Hey guys, it's Julia and welcome back to my channel and for today's video I'm going to be doing a witchy Q&A. So this was actually requested by some of you guys to talk about more, I have done a few witchcraft related videos in the past so I'll have that playlist linked down below. I also plan on doing a video about, I did my tarot collection recently so I want to do a video more about how I personally do readings and what tarot kind of is. So that's going to be a separate video. This video I asked you guys on Instagram, which my Instagram is always linked down below if you guys want to be a part of future stuff like this. I asked you any questions that you guys have related to witchcraft, wicka, crystals, tarot, anything like that and I'm going to be addressing that today. The main question that I got was how did I first get into it because I've never talked about my experience, how I started, stuff like that. And very much someone who researches a lot of topics, I get interested in something and then I get invested and then I start researching it. Despite if I believe in it or not. So I was watching one of my favorite YouTubers, Kayla Nicholson, you've probably heard of her. She does tarot readings in some of her videos. She's a lifestyle channel and she does a lot of lifestyle positivity stuff like that on her channel. And she also sometimes does tarot readings and some spiritual stuff. So I have been watching her for so long so when I saw her get into tarot, I was just really interested. And I was like, oh, I should read more about that because, you know, I was often grown up to think like, we'll talk about like personal things in this video just because it was asked. But I was born Catholic, not born Catholic, but I've been Catholic since I was a child. So I grew up Catholic. I went to a Catholic school. I go to a Catholic high school. I, we're not, this video is not about religion. Like this is just about some questions you guys asked. Like we're not going to go into that. But I, you know, I knew like tarot was like not against the Catholic religion, but it's not a part of it. Like it's not a part of the Catholic religion. Like it's really like outside of it. It's more of a pagan thing or occult stuff. People who are atheists can use tarot cards like anybody can, but just specific to religion. Like you got to be kind of careful that it doesn't clash with your other beliefs because I don't know. Some people don't care, but some people do. So just pointing to that. So I saw someone else talking about it. Like I said that YouTuber that I really like, I saw her doing readings and stuff and I was like, oh, like, I'm really interested. Like I should, I've always been kind of interested in witchy stuff and occult stuff. So like I was like, you know what, I should give it a try. So I bought a tarot deck and I got it. It was my first of the wild unknown tarot deck by Kim Kranz and I started playing around with that. And for the first little bit, I was just kind of studying it, like how it worked, how like you do tarot, how you do the spreads, what each card means. That, you know, there's some beliefs that aren't right. Just like that there's like common misconceptions about tarot. Like the death card means you're going to die or like if you do a reading, it's going to tell you who your true love is, which is like not how it is at all. So there's a lot of like stuff shown in films and pop culture that it's just not right in related to tarot. Also like a lot of con artists out there who do use tarot just to make money. So like when people hear tarot, they often think of like psychics or like con artists, like street artists, stuff like that, which is not actually the case because some people really do believe in these cards and believe that they help them and are not con artists. So I first got into it because of my interest in witchcraft when I was younger and like in current time also some inspiration that I saw from another YouTuber that I was watching and I also just had a general interest in what the cards were about because nobody, I don't know, nobody around me does tarot readings. Nobody that I know is into that or like was into that when I wanted to start. So I decided to look into it on my own. So I got a tarot deck and played around with it. That's kind of where it started for me. I also got a question, do you believe in them? I'm going to interpret this in terms of the tarot deck. I do. I think I don't believe in this card is the death card.  Like there is like more positive and more negative cards. You can interpret them that way. But like literally all cards are onto interpretation and can be implied. Like they can all be implied. Like they can all be shown in your own personal life. For example, a card about motherhood or about finance struggles, anything like that. That can all be linked to you or to what a friend is going through or something like that. So there's just like, I've just gotten really used to the cards. And again, I'll talk more about the cards in like a separate video, but I do believe in them. But I don't make decisions solely on my tarot cards. I make decisions with my judgment. Other things as well as my cards do impact like what I do each day and stuff like that. But it's not, oh my god, I got this card. We are doing this today. Or, oh my god, I got this card. I'm going to die tomorrow because that's not how it works. Another question is how did I learn tarot stuff? And I'm just going to say witchy stuff in general. I, again, I watched a lot of videos on it. So this one YouTube channel, Harmony Nice, I recommend her to like anybody who wants to get involved in witchcraft or Wiccan or all that kind of stuff. Anyone's even curious, I link them to her because I just think she explains everything really well. She has like a really good vibe to her channel. I really love her videos. I also just think she's a great person. I have one of her books that I have to read. Like I just really like her. So I always link people towards her to learn. But I also learned from lots of videos, some documentaries and even like witchcraft related books, which is another question on here is the best witchcraft book I've ever read. So I've made videos on my like witchcraft related books that I've like read and stuff. I would say the little book of witchcraft is the most simple straightforward guide out there. That is really helpful. Also practical magic is a great one as well if you're starting. Have you ever had a discouraging tarot reading and what did you do afterwards? So for a long time I always, I did get discouraging readings or I would get this one card. That is probably the most negative card in the deck. I would get it very often. It's just the card doesn't look great. I will put the card out but it doesn't look positive and it's just not the meaning of it. Like the meaning of it is just not great. So like I've gotten this card a number of times in relation to future or present or past or my spirit stuff like that. So I've been, when that happens I try to do more like when I get discouraged about stuff like that. I kind of try to do like other things after that like self-care or work on certain things I know I have to work on and then like keep moving forward kind of thing. Does anyone in your family practice it? No. One in my family practices it. No one really talks about it. Most people in my family don't acknowledge that I do it stuff like that. Even when I burn like sage in my room and stuff like that I usually get in trouble so I don't do that anymore because it bothers everybody in my house. But yeah, no one in my family practices it. So I wasn't like born with like parental figure that's related like that was pagan or like is somehow involved in witchcraft. Next is are you in a coven? No. I mean on Reddit there's a certain coven that I'm like in a chat for. It's like an online coven but I like want to find my own coven. I don't know. I wouldn't do it with like people like in my area like if anything I think I would start one. I know I'm not like the most knowledgeable. I haven't had the most experience to start one but I think it'd be really cool. So like I don't know like maybe I'll start a coven one day. I don't know but how accurate would you say tarot is?  Simple as that. I believe in tarot and stuff like that. I confide in it when I need it. You kind of also don't want to be too emotional when you use tarot. It's just something to it's like an aid to help you but it's not like the only thing you do when you're in crisis, you know? A lot of these are like what I interested. How often do you do personal tarot readings? So like when I do my own tarot readings I do them almost every day even if it's just like an app on my phone and I draw one I do that. If I'm out on the go like I will do that app stuff when I actually do tarot readings like again I try to do them every day but I don't always. I think it really depends on like the week the month stuff like that or how often I feel like a pull to my deck. The way I try to bring my deck with me wherever I go just it just helps me. I don't know. Readings for other people I have done before I've done a few online and I've done some for my friends and stuff in person and yeah I do them every now and then like if someone wants one I tend to do them like in person if I like the person. I'll do them for like I'll do them like why not? Like I'll do a reading for you. Otherwise like I do charge because like it could take a lot of time and stuff like that but it depends. Did you first get into richcraft and how religious at all before? I was really Catholic growing up and I've had phases where like yeah I'm Catholic but I'm not practicing Catholic like I don't pray every night. I don't go to church. I don't do this and this and this but then there's times in my life where I've been dedicated to that or I have a Bible and I've annotated my Bible or I've read like almost all of my Bible like I used to be very religious in that sense and then things kind of fell for me after that point with some personal issues and I didn't really believe in it or like take confide in that religion anymore. I just just didn't and just certain like things of the religion I just don't believe in quite frankly like when you're born into it like when you're born and then you get baptized you don't get to choose your religion which is fine but that's why I just don't really practice it anymore and I don't identify like I don't identify as that religion but like technically I am because I've had all the sacraments but moving on from that do you have any wishy-themed videos or not will you ever make one? I have a playlist full so if you guys want to see that I have a playlist full. You can check those out. Some really cool questions so like do you charge cleanser crystals? If so what method and how often? I have a singing bowl I invested in that a while ago I clean my crystals with that that's with like the air vibrations and stuff I do that every now and then like when I'm doing like a deep room clean like I'll charge all my crystals or if there's like I don't know I feel some need to charge them I'll charge them cleanse them I also when there's a full moon I tend to put like my favorite crystals that are usually separate from my other ones I put those like on the window ledge or like outside and they charge overnight I do it that way. Your favorite crystals? I'm a big fan of Opalite Opalite Rose Quartz is a classic Amethyst is a classic love all those Salonite's really beautiful so is Cat's Eye How did you tell your friends and parents? So see I didn't really tell anybody I think people just around me could see that I was getting into stuff like that so I wanted to do tarot cards and read them I have just since then gotten more spiritual and have relied on more like of Earth's energy and things like that again I didn't really tell anybody like hey like I think like I identify like I like am interested like I practice witchcraft like I never flat out just say that to somebody it's more like I'm interested in this stuff