Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, September 18th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter Fives. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. All I wanted to do was put a filter on where my beard went away and I lost all my video feed. Anyway, hey, I'm the Wombat. It's nice to meet you guys. Hello. And from Western Canada, Dread Pirate Higgs. Welcome. And from over in British Way, England. There's John Richard. Welcome. Thank you. And Boudreaux and Buffalo from Kentucky. Kentucky. Right, I forget. Welcome. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, pre-thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in your town, well, I'll take money on it. I bet you're not. Right. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. The Atheist Society of Knoxville, ASK. We'll tell you more about them after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going over a bunch of listener comments. I keep saying we're going to go over them. I intend to. And I want more of them. So we got our chat open. We're ready to talk. We got comments from last week. We're ready to go. Let's do a whole mail back session today. But before we get into those, that steak and the on courses, let's open up with a nice appetizer or noodles. And we'll throw it up to our own Dread Pirate Higgs for a weekly invocation. Guam be me Captain, I shall not want. He maketh me to float in salt waters. He steereth me through glassy seas. He filleth me bowl. He steereth me through the streets of Noodliness, for goodness sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will fear not sinking, for thou art with me. My master and I rudder they comfort me. Thou preparest a feast before me, in the presence of me meats. Thou quenches my thirst with grog, my goblet runneth over. Truly, pasta and grog shall abide with me all the days of me life, and I shall dwell in the galley of the Guam forever. Guys, I do want to catch up with everyone before we go into some listener comments today. Boudreaux, Buffalo, it's also good to see you guys. We'll start with you. Buffalo, how you been? What's going on with you? I've been fine, not too much. Not too much at all, actually. Getting ready to teach again in the spring and climate change course. Science of climate change course, let's do it. That's fantastic. Also, do you find any, so I'm hoping you're not getting any sort of a backlash or friction when it comes to teaching about climate change in an open and scientific way in the grand old state of Kentucky? Could you mind talking about that a bit? Not anymore. When I started the course 12 years ago, about 60% of the students didn't know whether or not it was real. Wow. That doesn't exist anymore. Good. I'm happy to say. Yeah, near does a healthy climate. Yeah, right. That's about right. Boudreaux, good to see you too. What's up with you, my friend?  So, yeah, yeah, yeah, still getting the birthday. But no, I'm most excited to see Wombat here in Kentucky next week. Yeah, I was looking forward to the long drive too. I needed to like wear out my catalytic converter a bit. I put so many additives in it. I just need to burn them out. I'm like, I need a long drive. Where can I go? That's the real thing. Yeah. I'm like, all right, fine. Let's do it. Put some long miles in your car. It's good for it. Looking forward to spending a day in the life of Eric or a weekend in the life of Eric. Also, got to get you on a disc golf course. That's what I'm excited about. I want to show you what that's all about. Congratulations to you on that score. Yeah. Also, congrats on a happy birthday. We'll throw it up to Dred Pirate Higgs and his weekly check in on the on the quest for chaos. Yes, yes, yes. Well, what's going on now that you are now national news? Well, we've certainly had a lot more people join up the Facebook group. So we're hoping to get more Canadians. So I've put it out there to some of the main Pascaferian groups that are international. Cool. And see if we can conscript some for manning the local cannons. So nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow, as you know, or may not know a reminder that it is talk like a pirate day tomorrow, international. I know in Canada, our Prime Minister declared it ad hoc as the memorial day for the morning of the Queen. Of course, that's just another attempt of government to take over our religious holiday. I'm a little pissed off, but now you can do that. That's fine. That's fine. Tomorrow, tomorrow's the wedding. We're having our first Pascaferian wedding in Canada. I am the officiant because I am a marriage commissioner. But we're going to have it scripted, of course, to conform with Pascaferian beliefs. So that should be a good time. And I'm going to live stream that on my YouTube channel, mine pirate. Nice. 3pm Pacific daylight time. So come check out that channel if you want to see a cool wedding. Nice. You know what? I also say, there is a Pascaferian holiday that is often overlooked by government, which is called Friday. And I find that to be one of the most important holidays of all day. Like everyone's so happy that it's Friday. Got to think of local Pascaferian. That's how you that's how you really, you know, enjoy your Fridays, just fine with a calendar and be like, thank you for this day. It's really great day to be like, I didn't do it, but I appreciate the things. And you don't have to go to a church. All you have to do is eat pasta and regard it as a, you know, a symbolic of the creation of the universe by the great monster. It's got to be, it's got to be the right posture to like, we don't take false believers in this room. All right. Anyway, guys, Joe, we got more people to go over Larry Rhodes, I want to throw you under the bus.  Yeah, I wrote for about two or three hours yesterday had a good long trip up toward brush your mountain. And beautiful day it was like 80. I did notice that going through the shaded regions with the trees overhanging was cold. Yeah, it's getting there.  You got two weeks of good weather before it starts getting impossibly cold to do anything outside. That is life in Kentucky and Tennessee. It is what it is. You enjoy it. It sounds like you got it. Yeah. John Richard throwing up to you one last one last. I'm trying to find a nice. What's top hat top drawer comments from you. Is that is that the proper phrase for it. Top quality is all I'm saying is like quality check in from John. I'll take any of that. Give me give me like all the the dressings that are going on because I know you got a lot of stuff going on. I'm getting more and more into you tubing. So, for example, this morning I did a podcast is not uploaded yet, but it was with some colleagues on the UK, Atheism UK Council on the subject of the transfer of the leadership of our established church from one sadly dead monarch to the next monarch. Right. So she not only rained over the state but she rained over the church of England to and all of that passes to Charles the third. And the question is how he will handle it and what changes might occur and how the Archbishop of Canterbury will react to this and all sorts of things and furthermore, now that the country polled as 51% faith less. Hmm. And his title, not be defender of the faith defender of the favorites. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so my only comment. And I think dread you're really going to love this too. We often talk about quantum entanglement on this show to, you know, we we noted that when the queen dies, the the next Regency in line or become the next person in line immediately, that instant becomes the region. Right. They could be on Mars and Jupiter, but it's still instantaneous. It's like their quantum entangled people. What do you think about that dread. I don't think it works on the macro level it works in the micro level I think it works on the macro level I think we see an instantaneous change of power right there and it's just like you can't track it it's faster than the speed of light and we know that is a thing it's like Yes, but of course, but you're you're talking about a cultural thing not a physical thing. Okay, we can go. Guys, I know the mail bag is bursting at the seams we're going to go through some comments. First one is from our last episode from our, our favorite comment or data's trading room. He does say that he had a story.  He brought up the story of devout believer who was sailing on a boat, the boat started sinking and the guy was about to drown. He was swimming in the ocean and he was looking for someone to rescue him, but he had a boat that came along and he was like no God's going to save me. And then a bigger boat came along and he's like no thank you. You don't need to save me God's going to get me and then a helicopter came along and I was like hey do you need any help and the guy's like no no I still have the power of God. God's going to save me from this water. And so he finally did drown and in heaven, the guy met God and asked him, why didn't you save me and God answered. I like drowning people. I'm all about drowning people. That joke has a different punchline doesn't it. That's mine. That's mine. That's Tyrone original. Just remember that's more accurate. Just remember that's more accurate. Ty twist. There's another comment from that straight room said, regarding our use of Latin phrases saying I do not agree with cognito ergo some. It is some ergo cognito. I am, I am not because I think I think because I am, when I am not, I also think not. Any comment? Yeah, but Latin always ends with the verb final language right. Yeah, verb final language right. All right, we're going to get to some really nice comments today and thank you so much for those really nice comments. We're related to harmful beliefs deserve no respect, even when justified by religion. And that is usually aren't justified. Usually aren't. Yeah, in the secular sense absolutely not but by the religious person absolutely right in their own eyes right and so harmful beliefs deserve no respect even when they're used as an excuse by really or even when religion is used as an excuse. So in case in point, we had a commenter who shameless the seagull. I'm Jewish. So naturally I presume you already know what happened to my body on the eighth day of my life, when it what in the world went through my parents head as the mohel pulled out his sharp tools, what a real thought could justify skinning a non consenting human being alive. And you think about that. I'm also circumcised to I never really thought a lot of thought into it but I do recognize that like, that's the thing that if I wasn't religious or if we didn't have a religious culture, what it happened and causes a lot of, in my opinion, unnecessary surgery or harm there's some people who mess it up there's some people are like, what do you call it they mess up the circumcision and that person's just walking around with a ineffective.  