I even think Korea and Japan being more modeled after the West whether organically or by concerted effort actually have a lot more lanes than China does. China has like the most strictest look standards in only like one or two lanes for both genders despite being a country of like 1.4 billion.  Whereas in other countries, it's like, hey man, get in where you fit in. So it goes to show you it is different but I do think in the West with the rise of all the identity fueled movements, for sure it's opened up as it should. I welcome more diversity in the West but I would always say that it was always more diverse here. Like we said, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Prince and then you had that juxtaposed with Stallone, Mr. T, all the WWE, NFL, hockey. Like America has always had like everything because America is like not a country of one group of people. It's actually have like thousands of different people. Yo, you wanna hear this theory that I got about China? I think that China for a few decades in the age of media was promoting only one depiction of beauty for each gender, right? Right. They were like, Gao Fu Shui and then like- Women gotta look like this. Gao Fu Shui, men gotta look like this. And because they wanted all of their citizens to follow suit and be like classy and clean and become like these people. However, now you're starting to see, I guess in their opinion, the extreme effects of that where now they think that men are getting too effeminate. So now there's like this pushback and a reverse going to like, hey guys, let's promote some athletic guys. Versus they wanted to all like promote like the royal look. So now it's kind of like they're just making pivots. And you can even say that the reverse of that, Andrew shout out to our homies, higher brothers, like higher brothers ran like as an antithesis to that like princeling thing because those dudes are kind of like almost just some like crazy trap rappers. Yeah, I mean, the Chinese Migos essentially, yeah. Overall, it was a very good video from Aini. Obviously we can't go through every single point, every single little detail. It just take way too long. Overall, I have a couple of thoughts. One, I totally get where she's coming from. I do not in the macro big picture sense fully disagree with her premise. I do, however, think she left out a lot of nuance about a lot of different types of archetypes of guys. Also, I don't think she addressed that you can just look like a pretty boy and think like a wool like masculine guy or you can look like a wool guy and like have the personality of a soft pretty boy. I think she was assuming that a personality set automatically comes with an aesthetic set where obviously there's correlation, but it's not like a hundred out of a hundred times somebody who looks soft is soft, right? There's like humans are nuanced in 2022. Yeah, I would also say like the whole who versus when thing kind of you can boil it down to if I had to in other Western terms like a man's man and a man's woman. Like a lot of women are going to lean towards the when guy even in America today. Like I'm not saying it's more than the buff guy but or the who guy, but I think that that's where society is shifting, right? That's why there's actually a rejection from the man's man side of things and that's where you get the man a sphere because they're like, what? Like women value the soft guy more. The existence of the a man a sphere is indicative of a backlash counter movement to the movement moving towards the when side. It's tied to it for sure. It's not like one for one directly but of course those things are tied together. Of course when society is starting to value more of feminine men in American society or you know, whatever.  Like you guys don't want men don't want to work out and learn how to fight. So I guess there's that whole conversation. So I guess it is interesting that this whole conversation of when can actually, yeah, it can lead back to even why the man's sphere even exists in America. Yeah, I mean, I just think it's a very clunky comparison. Anytime you are directly one for one trying to compare China, which is a very old country 5,000 years that it's just gone through so many ups and downs and crazy system shifts. And then you're comparing it to an expansion team that is actually a patchwork quilt of a lot of different races and religions living under some Anglo-Saxon principles, right? Which is America. So there's only 250 years old, 5,000 one group of people versus 250 years, like 100 groups of people. It's just very, very difficult. And that's where I guess I disagree with Aini was on some of her assertions of like, well, yeah, maybe Easter masculinity is femininity. And I was like, nah, I don't think that's true. I just think that Han Chinese culture has always leaned more towards the poetic, like what we view modern day is like metrosexual. That it's always just lean that way, but they always had everything and they always needed everything. I will say this though, and to defend Aini's point, I do think there's something about Chinese culture in particular that like weighted it towards the when like 80, 20, like pro like poetry, Wang Li-Hong, J-Chiao guy, you know what I mean? Like, I just think for whatever reason. We have an illustrious history, man. It just ended up 80, 20 that way. I think even Koreans and Japanese and Vietts even have a little bit of a better balance. Like let's say, for example, it even leans towards the soft boys. There's might be like 55, 45 pro soft boy, whereas like China's like 80, 20. I just think for a country that big, they can't like be so lopsided one way or the other. Like, you know, you can argue Mongolia is too lopsided. The other way, right?  That's not good either. Maybe it was a rejection from the, maybe it was a rejection of the toxic masculinity of Genghis Khan where he came in and he just took over and he wrecked up. He didn't build governments as well. He didn't really build like new languages. He was just a good fighter. And he was just a good like destroyer and dominator. Oh yeah. You know, I gotta say, even after a thousand years, China, we're still experiencing some PTSD from the Mongolian empire. So, you know, we just wanted the opposite of that. So yeah, pretty boys is what we came up with. So we kind of went with the guy-by-guy that Genghis will never accept in his hoard. It's a theory. I got theories people. Anyways, you guys let me know in the comments down below what you think of that theory guys. I also wanted you to answer the question maybe like, should we as Eastern people value Western masculinity? I mean, it makes sense. You are in the Western world or not because maybe Western masculinity or not because maybe Western masculinity is also changing. But let me know in the comments down below, guys. We are the hot pop boys. Shout out to INE for a great video. And until next time, we out. Peace.