that's related to witchcraft like they kind of hear me talk about it or if they see the tarot card in my bag or I talk about crystals a lot I actually like at the beginning I gifted a lot of people crystals because I was like take some crystals everyone so I like I would buy crystals for people as gifts so they're kind of like why is this trick by any crystals but yeah I don't know if that answers the question but that is what I kind of did for a bit I also had a question about if it's linked to paganism so it is linked to paganism like if people ask what religion I am I technically just say pagan it's easiest for me and then I practice witchcraft but I tend to just say pagan Wicca is something that I'm very connected to but again that like I don't say that when people ask my religion I usually just say paganism just because it's easier but like am I a Wiccan kind of so anyways that's all the questions I have for today I hope that like answered some of you guys not concerned I hope that answered some of your guys those curiosity questions and if you're interested in anything like that but again my personal opinions stuff like that how I do things might not be how you want to do them or how you start or maybe you like different forms of witchcraft like looking into deities first or like looking into stuff like that more I just am drawn to these certain things that I practice but yeah I will have all the links down below for anything like that if you guys want to support me on Patreon I have like a whole tier for witchcraft stuff if you guys want like ratings and stuff like that you can get that every month and yeah check that out it will be down below if you want to follow me on Instagram, Twitter anything like that I'll link down below and I will see you guys all super soon thank you so much for watching bye


Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's presentation about WikiData for Education. This is a project and it's an initiative that aims to align the sum of all knowledge that we hold in WikiMedia with this co-curriculum. And this presentation will be held by me, Dien, and Justice today. And we hope you will like it and you will get an insight about this project and probably help to build and grow and push this project forward. So next slide, please. So I will first start by just giving an overview about the steps or the summary of this presentation. There will be an introduction and then explain in a bit what is WikiData for those of you who are not familiar with the concept of WikiData. And then we will explain the curriculum information as strict or data. And then we will talk about why do we need to model the curriculum. And we will explain where are we right now at this project, and we will move to explain the curriculum data model that we came up with. And we will provide examples as we use Ghana curriculum as an example to upload it on WikiData using the data model. And we will move to where are we right now and what is next for us. And also we will explain the campaigns that we managed to do that resulted on top of this work and data project. Next slide, please. So what is this project about? WikiData for Education is an initiative that aims to improve the world's ability to access relevant data about school curricula and to simplify and automate finding and aligning open educational resources to national curricula. It's a project that aims to use technology to enhance learning experience in foster collaboration among educators. What we mean by that is that we have a lot of resources online. And at the same time, we don't know how to collect these resources and how to align them to the curriculums that exist in different parts of the world. Especially that curriculum differs from a country to another names of levels and structure of the courses differs again from a country to another. But sometimes the names differ, but the content is the same. And we might be able to standardize all of this and to modelize all of it in one place where people can just query and get the information that they need in order to provide the resources or to support this educational system. So that's what the aim of this, like the main idea behind this project. Next slide, please. And to do so, we decided to use Wikidata. So we have a brilliant project that was introduced. And it's just so Wikidata is technically a central storage structure data that can be edited and read by humans and machines. And that's exactly what we needed. We needed a structure or storage where we can put the curriculum data in a readable way for people, humans and from machines as well. So that we can we as people upload the data of the curriculums following the model that we will introduce. And at the same time, we can query it in order for us to do some comparative analysis in order to provide resources to study these specific curriculums to compare between curriculums. Like there are many use cases that can be held. So Wikidata or the way we present these items or like these topics on Wikidata is that each object is represented as an item and each item can be described by a group of properties. And items can also be connected to each other using properties as well. So it's more of a connected network of nodes where each node represents an item. Next slide, please. So now that we managed to find which platform we will be using for this project, which is the Wikidata. We started also to think about why, like how to upload this kind of information or the curriculum information to Wikidata. And to do so, we collected few curriculums and the structure of these curriculums were a bit tough to just like you cannot just copy past information from the curriculum to the Wikidata or to any structured database, because the curriculums are represented under like textual format in documents such as PDFs. You can just find a paper format like each country can write down their curriculums in a specific format, either PDFs, documents on websites. So it's not really something they can just use easily. So we needed to translate this information or this curriculum to a model that could be used in any structured database, including Wikidata in our case. That's why we decided that we need the model to transform this information into a modelized information as well. So that's why we start working on the model and we come up with a model that could englobe all the information about the curriculum in a more structured way. Next slide please. Now maybe you will ask why even bothering yourself to model this whole curriculum and to put it in a structured way and to put it in a database. Why do we need all this? I will come up with a few scenarios and use cases and then you will see how important this project is. Let's say you're a volunteer in Wikipedia. You are editing documents and you decided that you want to edit dog like or like write down articles that would support education somewhere or that would be aligned with curriculum somewhere. In order for you to do that, you need to know which articles are missing, which articles exist in that are aligned with the curriculum so that you can either improve them or create them if they do not exist. How would you do that if you don't know what each curriculum is about or what each curriculum is aligned with? So to do so, you can now do it actually with the model that we have in with the items that we upload in Wikipedia. You can just write a simple query that we will show afterwards in this presentation and then you can figure out which articles are missing and that are aligned with a specific curriculum in a specific country. And you can take the initiative and write down an article and that's how you can easily help thousands of students to have a resource of information about a specific topic that would be aligned with their curriculum. A second scenario or like a use case that I can think of is let's say there is like an educational company or like educational organization that wanted to support education somewhere. So they wanted to create a portal or like a website where each student or like teacher can just go type in the country, type in the level, and then they will get type in also the subject. Let's say Mathematics and they will just get the resources that would be aligned with their curriculum and for their specific level of education or stage of education. How would this, you know, how would they do it if they don't have what kind of materials or resources are needed for this specific level, what kind of courses are thought or like in a specific level for a specific country, how would they know. So for us with this model, it's possible now to just run a query and you will get the list of all the subjects in the courses for a specific level for a specific country and then you can, you know, upload the as many as resources that you want and you can also explore what kind of curriculums or what kind of courses these countries are teaching for a specific level. Another use case that I can think of is let's say I was a researcher PhD candidate and my main focus is actually education. I want to do something to improve education and to start with I need to do comparative analysis between curriculums in different countries. I have no resource, like no baseline to start with. There is no core database where I can find these informations, or where I can do some comparison. I cannot do that because the information of the curriculums are presented under PDFs and documents that you might get access to or you might not. So the idea behind this is to provide all these information somewhere into centralize these so that anyone absolutely anyone can just go and do their comparison and compare between curriculums in different countries and different levels and they can see what is lacking, what is good, what is what is probably what needs improvements and they can come up with brilliant idea within their research that could probably boost education in this country or another one. The other use case that I can think of, maybe we just want to build an automated bot that would answer your question about a specific country for an educational level saying like I want to get the curriculum for this country for this level and I want all the Wikipedia article aligned with it. You can't do this if you don't have this information as in a machine readable way. So in order for us to make education accessible by machines, by AI projects, we need to provide the data so that initiatives would start from there. These are like just basic use cases that I can think of but there are like plenty of other use cases that you can come up with and this is why this project is important and this is what we are unlocking by modeling this information and by making it available on Wikipedia. Next slide please. Where are we now? So we've done the data collection which means collecting all the curriculums that we needed. First we studied multiple curriculums to understand the difference between curriculums and then we come up with a data model that could at the same time keep the localized version of the curriculums but also try to standardize these to make it easy for us to compare between them and to link between curriculums in different countries. So we provided a data model and the third stage was about uploading data on Wikipedia respecting the model and we run some campaigns and we took Ghana as an example and we managed to detect the missing articles in specific languages for specific levels of education. And there was a campaign that the user group managed to run there and they created many articles that were aligned with curriculums and they made this knowledge now accessible to students there. So it was a brilliant initiative from them as well and we managed to see brilliant results out of it. And now we're in the final stage of the project which is published in the report or like writing the report so we're finalizing the report and that will be published soon and you can read it. It will be shared by us and you can read it to get more in depth understanding of the project. So this is