Hi everyone! This is Katie Mauro bringing you this ESU8 Wednesday webinar recorded March of 2017. Kino is my absolute favorite app. It's built in and free on any Mac or iPad. It has consistent tools and compatibility with the rest of the Apple ecosystem and it allows for creativity and productivity, both essential skills and any of our line of work as educators. These are the reasons why I often say you can use Kino for almost anything and why I chose to focus on this one powerful app for this week's webinar. If you want to learn how to get started with the Kino app, either for Mac or iPad, do check out the free Apple Teacher starter guides available on the iTunes Store. You can download both and follow through the pages on how to use the basic toolbars and features of either Kino for Mac or iPad. Follow that up with the Apple Teacher badge and you'll be well on your way to becoming a keynote expert. But that's not what this session is all about. Instead, I want to focus on some applications of Kino, some possible lesson ideas for the classroom, some ways to allow students to document their learning and share it with others. And to package those ideas, I put them together in an iTunes U course, which I invite anyone to enroll in with this Enroll Code. So if you have the iTunes U app on your iPad, enter the Enroll Code and join this course. Here you'll see all kinds of ideas of using keynote in the classroom, including ways to structure your projects based on six kind of starting themes, I guess, or inspirational ideas. It does have reference to those starter guides once again and some ways to download a sample keynote file to track your learning as you work through the course. The activities are listed and numbered, each of them with the resources available and the prompt to practice yourself along with the skills you'll need to master in order to do that activity. Many of them have student product examples, definitely extension ideas for how you would apply this to the classroom. And there's even some bonus activities and it doesn't stop there. In the additional resources section, you can find even more lesson ideas all centered on the app keynote. The six focused activities that I'd like to feature right now, we're going to go through just a brief overview because we know that you can dive in deeper in the course. And the first one is called the keynote to coding. To put it simply, in this lesson activity, it's not about the actual computer code that students are generating, but rather a set of instructions where you're telling a computer to do an action because that essentially is what coding is. If you think about it, there's a lot of offline coding activities that are very valuable for students as well. The process of giving instructions, listening to instructions, following instructions, all is wonderful whether you're using digital tools or offline analog, just human interaction as well. Like this activity we featured at our elementary science Olympiad at ESU 8, where students gave codes to building a set of Lego block structures to their partner who could not see them but had to use just their instructions to replicate that structure. So that's basically the backbone of this lesson and it uses tan gram shapes which students would create in keynote and then the inspector which gives dimensions and details for each of the shapes that they've been created for their tan gram figure. That's the students code. Now the resources in the course for this lesson from April Card, they go through it step by step so that you can replicate it with your students and explains more in detail how to find that code in the inspector and then share it with each other and see if they can then in turn replicate the same tan gram shape from their partner students code. So it might be something very simple like this. This idea really requires the knowledge and the skill of being able to use the shapes tool in keynote and the shapes tool is very powerful actually so I'm going to take a few minutes here to explain some things that you can do with shapes that actually will take us into the next lesson idea as well. Kino is a great tool for creating original artwork and illustrations. I'm going to show you how just using the simple shapes tools allows you to become an artist all within Kino. We're going to start with a new standard sized white presentation theme and we'll actually delete out the placeholders so that we just have a white canvas. Maybe zoom it down just a little bit so we can see the edges of our canvas and we're going to build an ice cream cone as our first original graphic here. So we'll start with the shape of the cone a triangle and extend it out so that we have a tall skinny triangle. We do need to rotate that so in our shapes inspector in the over here in the arrange tab we'll first rotate that triangular triangle shape so that it is 180 degrees from the way that we initially started so that the tip is pointing down. We're going to fill this with a different color because we want it to look like a cone. So we'll go back to the style tab. We could do advanced image fill and choose some of the pre-selected colors. We could also do a solid image. Let's just choose a gradient and let's blend together a couple shades of brown. So we'll we don't see one here in the color picker. Let's click on the color palette and we can choose from a regular brown here and for the second color let's go back out to here and you know this one might shoot might need a little bit more of selecting of a color that's nearby the brown. So we could start with the brown go over into the slider and then change the the shading or the tone of that brown and at any of these colors you can select a color that matches something else on your screen anything you can use the the color dropper and actually click inside of any other color on your screen. Here I'm getting some I'm sampling some gray