Moille. Thank you. Well, pronounce moille. Moille. Thank you. I'm doing my best. You guys are giving me John Richards. What do you think. Well, some of the ways that's done.   Oh, that's not real. Is that real? Yeah, that's real. That's not real. Oh, no. And one or two people have been infected by germs. Yeah. The mouth is part of your body, honestly. And about six boys every year in the US die as a result of this operation, the needless operation. This is beyond what I was expecting to hear. Yeah, please stop that. And there's no pusher. There's no pusher pressure to outlaw it because people are using religion to support the belief of like, well, it's tradition. It's our belief. We're going to do this anyway. And yet abortions illegal. The odd thing is, female genital mutilation. Everybody throws up their arms in horror about, but male. Everyone. Well, a lot of people. Yeah, not, but male genital mutilation. You can get away with it. It's not a big issue. Just to hear your point of view. Is there, is there, you know, a recipe of this with the Catholic upbringing? Well, yeah, I mean, I don't remember a whole lot of it, you know, from, from growing up. I mean, it's not like something we talked about in the locker room or anything. But I did. We, as a family, we really struggled with this one. When Vincent was born, he, my son's 11. And I wasn't as activisty as I am now in these kind of groups. Certainly still atheist and but I think the way Kristen and I resolved it, well, whether or not to have him have a certain system, we talked to our pediatrician. And we said, is it something we should do?  Not like we're walking around naked or anything, but it, it's stuck. That's what we went with. I've really regretted it since. And I wonder why a doctor would say that it saves questions. Questions are good things. Yeah, exactly. Let him keep asking. Yeah, exactly. I'm more likely that he would pass it on without questioning to his next generation. Why would I ask questions? Questions are good. Questions are good to have. Buffalo. Go ahead, Pujo. You had more. I was just going to say, had I, had I, had I ever make that time machine? I mean, yeah, I'll go along with you. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Like I can definitely, I can definitely think of times when it was inconvenient, like when I was just based on new jeans that you wear. And you're like, dang it wouldn't be great if it was like a sheet of skin. What? Get out of town. Well, what in the world? All right, John Richards, what do you got? The thing is, what's the motivation behind it? Because it's almost never medically necessary. There's about 2% of males who need this operation and don't discover it until they're in their teenage, you know, going through puberty. And so the only reason for it is cosmetic. It's branding. They're saying you're one of ours. Right. Yeah. In the most committal way possible. It's like, give me your, your, your actual junk and scar it. This is back in, you know, Mesopotamian times. Like, did you sanitize that? You know, there's no such thing as germs. It's going to work out. It's like, then you are very committed when you do this. Yeah. But it's almost like the, the shibboleth thing. Yeah. You know, the pronunciation of shibboleth, the Hebrews, that's how they knew the enemies from themselves is pronunciation. Wow. So circumcision is a way of identifying, truly identifying a Hebrew from all the rest of the heathens, right? Not only that, but like, if you get a tattoo of a cross on your face or your chest, it's very hard to get out of Christianity after that point, right? Yeah.  It's easier for you to pull it back into the fold. It's like, you've already been scarred, you might as well commit to it after that point. It's a really unfortunate system. Yeah. And I think if moving forward, if I do ever have like a son, I would, I would be very, very adamant against that, even to the point where it'd be like, okay, I mean, there's a lot of weird things that I probably let my son do or not do, but I'd be like, okay, if he wants to go to Vanderbilt, I'll let him go to Vanderbilt, but he's not going to get circumcised. He's not going to be a Georgia fan. All right. Larry Rhodes, any more thoughts on this? On the idea? That's about it. Okay, cool. Harmful beliefs don't deserve respect even when justified by religion. We do appreciate that point. Next comment is the world is much more impressive when you realize that God didn't create it. And this one's brought to our own commenter, Victor.  He can wish anything to happen and it will. I constantly am told to marvel at how beautiful and incredible his creations are, but I never did. I never really understood why I was meant to be impressed by something and all powerful being made. He's all powerful after all, it shouldn't be so impressive that he made a plant grow or whatever. But after becoming an atheist, I started thinking more about the world and how it came to be, how living things started living, how animals and plants started evolving, how some species of ape evolved into Homo sapiens and practically talk over the world. It's incredible. No God was involved in this. It was purely the beings themselves, which I find much more impressive. The world is much more impressive when you realize that God didn't create it. And I, I hold true to that. I'd love to hear what your guys' thoughts are. Jed, what do you think about that? First, we hold that the flying spady monster was the creator of the universe and the world. And especially, you know, the idea that gravity is not a pull, it's a push by the noodley lord pressing his appendages down on people to keep them on the earth. That's why midgets are the first people because they were smaller and easier to keep to the earth. Okay. So many, so many under comments on that. John Richards, what do you think about the idea of the world being more impressive when you don't have a religious belief. Well, absolutely. It's incredibly wonderful, especially when you realize that we're like ants looking at this amazing, I'm lost for words, amazing size, distance, variation, diversity. And I don't like the way the Christians have stolen that idea and called it all awesome and claim to own it. It's theft. Yes, I agree. Yes. Jed. Oh, I'm sorry. Boudreau, what do you think? There's a really neat meme I see floating around occasionally where it's, you know, if there is no God, then how do you explain this and it's a picture of a beautiful sunset. And the very next frame is, you know, the the ionosphere and the bending of the light and the, you know, the science behind it. Like this is why, you know, this is why we see the colors we see and it's beautiful and it's beautiful because of, you know, just the physics of it. And I know, I know Dawkins has a really neat quote about that I can't pull up in my mind right now that about how really it is just like your, as you said, Victor made the post. Yeah. Victor, but it is a Victor. Okay, I might be able to help you on that, Boudreau. Oh, good. Oh, I was actually going to point to you. You had the quote, but so it's, it's really it's a he wrote a book called the blind watchmaker. And so, of course, you know, the argument against this idea is, you know, look at the trees it must be so that a God created it but it'd be like finding a watch on a beach, and saying well this watch is so intricate and complicated. There's no other way it could be created without there being an intelligence behind it. But if that's the case for all creation, you're walking on a beach made of watches, where watches grow out of the ground and washes go compose the water of the ocean, and the sky is made of watches, like everything is watches. It's watches all the way down. And so that's the argument against this idea that you look at something you can incredible or irreducible complexity. It's just, it's a failed argument on the basis of that blind watchmaker thing. That's, I'm not a fan of the argument of complexity, as far as like an argumentation for design. When we know that simplicity is a hallmark design if you ever spent any time, an actual engineering place, or get paid for it. You will understand very quickly that the less complex something is the more people will be willing to pay for pay for it. And that's, that's the hallmark and beauty of design, not simplicity not complexity. I just got a bunch of comments on this one. Buffalo, do you have any comments on the idea of the world being more beautiful, more awe inspiring when you take God out of the picture. Well, as a as a biologist, of course. Again the complexity of that proliferation of life is awesome and it's just inconceivable that it could have come from one source. Okay, evolution itself I think speaks against it. Yeah, very, very gnarly way of trying to improve things with living bodies but yeah it's, it's a very interesting path of how we got here, far better than any fiction, in my opinion fact always beats out fiction. I want to get Larry a chance to get in and then dread Larry do you have any idea or opinions on the idea that fact is more impressive without fiction, or the world without an explanation fairy tale explanation. There you go. Because, of course, if he's all powerful like, like the commenter was was saying, there's no reason why he couldn't create every kind of complexity that we see in nature. But the thing about it is hallmark of the hallmark of good intelligent design is simplicity, not complexity. Absolutely. And if, if God had really wanted to make us so that we could live in the universe anywhere we wanted to he'd make us out of titanium. That would be one piece that would bend in any direction we want to have a computer for a mind. He doesn't have he didn't have to follow all this evolutionary zig zags going up through the biological ladder. Yeah, ideally make us out of Teflon, you know, That way, at least we wouldn't need umbrellas, even titanium can be exposed to oxygen. What's up, dread. What's up. Well, I was just I was actually listening to a podcast around the topic of Darwin's study of evolution. It would, you know, it occurs to me as a result of that that he started out as a believer, and he he really struggled with his belief in the in the light of evolution. So, having, you know, come up with this, the theory of natural selection and evolution by natural selection. He wrestled with that for a long time. And at the same time did not have a mechanism for it. So he had a theory for which he did not have a good understanding of how it could work. It wasn't until Francis and Chris came up with the discovered the DNA, like almost a century later or more, that it finally had a mechanism but again, he had a theory without a mechanism and that helped him to struggle with his beliefs. Nice. Yeah, he was, he was born to that theory and it was he was probably circumcised. Yeah. A little lone fact is Abraham Lincoln and Darwin were born on the exact same day they have the same birthday. Nice. Yeah, regarding the idea of why would pediatrician want a kid to stop asking questions questions are a good thing. And stealing a version of this for my best man's speech, I'm giving in a few weeks. Well said, mate. You know, I like the quote but I wonder how he's going to fit that into a best man. I really wanted to see. What's his new wife going to make. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stand us and says I've always felt that complexity of the universe is an argument against God. If he's all powerful he could have created things that didn't need food or water and thereby avoided starvation and dehydration. He could have made beings that don't need oxygen and avoided drownings and suffocations he could have created a world in where light was simply an inherent trait rather than needing it for to come from solar fusion. The complexity of the universe and life's nearly perfect fit into a hospitable environment speak to chance, adaptation, evolution and evolution, not omissions and omnipotence.  Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, like look at that beautiful bird is now food for something else. You know, John riches, what do you think. Well, the whole thing is just a claim, isn't it. There's no connection between this God and the diversity and amazing variation of the cosmos. Very unlike Paley's watch, you know that story that dread told us we know we know how watches are made. We can even show you watchmakers. Yeah, they have no link between their claim and the observations that we can all make about the universe. Even more problematic there's no frame of reference for what something that isn't a creation is or what something isn't a creator is if everything in the world's a creator and you're surrounded by everything that's creation. If you don't have a friend or reference you have no basis to claim that something is a creation when you can't recognize when it's not. It's the most simplest thing in the world. Lack of a reference. Well, you says I'll say it again. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead Larry. We need to take a break. We got five more minutes before the end. We got five more minutes. I think we can fit them in. We can fit these in. All right, so well you says I'll say it again and again once you realize that nothing supernatural exists the world is a much nicer place. And you you are w you you says, similarly, my wife a Christian asked if I thought we were destined to be better when we were dating. She knew I'm an atheist and was then struggling to come together with it. And I said no, and I know upset her pretty hard until I can explain that I found it far more precious that according to my beliefs, our meeting was a culmination of a lifetime of if any single one was made differently, could have meant that we'd never meet. And that improbability is far more beautiful than some sky guy determining that we would end up together, no matter what. I imagine that there's some additional comments on the phrase sky guy spoken by a male right. Well, don't man's blame me my improbability. You know, I do find the probability of us being here even just talking this conversation far more beautiful than it being preordained. Yeah. And it's a difference between. I'll go ahead, John Richards. I would have thought that how they came together was pretty immaterial. What matters is how they're going to go on in future. Very nice. I like that. That's that's the motto for a movie. That's about to happen pretty soon. Guys, I think we're now at the bottom of the break. We're going to go into after we come back, a tell all from a man who's pastor out of them as an atheist to his community group. And then any additional comments that you guys are free to put in. We'll see you back after the break Larry, why don't you take us out. Stay tuned for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Larry Rhodes or doubt or five and we're on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk just for a moment about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK is founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year and we have over 1000 members. And we have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening at the Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. If you can't make the meeting in person, we also have a Tuesday evening zoom meetup. If you'd like to join us, email us for the link at ask an atheist at Knoxville atheists.org, or let's chat as see at gmail.com. You can find us on Facebook meetup.com or go to the website at Knoxville atheists.org, or just Google knocks late this just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and look for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one star. What do we want to pick up some quick comments from last the first half.  Jacqueline Marie 11 says it's genital mutilation to do circumcision or are obviously female general mutilation. We attempt to protect women from genital mutilation, but this happens in other culture. I'm sorry, we protect women from genital mutilation that happens in other cultures and conveniently ignore all the mutilation happening to male infants in this country. I'm going to add in that this happens to intersect in this as well after birth. A lot of doctors let the parents choose the sex they want their genitals made to look like if they're ambiguous, and parents have zero rights to make these decisions for their kids. I agree on both of those points. On top of that we got another comment.  Sorry, sorry, sorry. So I had a different comment that I'm going to try to scroll up to if you guys. Okay, hold on. I'm going to go into messenger so I can pull this up. All right, so we got a comment from person who'd like to remain anonymous. Hello tie I'm writing this out of annoyance then distress and not directed at you or anyone on the show just venting. So the story short, I came from a seventh day Adventist family fourth generation, and in SDA churches, if you want to get baptized you need to complete, you need to complete a guide with your pastor or presbytery. It usually lasts six months. I expressed my wish to be baptized a year ago. However, during that time, I started doubting my faith and after eight months of studying and praying with no responses whatsoever I stopped believing in God. He told me to get baptized as I completed my preparation. And when I told my family that I don't want to join the church they called the pastor over for private meeting. He always seemed like a nice guy so I was honest with them I told them everything about my lack of belief and my experience with religion. We ended up praying together. No response of course. Fast forward four months I stopped going to the church because everything seems so cultish and because I was tired of their ignorance and cognitive dissonance in general. I find out that this evening my pastor outed me to the entire church and to my parents because they didn't even know I was an atheist. I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised my first mistake was to trust someone from a church slash cult. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. On that subject last week. Some of you were in the show that I do later on today, the Global Atheists who's review where we express our views on the news, and our New York panelist, who is of Jewish extraction. He said that deep baptism is relatively easy what he finds difficult is D circles. I don't know about that. So, anyone have any additional comments on that story from from our own anonymous writer dread or dread. You know, there, there may be in biology there may be the opportunity to once they discover how you know salamanders regrow their tails and whatnot that you know four skins may be able to back somehow. Yeah, yeah, some stem cells around there or something. And then then we'll all be able to regrow. And that means that when we take up drumming we'll all be able to say how much we love beating the four skins. There is, there is a salient point I'd like to go on and Pedro. What, well, if you're on a point I was just going to comment on the, on the person that made the comment but you go ahead first. And like the reason why, why do we have a system where someone tells their secrets to a person who's the authoritarian head of organization like the, the rule of the position of power should be to serve the people that you're working with right, not to be the, the secret keeper the gatekeeper master master whispers of your congregation because it only makes them harder to leave if they want to go somewhere else because now you have all this black man ammunition right. Yeah, and we have an agreement. So that's the general theme of the comments that we're getting is that it's basically a win win for your pastor. Drummer five says this, either you're an example of what not to be like, or you become a notch in the butt of Christianity as an empty found God again, in either case it has to be made public. And in the end he only cares about himself and his soul, not yours. Yeah, so so yeah long that point. It seems to me like there's got to be a little bit of a benefit cost analysis going on with the, with the church where it's like, it's probably not worth their time to try to convince this person let's spend our efforts on convincing these others that will turn quicker or at least keep them in line. There's also the thing