where we are now. We're in the final stage technically. Next slide please. And this is a glam about the model. So this is like a simplified version of the model. It's pretty complicated I would say but I managed to just show like how items will be created on Wikipedia and how they will be connected. So we always start by the parent item on the on the left. It presents which curriculum we are trying to upload here. So we took Ghana for example. So we are trying to call the national curriculum of Ghana and then this item is linked to different items that represents different level of education. So we have the first one represented in the national curriculum of Ghana for high school. Another one for secondary school and you get and you go and it goes that way. And then for each level represent the specific educational years. So it could be the first year of high school second year of high school third year of high school. Each one will be represented by an item. You move again to the next stage and for each level for each educational year let's say the first year of educational. Let's say the first year of high school. We will present again multiple items that would represent different subjects math social studies physics any kind of any kind of like subjects that we are teaching. And then after that for each subject we present the specific that say courses that are taught. And within that we also define which educational level this course belongs to which subject discourse the discourse is aligned to we also present the list of courses that are aligned to this subject. And for each course we also specify the the sub parts of course because some courses are like subdivide divided to like multiple sub parts. And that's what we call their content standard. It's in the right of this of this slide. So I'm just trying to share with you like an insight of how the items are created and how they are connected. We start from the basic or general item that represents which country we are trying to model here and it goes down until the tiniest detail the course which is like the sub part of a specific course. And that's how the model is that that's how this whole concept is is mobilized. You can get more details about the model in like technical depth by checking the the official page of the of the project or also by reaching out to me you can reach out to me. And you can get like to discuss many many many you know technical details like you're passionate about this and next slide please. All right. So thank you so much. Scana for all this wonderful presentation. Yes. So my name is Mohammed Kamal Din Fusani. I go with the username D and she told me and based on the model that Scana has explained we managed to upload some curriculum data some curricula data on wiki data and this is just a QR code you can scan together. So I'm just going to demonstrate this for you to see quickly. So if we open this if we open this on a new tab we are going to find the uploaded information based on Ganesh curriculum. Now the model was the model provided all the information we needed the the structure of how the items should look like and that was how it was uploaded. And so this is how the Ganesh curriculum looks like. So this is social studies curriculum for basic seven basic eight basic nine and for all the other for subjects there are more. So we again uploaded we tried to implement this project also in Uruguay and this is a QR code for that one as well. Now we're now thinking about what is the broader perspective of the data with regards to curriculum information and if you look at this QR code you're going to find all the curricula data currently uploaded on wiki data and that is pretty much found here. Because of time I would have loved to go into the nitty gritty for you to find every item but once you have this link you'll be able to navigate through all the items. So for instance if you come to Ghana we have social studies curriculum for basic seven social studies curriculum for basic eight science and all the subjects that have been studied for a particular level. When you go in there you are able to find what are the core competencies what are the content standards what are the indicators what we show that the student has learned you're going to find all that as well. So we have uploaded content for Ghana and also Uruguay. Now the data we have uploaded on wiki data were linked to Wikipedia we wanted to find out how these articles can make these items can make reading Wikipedia or the articles on Wikipedia more useful. So we created some queries to find out the knowledge gap this query you have you are seeing here takes us to the English articles on we English Wikipedia for social studies curriculum for basic seven. If we run this we're going to be having we're going to be having about 47 relevant articles linked to the Ghana's education curriculum for social studies curriculum for basic seven. Now if this is compared with the French Wikipedia the story changes you are going to find that we don't have. Equal number of articles that shows that there's a knowledge gap imagine someone who speaks French fluently and wants to be able to learn about the Ghana's curriculum on the French Wikipedia. Here we have 38 results but on the English Wikipedia we had 47 the same story goes for the Igbo Wikipedia. Let me do for the one Wikipedia the one is is a long way that is spoken in Ghana. Amazing so Ghana only had the one Wikipedia only have three relevant Wikipedia articles linked to the Ghana's curriculum for social studies. We also looked at the knowledge gap for the three Wikipedia and currently is being worked on so that we have a balance of articles. It used to be one now it is 11 it means that we are able to we are trying to fix the gap and efforts are being made to fix this gap you get to learn more about this in the campaign section. So what is next year we are looking at getting the few properties that are left approved so that we will be able to better visualize the kind of data we want to upload on Wikipedia data. Again we also want to add more curricular information on Wikipedia. If you if you had scanned the QR code for all the curricular data worldwide on Wikipedia you'll find that we have very little information looking at the number of countries the number of courses the number of subjects studied in different parts of the world. We have very little so we are looking at scaling this up getting more communities involved getting more user groups involved so that we get to upload relevant curricular data for each country on Wikipedia and also come up with fundraising applications. That will be able to help people with non technical backgrounds to just click away and be able to access this curricular data that has been uploaded. And this is going to help educate teachers researchers and also students to learn more about the relevant content that is found on Wikipedia because we are looking at the total sum of human knowledge. So if Wikipedia and its sister projects are the total sum of human knowledge we should have curriculum data. So we're going to continue the campaign of educating teachers researchers and students to better utilize Wikipedia and its sister projects. And again we are looking at continuous improvement of the model while expand on other curriculum because different countries have got different curriculum structures. And for now with the model that we have each issue work for every country. Perhaps there could be some there could be some changes or some little bit of bottlenecks that needs to be fixed continuously update this curricular information. Alright justice. My name is justice and I'm leading the campaign section on behalf of media data user group on this campaign yeah next slide. So the campaign essentially is to close the content gaps between the curriculum data uploaded to wiki data and it's corresponding articles. Next slide. So essentially when we started this campaign we were looking at the English Wikipedia and two other language Wikipedia's making it three. So in total we were working with English tree and now the Wikipedia which is still yet incubator but then there's a community working on it. Yeah next slide. So essentially what the campaign was to do is to create an overarching multiple campaign that was going to improve the content in at least two subject areas. But then we ended up doing three three subject areas which was computing science and social studies and then we're looking at the basic seven eight and nine. This was supposed to span a three month period but then due to a number of concern were able to scale it down to about three or four months. And then now we will be able to post a number of the campaigns that we we've done so far. Next slide. So essentially we've run campaigns in the three languages. But then when we got to the tree Wikipedia with due to the nature of the translation that they were supposed to work on they've done three in person events so far we've had one English event which is on social studies. And then one translation event for the gun Wikipedia in incubator which also we were able to do a number of edits. So so far that we've been able to do a number of campaigns on all the languages and all the language Wikipedia so on and the subjects. Now we are moving on to the next phase of the project where we wrap up with the tree Wikipedia the English and then the gun within this month. Next slide. So these are some photos from the campaigns that we did in the various languages. We did for social studies we did for English and then we did for tree tree. No we did for social studies in the English language and then we've done for tree and there are there are subsequent campaigns to be had within the space of the next three months three weeks so that we wrap up the campaign as well. Next slide. My name is Nina Chachu. I am also known in Wikimedia as Abrewa Akra Lady. My full-time job is head librarian at HSC University here in Ghana. I found it a lot more interesting than I was expecting. I was glad that it had links to Wikipedia and how to improve Wikipedia and the information that is there on Ghana. I think it's something really great. I think it will help the students but I think it will actually help the teachers a lot. My name is Ezekiel Adi and I'm a social media strategist for the Multimedia Group. I think it's very important especially someone who is in the space. It makes information access easy and also helps with collaboration and in our context people are able to have access to much more information and create diversity in the kind of information they put out there. My personal opinion or view of this web shop I think it has really further brought out the really important issue about diversity and the need for multicultural content on Wikipedia. Next slide. So far we've done campaigns in the tree Wikipedia. We've also done campaigns in the Ghana Wikipedia which is an incubator. Next slide. Like I mentioned earlier we are in the last few weeks of this campaign and we are learning a lot of things from this process. And hopefully by the time we are done with all the campaigns and our reports are ready there should be a significant change in how we approach some of this curriculum data on both Wikidata and then on Wikipedia as well. Next slide. Next slide. Yeah so these are my colleagues that led this presentation with me. Thank you. Again we thank you all for following this presentation and yeah we wish that you enjoyed it and that you've learned from it. And please feel free to reach out to any one of us if you want to learn more about the project. Thank you. Thank you.


Best food ice can be dirtier than toilet water.  And no one's stopping it. The FDA doesn't inspect ice at restaurants and bars. Ice machines are hard to clean and rarely get inspected, making them a perfect breeding ground for all kinds of disgusting bacteria. Americans love ice. In fact, it's the most consumed food in a restaurant. So maybe Europeans have been right all along. Although there is one liquid that can kill all the bacteria, whiskey.