from the actual toolbar menu and you can also take any color that you have being used at a current time and drag it into one of your holding spots so that you can use it again and again. Let's go ahead and go with this kind of gradient from gray to brown and call that our ice cream cone color. We can obviously change the angle at which that gradient is applied and one other thing that I want to do to make this ice cream cone look a little more three-dimensional is just add a shadow a curved shadow that you can kind of see adds some depth to it. All right next we'll make our ice cream so let's start with a circular shape. Blue ice cream isn't probably a typical flavor so let's go ahead and change that fill on the shape that we have selected to something that would be our ice cream preferred ice cream flavor let's go with some grape or raspberry. Again if you want to add a little bit of a shadow to it it might give it some three-dimensional shape or without. I'm gonna drag this down and actually make it a little bit smaller so we have some more room on the top of our cone. Okay now we need the ice cream to drip over the edge so we're gonna use another shape that's actually the pen tool in the shapes palette and this one works by defining the end points so I'm gonna click when I want a point and I'm gonna click and drag when I want a curve so I'm gonna start up here I'm gonna click I'm gonna click for this next one I'm going to click and drag and you can see it kind of adds an a beveled edge then I'm gonna click to make a point then come out here and click and drag to get a curve and then click and then click and drag to make a curve and then click and then click and drag to make a curve and then click and then click and drag to make a curve and then click. Now for the pen tool to actually make a shape I have to enclose it. So I have to come back to where I started and hit enter. But now this is defined as as a full complete shape. So I can take it and fill it, select it first, take off the borderline, and fill it with the same color as my ice cream. And I'm actually going to join the two together. So I'm going to select the fringes of the ice cream, hold down my command key, and select the scoop of ice cream, and go up to the format menu, down to shapes and lines, and unite those two shapes. So now it becomes one intersected scoop of ice cream. Another cool thing in here under the format shapes and lines menu is to make it editable. And now every handle, every end point can be adjusted exactly like so. And you can decide and it really gives you the free form ability to feel like an illustrator or an artist. Alright so we're going to hit enter. We could actually duplicate that scoop of ice cream and paste it on tops. We could copy and paste and maybe change this color to another color, and we've got a scoop of ice cream cone. Let's put it into more vanilla. It's worth noting that you can arrange these shapes by sending them backward and forward if you want to change the order of the ice cream as well. Alright so now we need a cherry on top. Let's go ahead and get a circle shape. Put it up position it where we want it. We definitely want this to be colored with a red fill. We can just choose that from the styles menu if we don't mind a little bit of texture. And let's add a stem on top of our cherry. For the stem of the cherry I'm just going to use this curved line from the shapes menu, and position it where it needs to be on top of the cherry, and definitely shorten it a bit here and change that curvature so it's not quite as big and bold. But I might want to make it a little bit thicker so in my stroke I'm just going to change the points or the thickness of it and maybe tone it down a little bit so it's not quite so dark black. There we have our cherry on top of our ice cream cone. Others. So for this one we are going to illustrate a bite out of the ice cream cone. We'll just go ahead and use that pen tool once again and we'll start with a straight line but then click and click and drag to make a curved line. Again click to make a point and then click and drag to make a curve and then click to make a point and then click and drag to make a curve and we'll close this up and hit enter so that we now have this kind of teeth mark shape. So select our illustrated teeth marks, hold down our command key, click the cone as well so that both shapes are selected. Go up to the format menu, down to shapes and lines and subtract shapes. What it does is it takes the bite out of the cone. Let's send this back to the back, arrange sent it back, pull this down just a little bit more and this just a little bit more and then let's select all of our shapes by click holding and dragging around the outside edges of all the shapes they're all selected. Come to our arrange menu and group them together and now I have one illustration that I can resize, that I can copy and paste and duplicate, that I can animate. Wow I feel like an artist. The second activity using keynote and building on the shapes tool is the keynote to storytelling and this one you have some options for extending it even further. The basic premise is to use some sort of a story structure. Maybe it's a story spine that would give the students the initial framework for their creative writing and then they would create a character in keynote which they would then animate to act out their story. In April's lesson idea she encourages you to make the background in your keynote slides green similar to the chroma color green and then when you put it into iMovie you can key out the green or make it invisible in order to put in another background. You can do this lesson even without this step of exporting and putting it into iMovie and taking out the green background and replacing it with something else. It's still a valuable activity for students to create a character and then build a story even with animations in keynote using