about shouting. If he's not going to be in the church, you don't want your church members to have contact with them. And so what better way to do that than out him. Right. Buffalo I'd love to hear what you think about this. You know, again, you got to keep the fuse full right. Right. You got to play to the crowd. Right. And then there's that thing when a person actually genuinely needs help in connecting with a God and you're talking to a whole group of people, the leader of people who have this instantaneous access. Instead of just being like, Oh, I'll Google that for you. Like if I forget my phone and I need to find out how tall astro just ostriches are on average. I can just talk to another guy is like, Hey, do you have connection to the internet. Yeah, of course, let me figure that out for you. I can't talk to God. Can you help me out guy whose job is I talked to God for a living. Well, I'll pray for it for you. And maybe I'll come back in four months. This is like, dude, do you have this connection or not. And you're not giving him any more meaningful ideas about why you should stay in not only when you out him but when you can't help him when he's in this time of need. And what do you why do you talk to somebody who's not merciful, or who has created a not non music merciful world. Yeah. Hot mess express one I love the name says he only did that for you to have your family friends and other church members manipulate and pressure you until you crack under the pressure and return to the church. Yeah, it's it's really unfortunate. I don't. Oh, let's see. Sheamus says rule number one for dealing with cultists. Nice is different than good. And I, I found that to be absolutely true.  There's a big difference between the two, like you can be pleasant with someone but recognize whether someone actually has the faculties to be able to make morally justified bold decisions or not. And nice is not always the best. Good is. Alright. How do you guys feel everyone good. Mm hmm. Okay, cool. I'm going to open up the comment well again. So hot mess express also follows up with, I had this pastor obsessively try to convert me to Christianity for months, and would go on these insane rants in the pulpit indirectly talking about me every Sunday. Long story short, I ended up ghosting him. And I'm sure that sent him into some kind of narcissistic rage, knowing he wasn't going to, I wasn't going to be the center of his attention anymore, or he wasn't going to be the center of my attention anymore. I'm getting tired of Christians and I'm starting to think all of them are bad. Christian ideas and bad people. Hmm. Yeah. But, you know, there's limits, I would say. Well, like I like to say is Christianity is as Christianity does. Right. What they say. Right. Right. Right. I can also say like Christianity puts out so much bad stuff under the under the gift wrappings of good things. Even just quietly pushing it along as a good person just you know, either being completely ignorant to that and just allowing that river to continue to flow, or causing no inhibition or critical thought and just being another one of the faces that are purported that Christianity is a good thing, can be in its own right a bad thing.  And I feel like that's culpability, even in the lack of inaction. Silence is a really, really bad thing in the base of what we're dealing with right now. That's my thought. What do you think, Dredd? You think that's fair? Absolutely. Okay, okay. I want to say it makes you automatically backwards.   If you've got a thing. Don't. Yeah, what do you think, Dredd? Well, I was just going to add that it's important for for atheists and pacifarians also to be aware that we're not attacking the people who hold these beliefs, but the beliefs themselves. It's often difficult for people who hold these beliefs to recognize the difference, right, because we're all so very invested in our beliefs. We, we conflate our, our sense of worth with our beliefs. And so when you attack a person's belief, they sometimes take it as an attack on a personal attack. And it's always important to make sure that we're trying to maintain an atmosphere of respect and willingness to even change our minds. Right. To the evidence. So, right, we do, we should portray what we want to, to, you know, what we're trying to encourage, we should act in accordance to that. Yeah. Yeah. John Richards I'd love to hear your thoughts on this follow up from hot mess express the liberal ones allow the liberal Christians allow this kind of behavior to continue by downplaying it, saying that no Christians are aggressive and egotistical. Yeah, all of them might not be like that but most Christians enable the Christian zealots by not calling them out. Yes. Yeah, same with Muslims, right, you know, it doesn't matter which religion you're talking about. It's the ones that hold it, you know, not as not as extremely, but their silence, of course, essentially allows the extremists to get away with it. And it's, it's sort of a reversal of what ground show Marx said, you know, he said I wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member. Well, don't join a club that's got these other fundamentalist members, right, supporting them. Hey, Boudre, we have a question about SDA. And since you expressed some interest in that I wanted to throw this one out to you is SDA by question by fuzzy buzzy is SDA one of the extremist cults. What, what, what is SDA. Do they hold a funeral. Are they one of the cults that hold a funeral for you and have your family treat you like you're deceased when you're when you leave the religion, or is that one of the other cults. Yeah, my interest in this was not because of my knowledge of SDA. It's just, I was interested in that the topic of someone getting outed like that. That was interesting. I don't know a whole lot about SDA. Honestly, it would not surprise me to find out that, you know, they would throw a funeral for someone who leaves. But I don't I don't know actually. Yeah. What is a Sunday, Sunday, or seven day a day. Oh, okay. Yeah, I work with some of them at our job there. Like I said, nice. They're nice people. But I've had, I've had in depth, you know, Socratic examinations with them. And they're like, Yeah, I believe in the Bible and I'm like you believe everything in the Bible. Yes, absolutely. There's no question about it. And even the thing on slavery. Well, let me tell you about slavery. It's like it's never just like a no, it's just like well, it was okay back then because they were okay with it with the slaves okay with it. Probably not.  Yeah, like the slaves had a point of view to and it's very easy to overwrite that but I so hot mess express I'm going to let this one last one. Honestly, thinking about it, dealing with my own religious trauma and reading other atheist stories about Christians trying to force them to convert. This is really dumb and childish this whole thing when I think about it. We have fully grown adults throwing temper tantrums and threatening people in order for them to believe that some ancient book is true. And in my head it's not just about the book it's about the power system that they develop or inherited as a result. And this is entirely a power play. And so when you know your pastor wants you to confide in them, him or her. Or most most of the time him because like I said it's a power play. When they hold those secrets and maybe even use them against you pressure you to go join back into their fold. It's all pressure. It's all power play. And so you got to be able to see that for what it is it's not the ordained Holy God talking to you it's a guy doing whatever he can to keep that paycheck rolling. He's just big for God. claiming God with the book of claims about claims. Hey, what's up. I'd like to bring up again the, the idea of believe in belief genes and the fact that everything's on a Gaussian curve and there are zealots down at the one end of that curve that in fact are what hard wired to have a need or a strong belief toward believe in belief. And all you need is a couple of those that are outspoken situation we live under. I do want to give a shout out to the anonymous posters for for recognizing that the system was a system and like getting out, you know, hopefully he's still out or she's still out but good job on your own part. I think these communities that you can reach out to their people you can talk to, and we'll be happy more, more than the happy to continue conversations with you, if you'd like to if you don't want this one sided podcast sort of system, we even have you on the show if you want to Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder, and I think we've talked about it, maybe in the past, you know how many church leaders are so invested in their career, so to speak, and they, they lost their belief a long time ago. Right. I mean they can't, they can't give it up it's their livelihood. They've got family members I know, I know. That's what the clergy project is all about right. Yeah, yeah, okay, right, right, yep. Yeah, the same thing can happen in families to you know the husband and wife one loses their faith and realizes that you know coming out as an atheist is going to ruin the relationship so they, You know the funny thing is the opposite never happens, like you never have a scientist who stops believing in science and then science stops working. Right. Right. It's always just like, dang it, I don't get nucleases, yet I still have stoichiometry like what's going on here. That's just nonsense about atoms and all that. Yes, it was like, why does it still keep working I have all my doubt put into this whatsoever. Alright, guys we're getting close towards the end of the show thank you guys so much for leaving comments. Feel free to leave more on my channel's let's chat, you can feel free to post a comment and we'll get over into it in future episodes of the show we really appreciate it. Buffalo, let me just say, I didn't feel like it would be a true show unless we brought up Gaussian curves so I do appreciate you bring that up. I'm still waiting for the Sam Harris drop from Boudreaux though so well. Boudreaux, I'll give you the opportunity anything you'd like to plug. I went with Dawkins this time just trying to spread it out a little bit the four horsemen they all need equal. Sure. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, no sweat, no sweat. Buffalo anything you'd like to plug before our customers come back from next week. No, I'll see my time someone else. Fair enough fair enough. So, I'll make the Sam Harris plug he has this great podcast called making sense, in which he interviews amazing array of intellectuals and scientists and thought leaders. An app called waking up, which is an exercise in or an app around mindfulness. So, as opposed to prayer and other kinds of meditation mindfulness is something that has no baggage around it with respect to a diet deity or diminity or whatnot. Should I plug my channel. Absolutely. Okay. My pirate and my and P y R A T E. I broadcast this live stream at 7am Pacific Daylight Time, and then move on to the global Atheist news review at 11am Pacific Daylight Time so check out my channel if you'd like please subscribe love to see you. And also, I'm more than happy to entertain all comments that you might want to leave there so check it out. My pirate. I also throw this out to next month I'm going to be doing a talk at Dalton State College about cheerleading for I don't know, which is some often very rarely cheerleaded for but as a good answer for when you don't know something. There's no better response than I don't know and we got to get in a better habit of saying that. John Richards. Listen, I got a whole notepad rated go tell me all the I have a whole agenda as you would say what tell me tell me what's a what's the plan what should we plug and pay attention to coming up. Well, free thought channel is the place to go where you will see global atheist news and one of the items of news you're like this week is that fewer than half of Americans may be Christian by 2070. Then there's global atheist news review which dread and you tire in dreads just plugged that it happens later on today. I don't put it up live, but because I want to spread my stuff out throughout the week, but you'll be able to see it on free thought channel later on. Then last night we had a fantastic free thought hour, the interview show with a South African professor of paleontology who takes on creationists in his private time. So that was that was that's well worth watching. Then, on top of all that, I've taken to debunking Frank Turek. What if I'm with that. Where I take some of his work and chop it up and insert my comments. I also want to do some two more plug on top of that I'm dread I'm glad you plug the clergy project. Also, I would also recommend recovering from religion, which is a website anyone can access if you are SDA and leaving if you're a job of witness and leaving if you're Christian and you're just doubting you have questions in general. Don't put them away it's good to ask questions questions are good thing as your part would say. Recovering from religion the website. Also, Larry, listen, I still don't know what atheism is and all it's all about we're going to have to just call it what it is. We apologize officially let's just, you know, chalk one up to Christianity and call it the end of the day. I have a book on that. What's it all about. Thank you, there it is. There you go. No, no, no, no dreads is called what's it's all about. Oh, yeah. And it's on it's available on Amazon, but my content can generally be found at digital free thought calm. Be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives, atheist songs and articles on the subject. The YouTube channel can be found by searching for a doubt or five or digital free thought radio hour. By the way, if you're clergy member but have come to see that the claims of religion are not justified and start doubting this help for you at the clergy project. Just search for clergy project or go to clergy project.org. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. What you gotta do is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next week. Every Wednesday night here in Knoxville. Say bye everybody. Bye.


In this topic, we are going to talk about the third approach to international compensation which is called the local plus approach. It is something which is emerged as a new concept, which is basically because of the increasing rate of globalization and many companies opening up in different parts of the wall. Earlier, the basic model was that they were US multinationals and they used to open their subsidiaries in other parts of the world or European organizations, most of it. But now that there are many Asian, Asia Pacific region companies which are globally expanding, so they cannot go according to either the going rate approach or the balance sheet approach. So this is a combination of the going rate approach as well as the balance sheet approach which takes into account both the local challenges as well as the global challenges which are attached with compensating people in that particular location and according to the strategy of the organization. So this is called the local plus approach. So now let's take a look what the local plus approach, what are the elements of that. In the local plus approach, the expatriate employee is paid according to prevailing salary levels, structure and administrative guidelines of the home country. Basically, the person is paid according to the salary structure and the administrative guidelines of the home country which is the parent country. Plus, you can see that I've made a bold plus in that. Plus the expatriate type of benefits in recognition of the foreign status. So it is not something which will follow the going rate approach completely. That the market's rate is going to be employed at the subsidiary level or it's not going to follow the balance sheet approach completely. That the compensation packages on the home country are applied to them as it is in the local context. In fact, you will take a combination of both of these. In case you will keep your home salary and compensation packages, but the challenges of foreign location and foreign assignment and the requirements of that, you will adjust them somehow in your compensation package. And those are going to be the expatriate type benefits which may be in the form of foreign inducement allowance or in the form of hardship allowance or in the form of other types of allowances and benefits. But it is going to be a combination of both the global requirements and the local requirements. And this is something which we are trying to achieve in the international human resource management context throughout all the processes. It's not just limited to compensation. When we talked about other aspects, we have discussed that there has to be a combination of being global as well as acting local. And that is something which is being applied to the international compensation context in the form of this local plus approach of compensation packages. So this is a combination of both the two elements. It does not usually, it typically does not include the cost of living allowance, mobility premiums, hardship allowances, similarization visits, home leave, cross-cultural training and other pre-departure or spouse assistance allowances. It is not as in the traditional approaches to the going rate approach and balance sheet approach. These allowances are given so explicitly in the local plus approach. They are not actually addressed in this way. They are actually made a part of the compensation as a general following of the psychological contract of the employee with the organization and such type of differentiated benefits. They are not paid in the local plus approach. Basically the home country structure is followed and then there are some expatriate type benefits which are included in that compensation package. But it is something which is more of an organic nature, less structured, less mechanistic, more, it is something which is more flexible to the environment, more flexible to the changing environment and something which is more fluid in nature and not something which is predefined as a a priori hypothesis. Okay, this is the way, this is the approach that we are going to take. And these are the different allowances and sets of payments that we are going to make to the person. It is going to be according to the requirement of the organization, the requirement which is the strategy of the organization and the local context is also going to be taken into account. So this is basically the spirit of the local plus approach that it is an organic fluid way of compensating the employees which actually which calculates the amount of payment which is required to be paid. Not that you need to follow some approach, but what is the requirement and what is the psychological contract of the employee who is working for you, how much that person would need to be compensated for and in what ways that compensation needs to be done. So this is basically the approach of local plus approach of compensation packages in international context.


I was trying to think of an example for this one without being completely naughty. I don't know if I can. So maybe we'll just be naughty. Anyway, whatever. Condition negative reinforcers. This is when you have a neutral stimulus. And you pair it with another stimulus that happened to be negatively reinforcing. And it takes on the properties of the negative reinforcing stimulus. I don't know. You got any examples for me? Because I'm kind of stuck here. I'm drawn a blank. I'll wait while you respond. And an example for you, after someone finally responded and magic through the magic of YouTube, you were able to go back in time and tell me what it was. So anyway, how about this? So beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. That's really annoying, right? Especially if I continue to do that. Well, you could pair something with that. What have I got? Oh, I have a phone. You could pair my phone. So imagine this is just like a yellow card or something or whatever. It doesn't matter. It's magic. So anyway, you pair this with beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. So you pair this with my beeping. Eventually, you could do this and present that. And you'd be like, go away. The beeping's coming. Ah, I'm going to die. So that sort of thing. So think about it in your car. The light on your dash when you don't have your seatbelts on, the light kind of predicts that sound of the seatbelt. So I bet if you uncook the buzzer and then still produce that light, that it would be aversive enough for you to put your seatbelt on. That would be my guess. That would be a conditioned negative reinforcer.