And now, an Ig Nobel Prize favorite moment with Michael Smith, B. Sting's secrecy. In 2015, Mark Abrams emailed me to let me know I've been awarded an Ig Nobel Prize. He also told me I shouldn't tell anyone. I somehow convinced my family from Panama and Singapore to come to the ceremony, despite them not knowing I was actually being awarded a prize. My girlfriend at the time, an Ig Nobel enthusiast, was also watching online, and she only found out that I was being awarded the prize when she actually saw me walk out on stage. Afterwards, I think her best description was pleasantly annoyed. She's actually now my wife and recording this video, and I should probably put these bees down before it gets done. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people laugh, then think. This historic Ig Nobel favorite moment video stars Michael L. Smith, Ig Nobel entomology and physiology prize winner for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations of his body to learn which locations are the least painful, the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm, and which are the most painful, the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft. The 30th first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will be webcast September 17th, 2020. Details about the Ig Nobel Prizes can be found at www.improbable.com


Wel, mae'n troffi TV i'r hyn o'r awdurdod yma yn ysgolwyr Ffleetwood, ar gyfer Edyn Carybaw Cwp 3r. Rhaen, rhaen i'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r ffordd. Yn goll, Giaffa Gynhau, yn ystod i'n ddweud o ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Fon dyw rhodaeth peisio ar gyfer hyffort�an ag fysr i ddeddi, ac roedd e gyrsbi'n cymryd i chi iawn i wneudllai grams theyf. Mae Giaffa Gynhau i chi lleid yn leisbydd i ni'n teщnad taeth gynny pad o roeddi can keen i chi wnaidd lu penwyeb i gnaeth ateb yn cofidiu'n meddwl gan nghyffredig. Mae'n trwy awdurdod, gan y gallai mewn gwirioneddau dim tsaint, Rydych chi'n gweld, gael maes cymryd yn owod theirfod arbenn Chinese fanogaethau. erbyn ydych chi'n gwneud i Lleidre lawn i Safd. The same沒有, ychydig yn ganun i'r cael ei fod yn ddechrau.yddwch chi'n ddechrau yn rhan o'r dwylo'r perddwyl, ond i ni oedd angen i ni'n gweithio i Loan Llywodraeth. Rydych chi'n gwneud i Lleidre lawn i Llywodraeth, ac rydw i wneud i ni'n gwneud i ni'n gwneud i Lleidre lawn i Siamdd i Culldyn. Fi'n gynnig chi'n gwneud i 90 o engineered ar y cwm yn ddesch gweithio p distressio. A hefyd yn Cynchw i ni'r gwneud. Mae'n mynd i ffyrdd o'i fynd arferfodol ag yn Salford, ac yn gyfwyrd i'r ffyrdd o'r rhan o'ch hynny. Mae'n cael ei gwaith yn cael ei ffyrdd o'r ffyrdd. Mae'r ffyrdd o'i gweithio yn cyd-23, a'u ddechrau i benio yn ddechrau, ac mae'n ddarparfod yn eich gwasanaeth. Ac mae'n gweithio yn ceisio i'r baeth. Mae'n ceisio i'r ffyrdd o'r gwaith, A gennym ddefnyddio â gwneud o'r cwm deisio fy nghymru. If it does well again, then I think we'll be looking and thinking there's no need really for us to try to go and get another left back because he's good enough for covers so, ynddw komch gwyb a left back. 2 centre backs, Gerry Mina and Michael Kane, an outer necessity really. I had thought about something wachy, playing Fabian Delft centre back, ond hynny mae'n dwylo'n cael ei wneud, a'r gyffredinol yn gyrdd y dyfodol yw'r gweithio ar y ddechrau, oherwydd mae'n dod pan fydd gael, mae'n ddau'r gwneud o'r perffredinol yn gyffredinol. Rydym yn cyfleoedd i'r Loti yn eistedd o'r llwyngau, ond hefyd yn mynd i'n cael ei ffarnigol yw'r llwyngol. a'r centre bach partners here for this one. So, yeah, he mean a Michael Keane there. Into midfield, Tom Davies, I think will play the Allen role, I guess. He'll be in the centre of the park in a position that he occupies for the England under 21 side. So Tom Davies there, and alongside Tom Davies, Guilfee Sigarton and Bernard. Very much the same midfield that played against Salford last week. Bernard was quite bright in that Salford City game last week, playing in a more central role. So, you know, again, another chance for inter-impression. It's up to these players, obviously, at the minute, they're not in the start on 11, of which we've used in the Premier League. And it's up to those players to perform at such a high level that Carlemontuloti starts considering them as a possible alternative to what we have already. Obviously, they're glad to have played the two Premier League games so far have done really well. But these lads who are coming in have got to take this opportunity. And I don't know whether they all did that last week to the best of their ability, but this week will be tougher and they're going to have to step it up. So that's me in midfield three. On the left-hand side, Anthony Gordon. I thought he did really well last week. He did kind of, you know, certainly started off very brightly. Had a bit of a quiet spell towards the end of the first half, but picked her up second half and certainly the last 20, 25 minutes. I thought he was really good. He was unlucky not to score. Hit the post, won the penalty, set the goal up for Guilfee Sigarton, so more of the same for Anthony Gordon. On the right-hand side, I've gone with Alexander O'Woby. I know that it's not his best position, but he came on at the weekend. Obviously missed the first couple of games through injury. He came on at the weekend and it's an opportunity for him to get minutes under his belt. So Alex O'Woby on the right. And then off-front Moise Keane, who started against Salford last week and scored a goal, obviously, from the penalty spot. So Keane, another chance for him to get 90 minutes under his belt. For me, he has to impress a little bit more than he did last week. He needs to keep older a ball a little bit more, but hopefully he will get a bit more confidence from that goal and will be on the scoresheet in this one. And it's a great opportunity, again, to keep, you know, showing Carlo Mantiolotti that he is improving and he is impressing. That is the team that I think Carlo Mantiolotti will pick for this one. I might be totally wrong, who knows. But, you know, let me know what you think in the comments section below. What would you do? Would you make as many changes as I have in this one? From the team at B West Brom, let me know in the comments section. Make sure you subscribe, give the video a thumbs up, and if you want more videos, join us on Patreon. See you later.


All right, let's get started. So who am I? I'm a maintainer of Fluendee. You can also say I'm a community manager or a mailing list person. The preceding talk about managing open source really resonated with me. And I work for this company called Treasure Data. I won't talk much about it, but if you guys were to take one thing away about Treasure Data, they're cool enough to have me focus entirely on open source, so cool folks. And I'm a former quant at the hedge fund, and I think the term to draw as I was a data scientist in finance for three years. And last but not least, I'm fairly new to Ruby, so Tom's talk was, well, I mean the whole monad thing aside, it was like quite a bit of Ruby for me.  I didn't know that Ruby had a lambda until a few weeks ago, so please be easy on me. So what is data science? Whenever I don't know the definition of a term, because I'm a mathematician, I do what all the mathematicians do, which is I go to Twitter for definitions. Data scientist or data analyst who lives in California, 137 people resonate with that feeling. But, like, we can do better, right? We can be a little more serious, so here's a pretty good one, actually, by Josh Wallace of Cloudera. Data scientist is a person who's better at statistics than any software engineer, and better at software engineering than any statistician. Pretty smart, 896 people like that. But my personal favorite, those are both really good, and I honestly didn't think, like, how much life I could get with those, so I have the third one, which is Big Data Borat. And a little, like, spoilers of sorts, which is this talk is not going to be about data science proper. I really like, I'll just talk about the statistics, and it really behooves to have, like, a solid understanding of statistics, even if you're programming, like, back-end or databases or distributed systems or, like, front-end day-to-day, because it really, like, puts numbers in context. But what I want to talk about today is actually before that, before you get to, like, do the whole number crunching and model building and hypothesis testing, which is, I want to talk about log data. So how many of you have, like, grep through logs or, like, type in, like, less stuff? All right, cool, right? Like, we all love that stuff, right? So I want to share, like, two anecdotes from my own professional life. And the first story is me, myself, and log data. So before I came to the bright side of the industry, that is, Silicon Valley and startups, I worked in the dark side as a quantitative analyst at a hedge fund. And my job looked like this. So I'm supposed to get data, and I do a whole bunch of, like, number crunching, about building, and I ruminate on the outputs, and I share my findings or lack thereof with my manager and, like, partners and other traders. But in reality, I spend, like, 80% of the time just doing that, which is, I don't know if the fund is too small, but acquiring data and reformatting, cleaning it, and rinsing it, repeat. So I like flowcharts, so here's a flowchart. Acquire data, and this is, like, 9 a.m. And you realize there's an encoding issue. And I would understand, like, if I'm, like, doing, like, sentiment analysis on, like, tweets, right?  I have no idea what I was doing, but, like, it's fine, it's fine, fine. I'm gonna write a script, and because I was a quant, I would use Python and not Ruby. Then I realize there's, like, some deeper level issue, like, the stock market was crossed, meaning the price that you can buy is actually, like, above the price at which some, like, you can basically buy and sell and make a profit for half, like, half of the day. And that makes no sense. Like, you realize that there's some issue with data.   I'm gonna do it. He's like, are you sure, kid? Are you gonna do that? He's like, yeah, I'm gonna do it, and, like, holy shit, Kurt has a very, very interesting job. And that actually really made me think about why it's so hard to actually make data useful. And part of it is it is not entirely clear when you start out, like, what's useful and what's not, but humans have this tendency to just, like, shove everything into something, right? And this was shoved into something, but it's impossible for, like, a business person like myself, my former self, to directly work with this. So I would work with other people, and other people are not exactly the people who get business value from it, and, like, you sort of, like, pass around the hot potato, and nothing gets done. So the second story is from my time spent at Treasuredata and Fluendi, working with people who really want to use log data to do stuff. So they're like, yeah, we're all about logs and metrics and that. And I call this M&M, not the chocolate, which I got earlier here, but metrics and monitoring. Everyone loves metrics. And everyone also loves monitoring, because if you're monitoring, you can see that all the trouble is coming in your direction. So it's not a bad idea to subscribe to this mantra that, you know, log everything, right? Log this data, log that data, like, I'm spinning up a new service. Oh, like, is logging everywhere in that? Like, are you sure, like, we have all the information later? The problem is if it's like three person startup, sure, it works. But usually it's like this. There are different people in the organization. And they have different needs for log data. Like, VP is probably one of the top, you know, top line numbers. Operations folks want to know, for example, like HAPoxy, concurrent number of connections. And you would ask about HAPoxy to product management, and there would be, like, HAPot, right? And what happens is, like, everyone's like, you know what? I'm going to start collecting my own logs, just like my former self, right? And then Kurt, get out of my way. I'm going to try to do it. And when everyone starts doing that in the team, what you get is something like this. Like, it sort of works. Like, day to day, like, as long as nobody touches it, it works. Because, like, that one Perl script, and it's all as Perl. Like, the 200 lines of Perl that Dan wrote six years ago that nobody else touched works. As long as you bug Dan, it's like, hey, the format changed. Like, can