that character in it. Another lesson idea for keynote is one that I know teachers have had a lot of success with. It's using animation builds and actions to put text or shapes in motion to show meaning on the slides in keynote. Now there's a great additional resource linked in the course it's another free book from Simon Pyle on how to do these animations in keynote and it really walks you through in great detail as well as showing you possible ideas for feeling like an animator honestly or letting your students use this resource to become more skilled at animating the shapes and adding the builds in keynote. This would be an example of a student project that I'm just gonna let play here shortly from a past student where Shakespearean Sonnet was put into motion by those keynote builds and animations and students were able to demonstrate understanding of the content based on how they created those animations. So you can see that they have a deeper meaning and understanding of the words just by using the context of poetry and motion to frame the lesson. This lesson idea actually comes from Teresa Pongratz in O'Neill High School and I remember her saying how it was one of her favorite projects she would do with students year after year. An adaptation would be to take found poetry so finding phrases and words from a text and then students rearrange them to show their own interpretation of it and like I said this is just one short example that actually you can watch in more detail if you visit it in the course. Another example comes from a math classroom and this is just animating an equation step by step so that students can demonstrate mastery of how to follow the process of balancing that equation or solving the equation. And so each character of course uses some fun builds and animations that young students enjoy but by building this animation students have to have that deeper understanding of the process and not just putting a bunch of text on a slide. So there's really powerful things that you can do with Keynote and I want to show you my favorite powerful animation that students often use when creating those illuminated text or animated equations and examples and it is a transition actually called magic move. I'm going to escape out and show this one to you live and basically what I have here is a slide with multiple objects I just found a copyright free key graphic to put on the slide I duplicated it several times and a few letters so we could see what it looks like with text and I'm going to take this slide over here in my sidebar and just hit control click to duplicate it so that I have an exact replica of it right below. Now the first slide is the way I started the second slide looks exactly the same but on the second slide I'm going to move things around and change it up a bit for each image I can change the placement the rotation I can change the size of the object I can sorry do whatever I would like to mix it up a little bit sorry that I'm not being very artistic here but it's just so easy to do and then with text you can do the same thing so I can move the text somewhere else I can change the size of it I can potentially change the color of it I want it to stand out in a different color maybe I want to make a shadow here whatever you choose to do but those changes are going to be applied based on the the magic move it's going to do all the in-betweens for you so on my first slide here I would then go over to my far right go to the animate portion of the inspector and in my transitions list here which it's already on magic move but I can find it in my my effects here my transition effects and you can see that it does everything for me so I'll hit play now my first slide magic move to my second now just keep thinking how simple that was and you can continue working on additional steps in this animation because this slide over here on the left I can duplicate again and now I can move things to new places or off the slide or do something entirely different but if the same shapes exist on one slide and then there's a magic move to the next keynote will do all of the hard work of the animating for you so here's the first magic move and here's the second there's some great resources inside the course that will help you build on the concept of magic move even further but I really guarantee you that if you show your students magic move one time they will be able to go even further than I would have imagined with this one simple keynote skill another very powerful keynote feature is being able to do non linear hyperactive or hyperlinks like this lesson activity one that's similar to the choose your own adventure stories of the past where students create their own interactive stories using the linking features of keynote to take the reader on an adventure down various paths in the story I've written this one up in a lessons for the classroom course so that you could actually implement it in your classroom and basically it follows this simple structure students create a story map of what would happen in the beginning what would happen next what choices the character would or the reader would have to make on the journey and then what would happen at each of the branches of those options where it would go next where it would go after that you can see on this students example of their story map that the idea bubbles that are colored in red feature a dead end usually the character something happened that ended the story and they have to go back to the beginning and try it again or sometimes you'll have paths that cross and intersect with other adventures along the way so building that is a great opportunity for planning and creating for the students in and of itself they then take that story map and transfer it to written text to create to flesh out the plot of their story the action of their story and then they build that story in the form of keynote slides where