Warning, this video will contain spoilers after chapter 1047. You've been warned. Hello, my Nakamotachi, this is Joygirl. And boy, do I have a saucy discussion for you guys today. And I mean saucy. Saucy like ketchup, you know? Sweet, rich, red, red like the red line, but also red like the subscribe button. So if you enjoy fun, insightful discussions like the one that I'm just about to provide, then please do click that deliciously red subscribe button, which will mean that you are provided with updates and notifications for regular one-piece discussions. And now that you have clicked that subscribe button, at the risk of overdoing it with the metaphors and the jokes, let's dip into this saucy material, shall we? So I was actually doing research for a completely different topic. And in doing so, I accidentally ended up entering the nanya of Norse mythology and got a bit carried away, but I can't really complain because it filled up my time and alleviated my boredom during the break week. But also as I really dug quite deep into the mythology, I actually encountered a little gem. Now that little gem actually being a ferocious beast going by the name of Jormungand in Norse mythology who is also known as the Great Beast or the Midgard Serpent and as that last name suggests, Jormungand is a serpent or a sea serpent to be exact and one of Loki's three children. Now, according to Norse mythology, it is said that the deity Odin actually threw Jormungand into the ocean which covers Midgard, which is their word for earth. And it's said that the serpent actually grew so large that it encircled the entire earth and grasped its tail in its mouth. And when you actually look at some of the depictions of Jormungand, I'm sure that like me, there is one thought that immediately pops into your mind. The red line. But let's keep going. Because something else that is contained within this mythology is that it's said that when the serpent stops biting its own tail, that's when the Ragnarok is supposed to begin. Which, by the way, if you are unfamiliar with the term, the Ragnarok is another part of Norse mythology which is used to describe a series of events or catastrophes that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the world. And also, Ragnarok is believed to culminate in a great war between the gods, between demons, giants, wherein the end and the death of the world includes the death of Jormungand but also includes the death of gods. Actually translated, Ragnarok can mean the doom of gods. Now there seems to be some variation on the legends, especially about its ending. Some say that an innocent god is revived or some others say that two humans will emerge from the Idrazil, which is the world tree that actually survived the war and then that these two humans will repopulate the earth. But anyways, with this very quick, very brief lesson on Norse mythology over, how does this then relate to one piece? So like I said, the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the Jormungand was that it reminded me very much of the red line, this huge expanse of red matter which encircles the entire earth. And so when I did some further digging around online, I found out that of course I wasn't the only one who picked up on this and a very curious detail that some people had pointed out was this little piece of dialogue, a very intriguing piece of dialogue that could be a potential clue. So you'll probably remember that at the end of the little garden arc, Dorian Broggy, the two Elbafian warriors, helped the straw hats continue their journey and overcome that giant fish. But something that may be much more easily forgotten or missed is a seemingly innocent flyaway comment that is made when they say that the only thing that this Elbafian warrior duo are unable to piece is the snake soaked in blood. And at the time when I first encountered this comment, I remember feeling that it was just a harmless comment. I mean, although it is a little bit odd and quite specific, something pretty insignificant apart from the fact that it further enriches the culture of the giants. But now with retrospect, I know, and I'm sure we know, that there is really almost never such a thing as a harmless innocent flyaway comment when it comes to One Piece. And we now know to actually read into these seemingly harmless innocent flyaway comments, and especially when they seem to concern a deity or a mythical figure, especially when it concerns a specific race in One Piece. I mean, I think we have learnt that, especially after the whole Sun God incident and the mention at Skypia. And so in a similar sense, this dialogue about a snake soaked in blood seems very specific and seems like it could be actually much more important. In which case, I think a case, a very strong case could be made that Dory and Broggy were actually referring to the Yomengand. I mean, not only do some of the real life depictions of the Yomengand actually portray him as red, but as this great serpent who is the gatekeeper to war and bloodshed, the words used by Oda, a snake soaked in blood seems quite fitting. But then in that case, how does this fit with the red line? I mean, obviously in Norse mythology, the Yomengand is an actual living, breathing creature, a snake, a serpent, whereas in the series, the red line is known to be a mass of land, a continent made up of islands all grouped together to form that big line. And now I do think that there could be multiple explanations as to how this connects. For example, the red line could have actually once been a real serpent, a real snake that existed, and then somehow formed into this mass expanse of land. And this could be just one of the many lies that we know the world government to tell about the world and about the formation of the world. I mean, there could be some deep lore underneath and covered by what seems to be this red expanse of land. But also, it could just simply be a metaphor. I mean, at the end of the day, this is Oda's story, and whilst it's clear that he obviously takes inspiration from a lot of sources, there's no rule or no need for him to stick to the story to the legends one to one. I mean, he could be just taking the symbolism and the metaphors and the meaning behind the stories, which does seem to be more in mind with what he does and what he has done with other legends and with other stories. So the red line of one piece could just metaphorically represent the great serpent of Norse mythology, whilst also tying in with the ancient belief system of the Elbafian warriors. Nonetheless, it's hard to deny that there does seem to be some sort of connection between the red line to the mythology of the Yomanganda. I mean, for one, we obviously know that Oda is often inspired by other mythologies and legends, but more specifically, Norse mythology and Norse culture. We know that Oda's love for pirates and his interest in this world sparked with his love for the cartoon series Vicky the Viking, where Vikings are really the OG pirates of the world. And we can really see this through the representation of giants in the series, especially the Elbafian giants, which were the first giants that we did see in the series. And it's very clear that the Elbafian warriors were heavily influenced by the culture and the values of Vikings, which is why there have been so many speculations about what we could expect from Elbaf, speculations between characters like Shanks, for example, and his possible connection or representation of the Norse god Tear, who also lost his arm, and I have actually made a video about that, so feel free to watch that after this one. But also, we obviously have characters in One Piece, whose names are actually directly taken from Norse mythology. For example, Loki, a prominent figure within Norse mythology, is the name for the Prince of Elbaf. So then if we continue thinking about what the influence of this legend of Yomanganda could mean for the One Piece series, we could actually be looking at how the final war may erupt.  And it's been speculated that this destruction of the red line will also result in the realization of the all blue and that this will grant freedom to not just Luffy, but to everybody to roam the seas. And so if we adopt those ideas about the red line being an artificial barrier that was created by the world government, those who call themselves the celestial dragons as fake gods, in that sense, viewing the final war as like the Ragnarok, the doom of the gods, a great war which actually culminates in the death of gods. This idea of the doom of the gods is actually quite fitting, as well as the idea of the world being cleansed and then being able to start a fresh and a new after this great war. The Yormanganda is an example of what has been called the Uroboros in history, the word Uroboros referring to symbols and representations of a snake with its tail in its mouth. This seems to be a symbol that has been seen countless of times across history, across vastly different cultures and amongst other things and other meanings, the Uroboros is also thought to mean and to refer to this idea of an eternal cyclic renewal. And I think that this idea is also quite an apt description for the story of One Piece, especially the theme and the idea of inherited will in One Piece as this inherited will passing down generations. You know, this theme of seeing parallels between important figures across generations is something that we are quite familiar with in the series. So in that sense, the breaking and the destruction of the red line as the land where the celestial dragons reside, you know, on top of the red line on Mary Joie, the destruction of this barrier and the symbolic representation of the celestial dragons being above everyone else, this could work really nicely as the metaphorical breaking of the Uroboros, the One Piece equivalent of the Uroboros, you know, in the sense that the destruction of the red line is the breaking of the eternal cycle of oppression that the world government has ruled over. And in that case, it makes a lot of sense that this will all be kicked off from Elbaf or at the least that it will be unearthed in Elbaf and that this sort of lore, these sort of reveals will come to light in Elbaf. I mean, apart from the obvious link between the Elbafian warriors to Norse mythology and Vikings, it's clear that Oda has some sort of affinity to Vikings which he represents as the Elbafian warriors in the series and in a similar way to how