you change that regular expression? It's like, yeah, no problem. I'm going to go to line 120 and change that rejects. And it would all work. But basically what I'm here to convince you is that there are ways to do it better. And with some, like, moduseness, I would say that Fluendi is one such solution. And I really mean that Fluendi is one such solution. There are so many other ways to do it. There's different paradigms. And I could talk about that, but I want to do a demo later. So if you want to talk about different ways to centralize logging and, like, build a unified logging layer, come find me at a party or tomorrow. So I'll just talk about Fluendi here. So how does it work? One thing about, like, one misconception about mathematicians is that we love the abstract. Like, we love monads. But the thing about it is mathematicians are trained to anchor discussions to, like, concrete examples. Just like Tom did this morning. That was very easy to understand. I finally have an educated guess of what monad is. Yeah. So I'm going to start with a very simple example, which is an Apache log. Because everyone's at least seen it, right? And it looks kind of like this. And whoever came up with this thought it was a brilliant idea because it's very clear that 200 is a status code and not just, like, a random number. Like, seriously, right? Like, I think for the longest time, I didn't even know what different fields were, other than the last thing, which is, like, a user agent. But so what Flindy does is it processes, like, semi-structured or ill-structured messages like this and parsed it into a JSON. And of course, you have to supply the logic as to how you do it. It's usually based on regex, but you can also write your own parser in Ruby. So once you do that, all the data sources are parsed into JSON. But then the question is, OK, so you're getting the data and you're getting an Apache log data and you don't know where you want to put it or like you might want to put it into two systems or all you want to do is just put it into the centralized log server. But, like, Flindy has to know, like, how to put the data into the right destination. And if I get abstracted, whether it's Flindy or not, the system needs to have a very intelligent and scalable way of knowing where the data originates and which data should go to which system. So how Flindy does this is it's based on two things. One is timestamp, but more importantly, it's based on this idea of tagging each event. So each event is actually a triple as a timestamp. And John talked a lot about timestamp. I used to live in Illinois and I didn't know Indiana had, like, two bajillion time zones. But then the second is more important, which is the tag, which is assigned by the input source. Then there's the bulk of the data. In this case, it's the method, path. So 200 is the status code and 140 is the size. And so to answer the question of how do you get the data into different systems, there's a way to tag it. So if you are sending data to MongoDB, you're going to probably tag it as MongoDB. If you're sending data to Hadoop, you're going to tag it at HDFS. So this is pretty much it, but I know I have, like, 15 minutes left.  And one disclaimer is that I've never given a talk to an audience this large. And I've definitely not done a live demo to an audience this large. So we'll see. But hopefully it's interesting. At least, like, you guys can see me failed before.  Ah-ha! That last speaker here is demo demo. Right? All right, so as some of you might know, or obviously all of you are cool enough to come to this one and not the one in Japan. But concurrently, there is Ruby Kaigi going on, which is a pretty big Ruby event. And, like, I love both events. My co-worker is actually at Ruby Kaigi. But in terms of logistics, I must say, Gokaruko has an upper hand, because I just saw this tweet this morning as I woke up. Like, they are missing the big dad, right? And I don't know if this was intentional or not. But the title of Matt's talk was Coming Soon. And, like, there's so many ways to interpret this. It's like, he was coming soon. Or, like, he wasn't sure what the title was going to be. Or, like, maybe, like, the features of Ruby that are coming soon. Or maybe add Ruby. But what I want to do is, and I need to put a disclaimer, which is I do a lot of demos for Fluendee. But every time I use, like, Nginx or Apache logs as, like, an example of data sources, like, half the people are like, oh, that's cool. Like, you guys are solving my problem. And the other half is like, it's just, like, web server logs. Like, I don't care. So I thought I would come up with data sources that everyone would care. And that is, I'm going to collect Twitter data strings with the hashtag Goga Ruko and RubyKaigi. And I'm going to use Kibana and Elasticsearch to plot it so that if we have fewer tweets, you guys can stop listening to me and start tweeting frantically so that we can, like, out-tweet them. So, with that up for the view, wish me luck. So one thing that we did recently with Fluendee was, like, it's, like, three years old. And for the first 2.5 years of its life, it had this, like, incredibly intuitive command-line interface for everything. And some people liked it. A lot of people liked it. Some people prefer something a little more visually driven. So we made one. It's called the Fluendee UI. And I started, actually, a Rails app. And when I go there, I'm supposed to sign in. There you go. Ha-ha. So it is a way to, like, launch, stop, and configure Fluendee inside a web browser. So how many of you are familiar with Splunk and Splunk Forwarder? Idea is similar, except you don't have to pay a dime for this thing. Splunk is a great piece of software, by the way. I have nothing evil to say about them.  And, like, let's look at installed plugins, because plugins is what enables Fluendee to listen to many sources. So there are three that I have pre-installed. One is for Elasticsearch. And one is for, it's called a record-reformer. It does, like, lightweight filtering in-stream. And another is, like, one for Twitter, so that I can listen to Twitter data stream. And if I go to a config file, there's a config file that is, like, it's not, so there's one feature. Like, I'm waiting for a pull request. Like, try to color this thing. And here's an uncolored but larger font version. So the stuff inside source is data source, so data inputs. So it says types. So there's a little bit of DSL for Fluendee. And there's my consumer key, OAuthToken. You can steal those now and, like, do evil things on Twitter on my behalf. And I'm sampling the timeline and looking for the keyword gogaruko, and I'm tagging it. And this was a concept from earlier. And, yep. So that's going to be called twitter.gogaruko. And if you go down, there's one for RubyKaigi. And now, match is how Fluendee knows which output systems to send it to. And it has a wallet card, so everything that starts with Twitter, it matches. And there's a little bit of bookkeeping. And this is purely technical, because I want to show the Twitter data stream for RubyKaigi and Gogaruko in different colors in Elasticsearch. But this is, like, technicality. Then you reroute this message into Elasticsearch, and here's, like, a little bit of parameters. So I am going in here and start this thing. Well, before I start that thing, I should stop that thing and start Elasticsearch. So I'm going to launch Elasticsearch. As always, it's very easy to start. I have no idea what the logs are saying most of the time. And I'm going to start this. Hooray, it's running. And if I go to logs, it should have logs, but the log says log is empty, so I just go ahead. And because I'm at Gogaruko, I'm going to use simple Python server to spin up Kibana. And let's see this thing's going to work. All right, so I have the default screen. So there's a little bit of, ha-ha, it's there. There are seven heads per minute. And nobody seems to be tweeting with Gogaruko right now. So hey, everyone, take out your smart, smart smartphones and start tweeting about Gogaruko. I'll be here. I still have nine minutes. I'm going to tweet myself. At Gogaruko, onstage, trying to make my demo work. Oh, it could be anything. It should be looking for just this train. Sorry for my, so my day job is a marketer. So I have a tendency to gloss over technical details. All right, cool. That looks pretty good. Oh, I need to encapsulate this thing. Hooray. At least my tweet should show up. No, why not? Gogaruko? OK, at least there's data. There is data. So this is basically my presentation. I can go on and on and wonder why Gogaruko is not showing up here. But yeah, and going back to the presentation, yet another reason I shouldn't use PowerPoint. Can you guys see it? It says it crashed. So basically what I wanted to convey is that log data is actually everyone's concerned in an organization. And this is very hard to feel, especially your team is big, and especially when you have messy but working data pipeline. But also as someone who experienced like how inefficient it can be, it really pays huge dividends to revisit how you guys log and filter and use data. And there are lots of tools out there, Fluendy's one option. And I'd love to hear how you guys are doing stuff. And I don't know why that is showing up, because mine is still caching. Lesson number what there could be. Let me see. Config file. No, I think that is right. So this is one of those things that I expected my demo to completely not work. It said my work, so that's pretty good. And my parting message obviously is do not use Microsoft PowerPoint when you're presenting on. No, no, no, no, no, let me finish my sentence. When you're presenting on the MacBook Air. Thank you very much and have a great party.


what's going on guys it's your boy dpj here today with another destiny video and in today's video we have top five most wanted emotes now just over a month ago on a previous emote video I asked you guys to give me your opinions in that comment section on what emotes you believe would be epic to have and use in destiny in today's video I'm going to showcase five of my favorite put forward by you guys now before we start may I just add that I have done two previous top five emote videos and we have seen at least one from each video incorporated into the game so you never know so tell me down below in that comment section what of these five picks from me from you guys would you most like to see incorporated into the game if there is someone here you like tell me what you would like to see in the form of an emote or dance move in that comment section these by the way ain't in any particular order I just love to see them all incorporated each as much as the other so at five we have something that would be absolutely epic me being a WWE fan as well it's John Cena's you can't see me which is basically him waving his hands in front of his face but it has become a worldwide known thing recently John Cena's become popular on the internet even more popular than he already is in the terms of memes and videos etc etc so yet I would absolutely love to see this in a number four we have break dancing now I just love to see a titan spinning on his head flipping his legs everywhere just seems epic and something I'd love to see at number three we have a bat flip now this would be amazing a bat flip on a spot or a running bat flip either way it would be truly bad ass at number two we have another dance move and it's the worm now this was made famous to me way way way back in the days of Scottie Too High in WWE who used the worm and then at a chop as his special move so fuck yes I'd love to see my hunter doing the worm so at number one we have nothing other than the RKO now this is a special move of another WWE wrestler called Randy Orton now a few months back maybe longer this all of a sudden blew up in a form of vines and some of them were truly amazing now the RKO is just another version of the diamond cutter by DDP and similar to the twist of fate by the Harley boys and it's something I would love to see in this game obviously two people are needed to pull it off we could just pretend and do it solo but guys they are the emotes I picked from my last top five email video from the comments left by you guys which one of these five would you most like to see in the game and also let me know if there was one email you could put in the game and use what would it be but guys hoping you enjoyed the video do drop a like I do appreciate the support subscribe for daily destiny and I'll catch you guys on the next one peace out until next time POST!