the buttons become the choices that link to different slides and you can see in this example a little bit about how it might look so when we get to a slide that has a choice I can either collect food or build a house and whichever one I select has a different outcome and the students loved creating these they actually put more work into them than than writing a normal typical book this same idea the same concept is easily replicated in something like a quiz show a simple question quiz where each object or button or picture then has a hyperlink to go not to a website site but actually to a different slide in this case so you can see that these links are applied so that this image goes to slide 36 this image goes to slide 37 image here goes to slide 38 now the right answer of course is the meadowlark so the only one that will get us to a slide that tells us the next question is the meadowlark you get to program that though and then let the viewers test out your links and test out their own knowledge so you can do that with any shape you just click on the shape or the graphic or the whatever is on your screen the object and then control click to get to the add link feature and instead of linking to a web page like you might be used to you would just link to a slide and then choose it from your slide list you can even go directly to any number of slide and now when we're editing in in keynote view we can see the the arrow showing that hyperlink but when we play our slideshow full screen you have to hover your mouse over to see it change to a hand to let you know that there is a link there so it becomes a clickable keynote presentation that really can take the user on a path that they are dictating by their actions to learn a little bit more about these interactive hyperlinks I'm going to show you kind of an extension of this which is creating these same hyperlinks as invisible buttons and I'll let you watch that now it's some invisible buttons with features of hyperlinking within keynote we're going to start by placing a US map or a graphic that shows anything with different sections on it on our keynote slide I recommend selecting it and locking it to the back of the slide so that it can't move when you add additional shapes on top of it now we're going to use the shape tool and you can use any shape at all because when we end up with hyperlinking the shape we're going to make it invisible definitely you want it to be close to the edges or the borders of the state shape in this example but I think that that would be close enough without too much overlap on an adjoining state next in our formatting inspector we're going to go all the way down to the bottom of the style panel or the style tab and slider opacity slider all the way to 0% this is the key to making your buttons invisible it is still a filled shape and we can still make it a clickable button but nobody can see it so you have to find it by exploration or by knowing that it's there we'll just add that link like we learned in our last lesson and we'll just visit instead of a different slide we'll go out to a web page for the state of Nebraska let's visit Nebraska project dot com and we can just enter to make that link active now on my keynote slide when I'm editing the slides I see the arrow showing that it's hyperlinked but when I play this slide and slideshow view I will not see that arrow so you'll just find it by hovering over it and exploring you can do this with any type of a shape so I could use just even a small circle to designate the shape of for example help us find where Washington DC is located and then slide the opacity to 0 control click add link and let's paste in a URL here to take us to a student created project about Washington DC and then finally you can even build abnormal shapes by using the pen tool and do it in the same way so the shape of California which is not regular here we can just draw some pen points on top of it close the shape hit enter and then take that shape and we would want to add just a color fill of some kind of color but then slide the opacity to 0 and then we can of course link that with a control click add link and in this case let's go back to the previous slide one thing it's important to remember when you're using these interactive hyperlinks within keynote is to go to your document inspector and for the presentation type change it to links only so that people can't accidentally advance to the wrong slide or a different slide that they have to use the hyperlinks to navigate the slideshow now let's hit play and we'll see how it turned out I am hovering my mouse over and it's not doing anything when I click until I come to something that does have a hyperlink and that'll definitely take me out to that website and after it loads I can close out the website and go back to the keynote let's show how the Washington DC link would work just find it with the hand takes me out to the student project on YouTube to teach about our U.S. government in the American government there are three branches and finally our California link which is an irregular shape so I can hover over the edges of the state borders and then click takes me back to the previous slide and there you have it invisible buttons in keynote finally another idea with keynote is to use it as a place for students to keep track of their learning as a portfolio or a learning journal there's really two key ideas that keynote suits itself lends itself well to here the first is building a template so that students don't have to worry about layout and design they can just focus on content and so you can build slides that have placeholders for things that are important to what you want students to share with you and the second concept is to to get into the master slides and edit those in keynote and really fine-tune a consistent theme across all of your slides and use that in order to demonstrate and document your