we knew that Oda would go all out at Wano. You know, in the sense that Wano is obviously representative of his home country to which he has a certain affinity and really I think you would agree with me that he hasn't disappointed when it comes to, you know, going all out and showing off everything at Wano, an arc where even aside from all the hype action we also got some huge reveals and revelations. I think it's safe to say that we can also similarly expect some massive reveals in an arc which seems to be based on the culture which sparked his inspiration for the entire series. In terms of in-series logic, it also makes perfect sense given that giants live a lot longer than humans. So giants really are the perfect source of information if they also remember more than the ordinary human because the events, the historical events of the past, all of this deep lore and mysteries, maybe events that only happened, you know, just a couple of generations ago for them as compared to the average human. But also because the fate of giants seems to be such a great source of interest for the world government that I can't help but think that giants must be a lot more intricately involved and related to all of the deep lore in the series than they seem. I know that the explanation of why the world government is so interested in giants is because of their natural strength, which, yes, in and of itself is also a good reason, but I do still feel like it does go deeper than that. I mean, for example, a very wild example, mind you, giants may even be related to the moon races and, more specifically, the Burka moon race. And the reason why I say this is because Burka is actually the name of a real location in the world, an island in present-day Sweden, but back, you know, way back when, it was actually a well-known trading centre for the Vikings, where Vikings-Gandanaevians were trade with other ethnicities. Now, obviously, in One Piece, we associate Burka with one of the races who live above on the Sky Islands, who we know to have originated from the moon, but it seems like there could be a Viking connection in the real-life world, and so that means that there could actually be a connection to giants in One Piece if Oda does decide to import that element into his story. And this information, this detail about Burka is actually what got me down this rabbit hole of Norse mythology in the first place, because I was actually looking up and researching on the moon. But anyways, that's a whole nother topic. In any case, there really are a lot of potential speculations that could be made about giants, about the red line, about the origins of the One Piece world as we know it, and how all of these are connected. I mean, we could go back to the legend of the Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, that world tree, which seems to symbolically match the sunlight tree eve that we have in One Piece as a tree that bridges the realm between worlds in the sense that it bridges the underwater, the undersea world to the land above water. And this may or may not be that big tree that we saw in Elbaf in Big Mom's flashback. But anyways, I'll leave it here for now, but I would be interested in hearing your speculations and also your thoughts on my speculations, so make sure to leave a comment below. Please don't forget to like and share the video and please do subscribe if you liked hearing this discussion. You can also join our Joyfleet Discord server or even become a Patreon member. And I would like to thank all our patrons for help supporting the channel. And by the way, if you liked where I was going with this whole tree discussion, then please do take a peek at my video that is wholly dedicated to my speculations on the trees of One Piece, which will be posted where at least one of my fingers will be pointing. But anyways, this is Joy Girl and I'll see you again soon.


Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA the Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. More summer heat information, and it looks like we're getting things. So I wanna talk about what this loading screen means, all the little aspects of it, because there's a lot of little hints as a part of this loading screen. I wanna talk about it and what we could see tomorrow when we finally, when the questioning and when the guessing is over with and done and we actually figure out what the summer heat promo is going to look like. There were some leaks. People said they have some leaks. So we'll talk about that a little bit today as well. But it's starting to look like this promo is not actually kind of like footies. We've been all over the place, right? I've said yes, it looks like footies. I've said no, it doesn't kind of look like footies. I was really strong set on this promo looking a lot like footies, but I'm not entirely sure if that's how it's gonna run now based off what I see today with this promo screen. So today this is the promo screen they put out with the car design with a flame. Two different flames though, one that's like white and at the forefront and one that is kind of darker and like, I don't know, subtle, that is kind of at the back of the car. So we now have four different cards. If you remember correctly, we've got this version right here. We've got the white flame, the dark flame and like the gold rare version or the basic version of this car design. So that's the first thing I wanna talk about. What does this really mean? What this reminds me of up here is with the fire and with the kind of lower tier fire, this kind of reminds me of like a foot future stars Academy card or like a premium SBC versus a non-premium. Like we had the David Silva SBC earlier this week with a lower rated version and a premium version. So maybe that's the difference between, you know, the premium is the fire and the regular is the subtle fire. That's just a guess. We really don't know yet. That's just kind of what I'm thinking at least at the moment but it does kind of look similar to what we saw with the Daniel James. So now I know you have like the flat, the ratings. You can see like we have this little design up here at the top with the arrows pointing to the right kind of saying that this car is gonna continue to get upgraded. We don't have a lot of like icons or themes on the top of a card like this. Like if you look at a lot of the cards in FIFA Ultimate Team, especially a lot of the cards that we are using right now in this game, a lot of them don't have, except for like these flashback cards that are, you know, obviously are pointing back to a point in time or like the Foot Champions logo on this Ter Stegen. But you can see that the flashback cards and the player moments are the ones that kind of have like that little icon logo on the top. So this is a new icon slash logo thing that we are seeing with the fire and the heat emoji right here. But that seriously kind of conveys again, maybe like, you know, two different, two different cards that you could possibly upgrade to. So that is really, really interesting that we have basically four different card designs now on the loading screen that they have given us. And then we have this little hint down here in the corner, which is very, very interesting. A lot of people have been making jokes about this on Twitter today because it looks like a couple different things. The first thing that it kind of looks like, and this is what makes it funny, is that it almost looks like you're giving, it almost looks like a hand that is giving a credit card to EA, which is really funny because of course, EA likes to get the money off this game. EA is all about the money and we know that. So maybe they're saying, hey, this is gonna be a money grab promo. I doubt that's what they're actually getting at. But the more realistic and more likely thing this could mean here is that there's some sort of voting involved because it also looks like it's a hand that is putting in a voting ballot like into a basket or into like some sort of box. It's like a voting card per se. So that is what this also could mean. So something related to like voting, two different versions of an upgraded card. And then of course today on Twitter as well, there were some people talking about objective cards and basically specifically, Furland Mendy was the kind of leak. This is the leak that I mentioned earlier in the video that was talked about today on Twitter. Basically Furland Mendy's foot miscard is the leaked card, the leaked part of this promo that people are saying is gonna happen kind of describing what's gonna happen with this promo. So what they said is basically what's gonna happen is there's gonna be an objective for the foot mis Furland Mendy, which makes sense. If you think back to that other loading screen we had on Sunday, there was four different types of SBCs and one of them was foot mis. So this kind of theory kind of plays together with that loading screen. But what they said was the foot mis Furland Mendy is going to return to objective. It's gonna be very, very easy to get if you don't have them already. And what you're gonna be able to do with that card is, similar to the Foot Future Stars Academy, you're gonna be able to complete objectives inside a foot and upgrade that card to basically an even higher version. So it's basically you're gonna do objectives to get a version higher than the card you already had in your club, which sounds like a decent idea. But let's talk about that a little bit because if that is actually what's gonna happen and that's how this promo is gonna run, that means we have to play the game. That means we have to play the game and EA has not been going super duper easy on the really, really good objective cards that we've got this year. Like think about Idrissa Gay was one of the best objective rewards that we've had. It was decently easy to do, but a lot of these require scoring in rivals. And especially at this point of the game, a lot of the content that is in foot right now doesn't really lend itself to people wanting to play the game because of course, Tots rewards are in this week's set, but there's no guarantee that team of the seasons are gonna be in foot champions rewards throughout the rest of this year based on what EA said earlier. So really what, if you do go out and get this objective card, what gain do you get from this? Like what are you gonna use this card for? I know the rewards inside of foot still say Tots SF, but yes, it's cool to upgrade