So the third main difference in Wing Chun and Mantis is the foundational fighting concept. In Wing Chun, the fighting concept is I want to go into the attack. If he attacks me, I want to go into the attack. So it doesn't matter why he's attacking. If he attacks me, I want to go into attack and dominate the center line. Okay? Any other attack? I want to go into the attack.


The folks that come here are law enforcement people. They are the ones that stand outside of needle exchange programs, methadone programs and arrest people. They are the ones that are going after young kids looking for half a gram of cannabis. A very disappointed harm reduction isn't in there. It is absolute nonsense that all parts of the United Nations directly support a set of activities and one part of the United Nations opposes it. It's ridiculous, it's untenable and it must be put right. For us harm reduction is important because it symbolizes a whole route of working with drug users that at this moment is excluded. We have drug prevention, people not using drugs, drug treatment for people who want to stop using drugs. People who use drugs are excluded and harm reduction is incredibly important because it means that we can include people who use drugs in drug services and that they can have a certain autonomy over their own lives. It's important for the EU as well as the commission to include this because it is part of the EU strategy on drugs. It's in there, the word is in there, the concept and the activities in there. It has been in the last two EU action plans on drugs as well. So we were a bit surprised when countries began to try and keep it out of the declaration. There are many countries outside of Europe that practice harm reduction. It is becoming increasingly a preferred option to deal with drug problems. We have seen, we've heard Iran, for instance, explain what it's doing. They have turned from being very strictly prohibitionists to doing harm reduction. Up to what point is the European Union going to defend harm reduction in the political declaration? Is Europe united to defend harm reduction policies? Thank you for your question. You know, I'll be very open. I don't care too much about the name. The contain is more important and harm reduction is a part of the rational anti-drug policy based on four volumes as the repression prevention of therapy and harm reduction. And maybe you've noticed that even Mr. Costa mentioned harm reduction in her speech. So it shows that the doors for using not only the container but also the name harm reduction is open. I think the difficulty around words being in or out, particularly these words, harm reduction. I think for developed world countries it has very little meaning. Countries like the UK, Holland, Denmark will continue as they did before to apply harm reduction. The real challenges for developing world countries that are facing new emerging drug problems, they're looking to the world for leadership, looking to the United Nations for leadership and the United Nations is saying to them very clearly focus on supply reduction, don't focus on harm reduction. And that is very dangerous because we leave the most vulnerable people in the world without the policies that save the developed world from HIV. And now this is a real contradiction. We're saying we've saved ourselves from HIV but now we want you to live with the dogma that will destroy your communities, that will destroy your healthcare systems and will leave your people marginalised and alienated. The fact that this declaration is going to come back home with no mention of harm reduction is going to be a real problem for folks in Russia that are work again a country with very high HIV rates among drug users. They are working on donor money, there is very little if any Russian money that's going into needle exchange. Harm reduction is not necessarily the favourite of the law enforcement in Russia. So I think what we're doing is we're failing with this declaration those people who are need our help the most. You go around the world and there are battles day in day out in each country between those who want to treat drug users as criminals and those who want to treat them as people in deserving of health and deserving of rights. These battles play out in every country all the time and the symbolism that comes out of Vienna from not having harm reduction in the declaration will be used by many people around the world in the coming years to say we would like to help you but we are just doing what the UN tells us so that is very bad and it what's the reason or the argumentation behind this resistance? I think that harm reduction means a new way of looking at the whole issue of drugs and that is something that let's say all thinking doesn't like to accept because harm reduction means that you accept that in the end there will be people who will still use drugs but you have to help them you have not to ignore them. We ended with a very rousing statement of 26 countries basically saying they refuse to go along with the consensus which is which is very heartening to see.


a celebration of learning. Let's have fun tonight. And I think let's talk about soil. I think soil is a key to a garden. In my opinion, if you want to have a quality home, you've got to build it on a quality foundation. If you want a quality yard and garden, you've got to have a quality soil. And so our first figure is going to teach us how to understand our soil and how to improve it. So let's welcome Dave Franson. Okay, Mr. Microphone, we're good? All right, we're good. So Tom took the words right out of my mouth. So we talked about how to make this stuff. So also the foundation. And so here we go. I can't wait to get my hands in the soil. But if I try to get them in the soil right now, I think I break a finger because it's really, really hard out there still. So I want to talk about the basics. And then within the state, we have a number of problem soils. And so I want to give you some ideas about how to deal with those. The best reference, most of you have, or you can certainly download it, is this circular H1325, which Ron Smith and I put together here a few years ago, evaluating, preparing and amending. Mr. Microphone is adjusting me. Okay, thank you. All right, so that's the one. That's the best reference that we have. It's very late. It was just written not too many years ago and still relevant. So this is what a good garden soil needs to do. It needs to be able to be firm enough so it holds the plant up and needs the ability to hold water, but it can't hold too much. It has to have drainage. And this is kind of a conundrum for people. It has to have whole water, but then it needs to drain. How does that work? Well, soils can do that if you put them together correctly. And then also, people don't think about this either, is that the roots need air. There needs to be air exchange. So that's one of the reasons that trees suffer underneath concrete because there's not much air exchange. So we build a soil in order to have all those things happen. Firm enough to hold a plant up, needs to be able to supply water so you don't have to drip, irrigate every second of every day. Good drainage so that you don't have ponding and you don't have problems with root rocks and these kind of things. And then the ability to change air because the roots have to breathe in order for the plants to grow, take up nutrients, everything they need to do. Soil is made up of minerals of all kinds. But it's also made up of organic material. This is particularly important in gardens as well. And then the air, there has to be pore space, which is why drainage is important. It has to have water, which is why the water holding capacity of the soil is important. So these are the minerals and they're sized. Soil sign is for a very long time and I think these are pretty intuitive for you. The sand, which is the gritty stuff that you feel when you feel your soil. The silt is kind of silky and it's an intermediate size. And then the clays are very, very, very small particles. And it gives us sticky quality to the soil, which people in Grand Forks and Waffedon and Fargo have learned to love so well. So this is USDA's textural triangle. It's the only math that you're required to do, I think, today. And just to give you an idea of when people talk about clay, they're really talking about a category of soils that have high amounts of clay, low amounts of sand, low amounts of silt. And this line over here is the percent sands from zero to a hundred percent. And then the clay goes from zero to a hundred percent. And then the silt goes from zero to a hundred percent. Kind of a clever thing that soil conservation service put together, I think, in the thirties. People think that if a soil is a third clay and a third silt and a third sand, that it's a lawn, but it's really not. It's a clay lawn that's more sticky than that. The dominant soil in our Dakota texture and our surface, once you get outside the valley, is more sand than anything with maybe some more than a neighborhood of 20 percent clay, more or less. And maybe some more in the neighborhood of maybe 30, 40 percent silt, something like that. So it's not a third of a third of a third. So most of the soils we have in this state are going to be in this category in here. They lie in here. Some of our soils are glacial or they're residual rocks, West River. But they have those characteristics. But they're soils in all of those categories in the state, and some of them might be in your backyard. So the easiest soil to work with, the one that's going to give you the least trouble, and the one if you're making soil, you kind of want to strive to get there. It is something like a loam to a sandy loam, the sandy loam kind of on a loamy side. It has really good drainage characteristics. It's a loam, soil, a true loam. When you put a little bit of water in it and you knead it with your hands, it feels like breaddill. It has that same consistency and resistance as breaddill. It's really hard to work, then you're probably way on the clay side. And if it feels really, really, really gritty, then you're on the sandy loam loamy sand type side. So that's kind of how you figure out what you do. So those are the minerals, and you can do a few things with the minerals. I'll show you how to do that later on. But the part that's most important, I think, is the organic side, the organic amendments that you put in. Organic, meaning residues, things that are broken down, compost, fattening, peat moss, all those kind of things. Soil is a biological creation, and NASA didn't understand that when they did the moon missions. And they brought moon rocks back to Earth, and they ground them up, and they thought to try to anticipate colonizing the moon. And so they took the moon rocks, ground them up into particle sizes that mimic soil, and they added water to it, and it makes the nicest bricks that you've ever seen. Because it doesn't have any biology at all. You know, these soils that we have all around the Earth are not just physical breaking down the rocks to low rocks. It's also the biology, the mosses and the plants and the animals that are alive within that that make the soil alive. And so you have to make your garden alive, too, by putting things in it that very small things and larger things can feed. Not all the creepy crawly things that crawl around the ground are bad things. You'll probably hear in this series of presentations about some pests. But the huge majority of everything alive in the soil is a helpful thing. And the soil is their home, and so you feed them. And as a result of feeding them, they make intermediate organic compounds that release nutrients over time. They help to grade nutrients and make them available over a long period of time. So soils are alive, and so help them out the best you can. So these are some organic inputs to consider. One is if you have some chickens around or if you have some cows around or something, you can use fresh manure. But it's the highest in nitrogen, but that's a good thing. And it's not such a good thing because it's easy to get the rate high enough that the fresh manure contains free ammonia. And ammonia is harmful to many things. If it's in close proximity, it's really easy to get things hot. People call it hot because the plants kind of look like they're fried. The chicken manure is a really good example. You put too much chicken manure on something, and the ammonia within it is overwhelming, and it can injure seeds and seedlings. So it's not my first choice. It's best for garden to put that into compost pile, for example, and let it age and transform over time. And we have a nice composting part of your handouts that you can go through and read that. So compost in the new room, compost in general. I have a little compost bucket in the backyard, and many of you do too. Anything organic out of the kitchen, especially in the spring and the summer, when it's not frozen and it runs all over the place, you don't want to do that. But any time that it's fit, you can put it out into a structured compost pile. And the organisms within it degrade it. And so after, I don't know, six months or so, the stuff in the bottom really is soil. It acts like soil. It looks like soil. It's very biologically active. So that's a really good source of biology that helps your soil become a very healthy soil. This is another amendment that I use a lot. Ron Smith brought to put me onto this a number of years ago. It's Fagin peat moss. It's a renewable resource. At least I argue what it is. It has excellent water-holding capacity. It doesn't have a lot of nutrient value, but that's not really what you're going for here. It aids aeration. It really doesn't smell.  