learning these are just a few examples from my daughter Claire who loves to use keynote to take notes so whether it be a presentation she has to share back for class or just a simple note card divided into sections to show different facts she's collecting from research Claire likes to create her own kind of templates and themes to facilitate that process of being I'm engaged while she's learning in her classes keynote's a great tool for student note taking as well this is an example of a teacher template that I would send out to my students with placeholders in it that they would then put in the content to replace the placeholder and so again they don't have to worry about making the slides look nice they can just focus on their content on each slide and follow it along a step-by-step process of what I expect for them to show that they have completed the task one of my favorite uses of keynote is to distribute a document to my students which serves as a template for their challenge-based learning team presentations the students personalize it with their original content but they still have the benefit of the structure and the support to include all the required components including text images and video to publish their work my students share their finished keynote documents with the rest of the class and beyond allowing for a more professional portfolio type presentation during the publishing stage of their writing projects keynote on iPad has truly helped my students become better writers and more confident innovators here's another example this screenshot actually comes from my book's author but the same idea could easily be replicated in keynote it's using literature circles learning journals for the students and so each slide comes from the theme depending on which role the students are going through that day based on the literature the novel that they're having discussion circles on so if they're assigned discussion director they would choose the blue slides if they were the word wizard they would choose the green their role that week or that day was the passage picker they would choose the pink slides and so on and each set of slides within the theme has the the directions to remind them of what that role was and then a place for them to add their content based on the pages that they read from the novel there's a bonus activity using keynote and actually placing videos on a keynote slide duplicated four times and rotated around so that they're all mirroring each other so that by putting a homemade hologram structure in the middle of the the the iPad that you're projecting it from it actually looks like your video that you created and put on the keynote slide is being projected up through that hologram projector and it looks like a hologram this is a great fun activity and whatever the video is inside of the hologram could be dependent on whatever concept you're teaching in class that day the kids could definitely generate these and I've got all the steps on how to do it on this URL that is of course linked in the course as well so there's so many more ideas about using keynote in the classroom that I could spend a long time much longer than what we have on this Wednesday webinar I would encourage you to check out some of those ideas or send me an email and tell me what you'd like to try and I can probably find a way to make it happen in keynote like I said it's a readily available tool accessible to all of our Apple devices and doesn't require a high learning curve in order to become a pretty expert user in it so it definitely facilitates that creativity process the same time that students are learning content I encourage you once again to enroll in the iTunes U course and get more from how to use keynote to share your learning and capture your understanding if you have any questions at all don't hesitate to reach out to me at katie at esu8.org thanks so much


Kwa kهupapu uzi ya na uzi Ya no? Kama ya nga hini, staunu, sapojiru ya na yuzi Ya no? Nafinia, huja kama kwa uzi Para izetama kutili hini Kwa mtine siі kwa ngeuza kuja ñ kwa ngea lisha kabDo Umiba Ya kwa ngeuza kwa kwa kwa mtini sava na lisha kabDo Kwa kwa ngea lisha kabDo 2022 February 2 What is the new labor loan? Remember, when you talk about the new labor loan, it's not going to only benefit the employer, but it's also going to benefit the employee at one moment of time. Remember, why the new law is coming in, it's just to create a good working conditions, a good working environment between the people employing and the people that are given work to do. Remember, much as the employee will benefit, but also the employer are protected in one world or the other. In today's video, we want to look at what you call the non-competing clause that is in part of the part of the amendments of the law. What are we talking about when we talk about the non-competing clause? Remember, before the new law that is coming into effect, in the UAE, someone had the right to change to a competing business. It was part of your contract. You would resign from the same job, let's say for example from the security job, one company and you change to another company, which is the security company, without your employer deterring you from joining that company. That is what you call the competing clause. You would freely move to a new job, still in the same line of business. But remember, the new law that is coming into effect Feb 2022, there is what we call a non-competing clause. You will be signing what you call a non-competing clause with your employer. What are we talking about the non-competing clause? If you sign a contract with, let's say for example, a cleaning company or a security company, and you wish to resign, or you wish to resign from this company, you cannot join another company that is doing security or doing cleaning.  