cards. Yes, it's cool to have, you know, if they're gonna be upgrading these cards, like again, back to that Ferlan Mendy, if we talk about that card for a second, like if we look at his footmas card, if I go to my club and search for Ferlan Mendy's footmas card really fast, let me do this and show you guys this, because if they're gonna be boosting these cards, the leak that people said they had was boosting this Ferlan Mendy card. He would get a summer heat promo card once you use this card to upgrade him, that this guy would be a 93 rated left back. Now that's awesome because again, I tweeted out today, I said, hey, if this promo is gonna be giving us new cards, they have to be high rated because we've already had Team of the Season, which has just increased the expectations for cards in this game immensely. They have to be high rated, you have to upgrade the stats in areas that matter, and it's gotta be just good value, especially at this point in the game, because if this Ferlan Mendy card requires you to go out and spend hours doing the objective and grinding this card, you can just go out on the game and buy another left back that is, you know, maybe not quite the caliber of that Ferlan Mendy, but instead of spending seven or eight hours trying to grind for that new 93 rated Ferlan Mendy, you can go buy yourself like the 93 tail Hernandez for like what, 300,000 coins or something like that. So that's the one thing you just, at this stage of the game, if this promo is all about grinding objectives and grinding gameplay to get cards that we're gonna use in the game, what percentage of people are still gonna be playing this game for foot champions, which is, you know, if you're playing FIFA, man, to be honest, you're playing foot champions on the weekend because you want the rewards, and that's like the competitive scene that everybody goes for, because the rewards are the best, and it's just kind of what EA caters this game to on the weekends. So that's kind of the whole draw for gameplay at the moment. There's not a lot of people that at this stage of the game just, you know, maybe some people wanna have fun with their teams and try them out and use the cards they got during the season and stuff, but at this point in the game, there's just not as much to grind for, and if they're giving us content of these new cards right here, that we actually have to go and grind for, what is there to do with these cards after we grind for them? It's more of just like a club collecting thing, like a panini, you know, for the club collection at the end of the day, that's almost what this seems like this is for. So that part I'm a little unsure about. If they don't put Tots rewards back in, then honestly grinding this would kind of be worthless to some people in FIFA, but there's probably gonna be some really cool cards you'll be able to get from this, and of course, when people see cool colors, when they see the pixels get updated, as some people call it on this game, they go bananas for it and they go crazy for it. So that's what I'm really, really, really intrigued to see with this promo. And could it still be footies? I mean, there still could be a footies drawing to it if this really does signal that we're getting some sort of voting system alongside with this. So still a lot of unknowns, but the fact that we have these two cards that were dropped today really, really interests me. We're probably gonna figure out more about those today on FIFA Ultimate Team with probably another loading screen coming out because they've been doing a loading screen every single day, which is interesting to say the least, but it is what it is. I also wanna talk about the other stuff that is going on in this game. We didn't get any content today. That loading screen that I just showed you was literally our only content. So you got three days left on David Silva if you wanna do him, and then one day 14 hours on Adiris if you wanna do that card as well. Looking across the rest of the market, what happened today? Well, if you think about it from this standpoint, since there was really no content today, what do you expect to happen? I would expect, because people are still semi-engaged in this game. The market would rise and that is exactly what happened. Last night, Marquinhos was 200,000 coins. He's now 225, Ronaldo was 550, he's 570. Awara was, I think, 260, 250, he's 275. And DeMaria is up as well. Some of these Ultimate Tots cards are inflated too. They actually went up a little bit today. Again, if you wanna buy any of these, I think you still get the coins. You buy them on Thursday when they're gonna get supplied even more. Ronaldo's up 200,000 coins. Van Dyke is up. Benzema's up like 30K. De Bruyne is up. I think Benyeter's up even a little bit. So for all of these guys, I would seriously wait until Thursday with the new set of weakening rewards. SBC fodder is slowly starting to drop. It's still inflated. 85s are down a little. 84s are down like 1,000 coins a card just as people are not doing the SBCs as much. But there's not really any supply for the fodder coming onto the market. So since this promo, if the leaks are true, like about the Ferland-Mendi situation, if the leaks are true, then that means there won't be too much SBC stuff going on unless that's another different part of the promo that we're gonna see. If there's gonna be re-releases of stuff, we shall see. But there was no daily SBC today. I know there's a Twitch Rivals event going on right now on twitch.tv where there's streamers and pro players that are playing at some like pro clubs tournament. I watched it a little bit today and there's actually live engagement rewards. So of course you could take your chance, go sit in the live stream and see if you can get yourself one of the rewards, which is definitely not very likely.  They sometimes like to hype those up with some sort of in-game SBC. We didn't see any of that today. Could we see any of that on Tuesday, actually today? That's a possibility. But again, I'm just really not sure how this SBC fodder would continue to drop because right now there's just no supply for those cards on the market.  Wow, they didn't have any promo packs, interesting. But usually during the second half of the year there's always promo packs in the store just because EA is trying to grab every little bit that they possibly can out of this game and trying to make some money off it. But yeah, boys, that's kind of the information that I have. It's not a super duper long video today. It really isn't. But that's kind of the information that I have about this promo with the summer heat promotion incoming. There's really not a lot to talk about today because the market's going up a little bit. If there's cards that you still wanna buy, I mean, some of the out-of-pack stuff I still would have bought, I think. I would have bought it last night, Sunday into Monday because that was when Weekend League sell-off was the strongest. But again, if a card like Ferland-Mendy comes, we could talk about this for a second. If a Ferland-Mendy card would come out that would be probably the best French left-back in the game. And it's just, again, kind of one of the trading methods that we've used all year in foot, kind of trading around the substitute trading method or in substitute cards come onto the market. So we have this Theo Hernandez team of the season is another French left-back, arguably the best French left-back in the game, 370,000 coins for this card. Now, if they bring out a Ferland-Mendy, who I think people would prefer over this card with his four-star skills and a five-star weak foot, then you would definitely see this card drop in price, especially considering that Ferland-Mendy, if it's available from objectives, would be quote-unquote free. So that's the kind of stuff you could be seeing. You could get burned, I guess you could say, depending on what cards do come out. Like I think Telus is now finally on the market like 500,000 coins. He's not extinct anymore. But if a Ferland-Mendy was to come out, then absolutely I would expect this guy to drop in price because people could go sell this, get 500K or 450 whatever he drops to and get an untradable left-back in the club from objectives that is very, very good as well. And just like when you see new cards come onto the market from objectives, you will see link investments rise. So that's gonna be something that if you still wanna trade during this timeframe, quick movements, if you see leaks or if you see the player when it comes out right away and links to that card are not inflated, that is something you could look into as an investment. I think of right off the bat, if that Mendy does come, Rafael Varan, it's gonna be a card that a lot of people are gonna look at. His team of the season card, I think is still a bit expensive. So I don't know if I would really get into that one, but the one that I would be slightly interested in is possibly this headliner, because this is only, this is about 500K. How much is the Tots card? Is the Tots card about a mill? I'm kinda out of date with this card's price. How much is the Tots? Over a mill. Okay, so this card is definitely rising. So yeah, I think I would like the headliner, Varan, possibly as a link investment sort of thing. Maybe as we see this Frill and Mendy come out. Yo, how much is this Varan, man? How much is Varan? Varan is 1.25 million coins, 1.2-ish mill for this team of the season Varan card. And I would definitely like this headliner Varan as possibly a link investment or maybe some of the informs as a link investment to that Frill and Mendy. Of course, you could look at guys like team of the season, Casamiro. You could look at like Ed and Hazards, maybe left-sided cards, and maybe Ramos with links there as well. Ramos is up a little bit because of all the people that packed Carvajal last week, but there are gonna be some possible link investments you can make with some of these new promo cards that come out too, if there is hype. Again, it's all kind of dependent on if there is hype. So we shall see what happens with this promo. It's still a big time question mark. There's really not that much going on inside of FIFA until this promo drops on Wednesday. So it is what it is until then. But if you guys enjoyed this video, smash your thumbs up on it. Comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe to the channel for new. It's been Nate, The Foot Accountant. Catch you guys later. Peace, out.