It's a good source of biology. It decomposes over time. You don't have to refresh it because the volume of your bed will go down over time when that rocks. But this is a really good additive, especially in our high-clay soil. So this is what a peat bog looks like. There are peat bogs in Wisconsin. There's a lot of peat bogs in Canada. I invite you to go online. Some of the companies do this, but it's farmed just like we farm. It'll put nutrients and pesticides and all that stuff in it. They drain the land for a period of time.  It's a long-term process, renewable resource. So that's what I like to use. Some people out there, and you'll find that when you go doing the search shows, they insist that these peat bogs are not renewable resources. I don't know if I did that for her, but if you're on that mind that you don't think it's a renewable resource, I'm not going to die on that hill. But there is an alternative. This is clear. I don't know how available it is locally, but it's shredded coconut shells, and it has the same kinds of properties as peat moss, probably way more expensive. But that's a possibility if you want to work with something that's like peat moss and renewable comes from palm trees. So that's an alternative. So that's kind of the basics of soils, and I'm probably about halfway through my presentation now. So now I want to talk about some problem soils, and the biggest problem of soils I know of are the really high-clay soils that we have in the Red River Valley. There's also the same kinds of soils up near Botno, and they're scattered around, and where your house says you may or may not have these as you go around the state. Really high-clay, 45% or more clay, and foundations, because of the nature of our clays, foundations have to be thicker. You know, we have two kinds of concrete in the Red River Valley. We have concrete that's cracked and concrete that hasn't cracked yet.  So these things have really nice characteristics. It can draw water through capillary action from deep depths up to the surface. So in a drought, our soils are very protected, but in wet conditions, it's really horrible, and so there are many words that describe it. So one of the ways in order to deal with that is to build raised beds, not to farm right on the floor of the soil, but to build some structures, and they don't have to be necessarily high, although some could be, it's completely up to you. But a raised bed strategy might be something that you consider, and Todd is going to follow me. We'll talk about this a little bit further, but I'm going to talk about it from the soil aspect, I think. So here's a couple I just peel off the net, and there are some good parts of that, and some parts that I'm not really crazy about. One is, you know, the really thick boards, these are, you know, all of them are going to cost a little bit of money to do. But there's not too many places in that soil for it to drain out. If you have, let's just assume that maybe the soil underneath that raised bed is a sandy lawn or a lummy sand, which it very well could be, then you're going to get natural drainage into the soil. But consider a raised bed that's in the Red River Valley. So the raised beds are going to be at a certain height, and if you water it and you don't have places for it to drain below the surface, then it's going to get hung up, and you're going to get, you know, kind of see the ponding, but the ponding will be within the raised bed itself because it can't enter into the original soil nearly as fast. And so that's just something to think about. And so these are mine. These are all the dreams of my wife, and there's a couple of them in the picture, and this will happen when we put one in on the other side, and so we put a porous panel across it to make that trellis for the cucumbers. But see, it's made out of those landscaping timbers, which seem to get smaller every year. So one of these years I'm just going to pick up the load, and it's going to be a little length and long. But for now, anyway, they're like three or four inches or so wide, and a couple of three inches or so high, and I put them together like Lincoln Logs because I just, you know, I love that when I was a kid, and then I'm stabilizing by putting some metal rods in the corner and driving them into the ground. So these are about 30 inches tall, which is really nice, because you don't have to bend over too much in order to hard to go. And then you can make up the soil within them however you want to make to them. So usually what I do in the clay soil is I dig down maybe about close to a foot, and I fluff up that original clay. And then I add a play sand to it from bags from some place and mix that up, and then I put some stagnant peat moss in it to make the total soil. And the soil is, when I know I've made the right soil, I can stick my arm in the soil up to my elbows, and I can work the soil with my hand. If it's like that, I know I have a good soil. So that's what I try to strive for. So you can grow anything in here. Here's some spinach. You know, just to let you salivate for a little bit about what things will look like in about two months. But there's some spinach in there and some lettuce in there. We grow tomatoes in there, all kinds of herbs, anything we want to grow in there, we can grow in there. So it's just a very, very nice soil. And we don't have to bend over too much. But you don't have to make them high. You can make them low, depends on where you are. But in the Red River Valley, I would suggest maybe making them high would be better than making them low. So this is before the cucumbers came in. You can see one in the background here in the back. Here's another raised bed. I've got one, two, three, four. The fourth one's under construction, and I have a raised bed about maybe two feet high by 16 feet long. It's strawberries in it. Now next to the fence, because of course the soil will rot the fence, so I have boards. And then the raised bed goes up against that. I have strawberries back in there. But these are really nice. They hold water really nicely because of the stagnant peat moss. The drainage is excellent because it's off the ground, it's out of play, and our gardening experiences have become hugely better since we started this strategy. So then, if you have a smaller place, or if you have with peppers, if you ever read the description about peppers and what they need, one of the things they really need is warm soil. Never wonder why they grow them in New Mexico. In Mexico, it's because it's hot. They love hot. And so one way to make things hot is to grow them in these self-watering containers. And these didn't start off to be self-watering containers. They started out to be about 10 gallon or so. I don't even know what they call them, but totes or something, 10 gallon totes, they come with a lid. And the lid is nicer. They're all built like this, where they kind of come in at the side, just a little bit about halfway. And so you can cut off the lid, and then that lid comes down right about halfway. And it just sets in there. And you can put some PVC pipe and drill some holes and wire it onto the bottom of the self-water container, fill it with soil, put some starter fertilizer in if you want. Peppers just love the idea. We have pepper trees. They get high feet tall. We have to take them off. We get hundreds of peppers off these things. They're just amazing. So this is taking the lid off. At the top, the layer will show them how to do that. If you go online and do self-watering containers, you'll eventually come up with the design for this thing. So that my wife found this on the internet, and so that's what we use. And then at the intersection where the lid comes down, you drill a little bit of hole here, and that allows for the drainage. And then this is the stand pipe that goes all the way down through the partition to the bottom, and it's cut at an angle at the bottom so it doesn't plug. And that's where you fill. So you just take a watering can and fill the rain barrels. So we take the rain barrel water and we fill up the bottom of these things until it starts coming off the bottom. And that's enough water to hold it for nearly a week, even in the hot of summer. So it's wonderful. Tomatoes like it a lot. Peppers love it more than anything else. They just go crazy. So, self-watering containers. And the soil I put in there is just a high quality soil that you would get from a garden supply store. So this is my mix. It's what I do when I make a raised bed in Fargo. I take about a third of the volume as the high-clay original soil. I take about a third of the volume of kids play sand that you can get in a bag, and about a third of the volume is sphagnum peat moss and then has somebody very energetic mixed that all up. And it's a job, but once you mix it up, it's mixed up. The peat moss, as you go through years, you'll find that your soil will settle. And so you'll have to replenish the peat moss maybe a little bit every year to get it to the original height of where the soil was.  So how about fertilizer? Organic, inorganic. I don't really care. I don't think the plants care. I consider it a personal choice. It's completely up to you what you do. One of the things that you do need to know is that all fertilizer is sold organic or not organic have to have a guaranteed analysis. What they say is in the bag needs to be on the bag. And so they've certified that in some manner, probably in the state that there was manufactured. So here's one that you would use maybe for a garden. That's 10, 10, 10. That means the first number is always the nitrogen. The second number is always the phosphate. And the third one is always the potassium, the potash. And then if it contains sulfur or zinc or anything else of any quality, those nutrients appear afterward. So in North Dakota for like our field crops, there are a few micronutrients that we really need because even though the wind blew a lot of our soil away from the 30s to present, there's still enough nutrition there that we don't have to add a lot of other stuff. But a garden isn't a field crop. It's a very intensive, small-scale agriculture. So we're growing very exotic things. We were getting seeds from everywhere and trying to push, let's try celery this year. Let's try this or let's try that. And so I think you have to be a little bit more proactive with what kinds of fertilizers that you use and what kind of amendments to try to cover all the bases for the odd things that you really don't know the nutrition of. And so something like a multi-nutrient fertilizer, I'm not a miracle-goal salesman, it's something like that that has a whole suite of nutrients in it and not any of high enough percentage that would burn or hurt the crop. Those might fill in the gaps that normal nitrogen phosphate powders 10-10-10 might.  