If you want God to use you as a spiritual leader, you desire a good thing. Here is a trustworthy saying, whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. That's 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 1. Yes, the desire to be used of God is good, but you must guard your heart lest it become contaminated with the mixture of impure motives. Here are seven warning signs of ungodly ambition. Number one, you lack personal holiness. To perform in public is easy, but to live righteously in private takes true devotion to and fear of God. Many have gifts, but don't know the glory. Many have charisma, but lack character. Living a lifestyle of sinfulness is a sign that your godly motives have been replaced by fleshly ambition.  If you don't pray or read the word consistently, you have no business being behind a pulpit. Spiritual leaders are supposed to help other believers grow spiritually, but how can you truly do that if you yourself haven't grown? If you lack a prayer life and a devotion to God's word, then it's a sign to you that your motives are becoming polluted by worldliness. Number three, you care more about crowds than you do about people. If you don't love God's people, then why serve them? For financial gain? For status? For popularity? When you look into the faces of those to whom you minister, do you see people with needs, hopes, hurts, and stories? Or do you just see useful tools for your agenda? To have the heart of God is to have the compassion of God for God's people. Number four, you have an unhealthy desire to be seen and recognized. Look, we all appreciate being encouraged and recognized for our work, but if you constantly crave the spotlight, you need to seriously evaluate your motives. People with an unhealthy desire for recognition are usually operating out of insecurity and rejection that hasn't yet been healed. They need to be seen. They need to be celebrated and noticed in order to feel fulfilled. These people love to see their faces on flyers. They love to be seated in the front row. They love to be noticed when they walk into a room. They demand VIP treatment and they generally crave attention. Number five, you can't receive correction. When your motives are impure, everything you do becomes contaminated. Impure motives force you to build the ministry on self instead of the Lord. Thus, when correction is brought to you, your first reaction is to be defensive, to protect what you have built upon yourself. Those who attempt to lovingly correct you are quickly labeled as haters or jealous. Now, granted, you can't give your attention or validation to everyone who brings criticism. Generally speaking, I think you should ignore the internet theologians and the keyboard crusaders. But when those who know you and love you, when those who truly walk with you in friendship and relationship, when they bring correction, you should take that seriously. Rather than use deflections like, well, I've been in the ministry for X amount of years or, well, they just don't understand my anointing. Perhaps you should humbly receive the correction that comes from those who love you and know you. If you can't take legitimate correction, it's time to check your motives. Number six, you imagine that the purpose of God's favor is to elevate you. When God elevates one of His servants, His goal isn't to elevate a person. His goal is to elevate His word, His message. God doesn't raise you for the sake of you. Ministry is not so much a promotion as it is a death to self. Now, preachers and ministers, please remember that we are not the main characters in the story. We are simply servants who serve the greater purposes of God. And we can very quickly be replaced. Count it joy that you can be a part of what God is doing. But remember your place. It's about the lost. It's about God's glory. Walk humbly. Number seven, you view other ministers and ministries as your competition. Ministry is not about competition, but cooperation with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. If you feel pains of jealousy, whenever something good happens for another ministry, you really need to purify your motives. If you feel like the success of others is somehow taking away from your success, then your motives need to be purified. If you take joy in the failings of other ministries and ministers, then your motives need to be purified. Why see the success of others as a threat if we all have the same goal? Again, if you want God to use you as a spiritual leader, you do desire a good thing. Watch carefully for these signs of ungodly ambition.  I'm David Diga Hernandez, and that is your moment of truth. I'm David Diga Hernandez, and I'm your reporter by clicking on the donate link now.