And I've been following them all that useful and with the exception of the calcium amendments for the blossom and rot, my colleague Jay Goose in the soils department uses this garden all the time. He mixes up just a dilute solution, the gypsum, which is calcium sulfate. And then when the young fruits are forming, he'll spray that every few days on the plant. It doesn't burn them or anything, but the reason that you get blossom and rot is that calcium moves up through the plant through the transpiration stream. It moves as the water flows through the leaves and out into the air, pulls the calcium with it. If you have humid days or if it's very hot, for example, and you don't have a lot of water, and the plants are shutting down, and the afternoon there's not a lot of water moving through it, calcium is especially important for these big fruits that nature really never intended. And so in order for those skins to form, there has to be a lot of time supplemental calcium in order to make those things whole. So that's a foliar spray, I think, that would be warranted if you're growing tomatoes, because I think all of us have experienced this at one time or another, and the calcium might help. So one other thing I want to talk about is that nature not always is friendly. And so I just want to have a heads up. There's an area of the state from if you draw a triangle with the point down the devil's lake and then going up through the counties up to the Canadian border through Valhalla on the western side through Township. There's a triangle there, and those of you that have gardened for a while know this, that if you take a shovel full of soil, they always get these little gray rocks in it or little pieces of this fine gray rock that's in it, that's shale, that 65 million year old shale when the state used to be an agency bed. And that's okay, because there's good things about that, but there's not so good things about it. It contains quite a bit of cadmium. And so that region up there is kind of susceptible to cadmium accumulation. And so if you're growing things like leafy vegetables, not the fruits, because the cadmium doesn't get in the fruit, but it does get in the leafy vegetables with the spinach, for example, the broccoli cabbage, similar leafy vegetables. If you have that, if you're growing that, probably your best thing to do would be to import your soil into a raised bed, put your broccoli and that kind of stuff in there and grow your corn, grow your tomatoes, grow your other things in your native soil, and you're going to be fine. But just to be on the safe side, I just want to give you a heads up that this is out there. And that certain plants accumulate it. I don't know if they're true or not, but you're not going to fall over from cadmium poisoning, but some people would want to watch that a little bit. I probably would if I lived up there. So with that, questions? All right. Now, the United States of people across the state is asking questions to type them in, and we've got to already give you one start. And if you can choose the questions as I said, I would like to know. The first question is, what is a good manure for compost? And is this person typically connected with a cobblestone or a manningy course? OK, so the question was, what kind of manure is best for composting? And I would say that any manure is best for composting. Just make sure you compost it. The most common one, of course, in the state is the kale manure. And that would make a good composted manure, but the worst manure would be composted manure as well. So I think any manure left in that compost state would be excellent. OK. And how about using fresh manure to try to create a week of waste when you use manure in the garden? Let's say that it was fit enough to kind of tiptoe around the garden here in about two weeks. It's still two, three weeks before you're going to put out anything serious in the garden. Put the manure out there, let it settle for a little bit. But I still wouldn't use high rates because ammonia persists for some time. But within the application, make sure the neighbors are OK with it. And then working in as soon as you can, that's probably the way to do it. The way not to do it certainly would not be, let's say, a lot of salt for tomatoes off when you decide to chuck some fresh manure into the garden. I don't think that would do that. OK. Another question, and keep repeating the question for the audience. How about they're fastened by your peppers? How many of the peppers do you put in toast? And how about branch holes? Or other types of PDC types are used for watering? Yeah, so the question was, people are fascinated with the peppers. And I continue to be fascinated by my peppers also. So you're not alone. It is kind of a miracle. We put two pepper plants, one on each side. We put the layer of soil over the partition. We put about half of it down. And then we put just a narrow band of 10, 10, 10. And then we put more soil. And then we put the peppers in. So they're separated from the starter fertilizer by probably about three inches or so. You don't want to put them right in the fertilizer. And then the drainage hole is the drainage hole. So the water wicks up through the soil. Make sure the soil is padded down into it when you get ready to water. And I usually try to just water from the top the first time just to make sure everything is moist and all the capillary holes are connected. And then from then on, it just waters through the bottom. The standpipe hole is where you water it. And it waters from the bottom. You think about that. It waters from the bottom, not the top. And then the drainage hole you put in the side right at the place where the partition is between the water and the soil. That's your drainage. So the saturated portion of that pot is the hole. That's as high as that water will ever get. So you don't have the ponding issues or anything like that. So again, I invite them to go online. I bet they'll find the plans. And if not, I'll have my wife draw up my hand. Because this is her idea anyway. And we can share them that way. But I think you can find them online. I'm pretty sure you can. Do you have a question? What was your opinion on using municipal compost? OK, so municipal compost. Most of that is usually grass copings that have come down. Hopefully they're not like more heads that are on fire. But if they're managed well, a good compost, especially something that big. If you have big compost, you have to turn it once in a while. You need to keep the air in there. You want the heat, but you don't want it too hot. I think we've had the fire department out to my bosses, a radiant farm once a week for about three weeks until they figured out that they really had to kind of turn that once in a while.  But the heat is important because it kills weed seeds and things like that. So if the municipal compost is handled correctly and the end product is nice and friable and smells good, then I wouldn't have any trouble using that at all. OK, next question. You briefly commented on soil acidity. Yeah, so soil acidity. There's no range of soil pHs. pH is a measure of whether a soil is acid or whether it's alkaline. So the pHs I run into in the state range from 4.5, which is very acid, to 8.3, which is very, very alkaline. So if possible, the really acid really isn't very good. And so the application of a very fine line of stone to that would be a very good thing. Try to get the pH somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 7 is ideal, I think. People that have pHs above 7, which would include many areas in the state, there's no real good or necessary reason for you to move it down. A lot of the plants that we grow are fairly resistant to the pH. If you find that some variety of tomato or a pH of, say, 8.1 just turns yellow in between the veins, it's probably not a variety that you want to put out next year. That's something that's probably tying up the iron in it. I don't know how common that is, but if that does happen, then that's a problem, so you change. The easiest way to deal with it is change varieties. You can mess around and try to put an iron supplement on it. Some of the iron supplements work and others don't. There's products like ironite that contain 22,000 ppm of arsenic. It's probably not something you'd want to use. There's iron chelates that you can use. If you're at the point of no return and see to do something or not have tomatoes, then maybe some iron chelate would be a good plan. But then make a note of that variety and use something that's a little bit more tolerant to the pH next year. Another question about your raised bed. I'm interested about, if you add peat moss every year, would you mix it in your entire bed or just top off the bed? The question was with the peat moss and the raised beds, do I have to do that every year? The answer is yes, I pretty much have to do that every year. I just don't put the peat moss on the top because then you make this bed of, it's like a sponge. And so you don't get water where you need to. So your beds are already to the consistency where they're fairly easy to work up. And so you only need a shovel. If you like getting your hands dirty, just go in there and start mixing stuff around and mix it up to maybe a foot and a half depth or so. And that's how I'll do it. That's how I do it. Another question, if you comment on, if it was sodium, this person has water very high in sodium to avoid using it. Yeah, so the answer, the question was how about sodium, the water that they would use to irrigate is high in sodium. I would strongly recommend that they don't do that, that they don't use that. I would put rain barrels wherever I could put a rain barrel. And I would use the rain barrel water instead of the sodium water. Sodium is really, really harmful for soils. Normal water, even with some hardness, people call it, has some calcium in it. But calcium's not all that bad. It structures the clays, and so it makes fracture planes. The clays are stacked. And they crack easily. Roots can get down below them easily. What sodium does is it randomizes. It causes a randomization of the clays. They don't want to stick together anymore. And so they're sliding like my desk. I've got papers scattered all the way across my desk. And I might spill a cup of coffee to take a week to get down to the desk, right? So that's a sodium soil. So what you want is a very nice early desk. Keep telling myself that. But it makes a great illustration for this class. So the sodium is just a very bad thing. We have soils that farmers have to deal with it. If you have sodium in your water, you definitely don't want to water with that. So can you use your tap water? I mean, you've got an outside-facing salt, and it has been four weeks without rain. You had a rain barrel, but you've used it. Yeah. So if you have a kind of... The question is, if you have a water in the house, it hasn't rained for a long time, like it didn't last summer for a long time, stop raining about the 1st of July, and then rain for about 30 days. And so the rain drill left, and so you're left with a hose. That's okay. If you have a water softener, just make sure that it's a kind of water softener that doesn't spit sodium into the water. If it is, you do what my dad did years ago with a water softener that spit sodium in it, and you bypassed that and used the fresh water to do it. Most of our municipal water systems don't have that issue if used pure. So Fargo gets their water from the red. A lot of places out in the southwest, and the northwest have the Missouri water thing. So that water is fairly clean. It's the people that have the wells that have the sodium. That's the big issue. The last question is, can you address any gypsum and the soil amendments? Yeah, so the question was, how about adding gypsum as a soil amendment? Gypsum is a high calcium. It's calcium sulfate. And so, again, it orders the plays and makes things a little bit easier to tell. But you're going to do even more benefit if you go with the organic amendments. It's much better to use the organic amendment than gypsum is possible. And it will help some, but the organic amendments will help so much more. Okay. All right. Thank you, Dave. And what's up? You're welcome.