That non-competing clause does not entitle you to move to the same company that is doing the same business with your former employee. Why is it like that? It is made or it is to make sure that it protects the interests, the business, the confidential information of the former employee. So hope guys you are trying to get me what I am talking about. So if you are planning or if you are going to sign up a contract with that company, let's say for example a security company, let's say for example a cleaning company, let's say for example a delivery company, remember when you sign you will have a contract of three years. But remember part of the amendments is that you can decide to resign even if after probation depending on which kind of misunderstanding or what kind of pertaining disagreements you have with your employer. But still, much as you can resign to a new job freely, when in your contract the old contract to sign with your employer has what you call a non-competing clause, which is part of the amendments in the new level. That means you cannot go to another business to another company that does the same work from your former company. Hope I am giving you the example right. This is mechs in the security company from let's say transguard security company, right? After my probation period of six months, I decided to resign because of some reasons. I'm not comfortable. I'm allowed to resign but the new level law, I'm allowed to resign and move on to another company. So I decided to move on another company. Which other company can I go to? Yes, this is where the answer comes from. Yes, another company I can go to is I can either go to a delivery company or I can go to a cleaning company but I cannot go to a security company. Why is it that I cannot go to a security company? Because in your contract for that former employee, there is what you call a non-competing clause. You cannot go to the same company that is doing the same line of business with your former employer. I hope that is right. So you should be very careful as you go to resign, as you go to look for new companies but remember, even if you are going to look for a new company, there is also another amendment in the law that before you resign, it must be a genuine reason that is submitted to the Minister of Human Resources and Immunization for you to be considered. Otherwise, if you are not so careful still, you will end up paying your employer part of your wages which should be 50%. I hope I talked about that in the video. Thank you so much for coming back to this channel. Let us try to look at more amendments that are coming in the new labor law. Where are we benefiting and where are you benefiting in one or the other? Thank you so much. Remember to subscribe and to support this channel. It makes from the next creation theory.


Hi fellow EWTers. There's one piece of content that we really want to produce for you to start out 2019. We have pieces that are finalists in the Melisema blog awards. The winner goes to Bordeaux for Un Premier Week 2019. We'd love to be able to blog, vlog, share our experiences about it with you. Here's how you can help. The judges at Melisema picked five winners out of 25 finalists. And they left the sixth winner up to public vote. And the voting period ends tonight. 11.59 Central European Time, which is 5.59 PM Eastern Standard Time. I'll put the link in the description box. Feel free to vote. You can vote for more than one piece of content, but not the same person twice. You can vote for both of us. Or if you want to be diplomatic, you could vote for everybody there, I think. Shireen is a finalist in the Food and Wine Pairing Award. She wrote an article about a wine from Shomlo, Hungary, paired with Indonesian stew from her childhood. I actually thought it was a fantastic article. I thought it should have initially been chosen. I'm a finalist in the Wine Image Award. My video is about Port Wine Day 2018. If one of us does end up on top, expect to see some content from Bordeaux in the coming months. Thanks a lot. Until then, drink adventurously, expand your palate, and expand your mind.


It feels like it's been so long, so we've gotten to discuss this. Tomorrow's going to be a fun day. We're going to break it all down right here. Get yourself for the main slate over on FanDuel.com and hopefully start 2021 off with a bang. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sodis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Here to break down Thursday's main MLB DFS slate. Lock is at 1.05 PM Eastern on Thursday. It is an 11 game slate and it's going to be a fun one. Now if this is your first year playing MLB DFS, I'll try to keep the terminology pretty basic here, let you know if there are numbers I'm using that you may not know about. Try to talk about that. The general format for the show, three pitchers, three stacks that I like and also three things to watch based on the salaries over at FanDuel.com. We have our solo shot, which generally accords every weekday morning, 9 AM Eastern on the FanDuel YouTube page that is posted on the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast feed immediately after that. We also have a Q&A show, usually every weekday of 4 PM, talking lineups, answering your questions about lineups as they come out. Now because opening day is very different, we have lock at 1.05 PM, changing things up for opening day. We have the solo shot right now, the Q&A show for tomorrow will be at noon Eastern. So if you want to ask questions about DFS process, specific plays that I like for Thursday, make sure you are subscribed to the FanDuel YouTube page, also on Twitch and Facebook, taking questions from all those platforms, getting you set as lineups come out to get you set for Thursday's slate. The solo shot, also on YouTube live at 9 AM, you can subscribe to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed to get that as it is posted. So solo shot 9 AM, Q&A 4 PM usually, but for this opening day slate, we'll have our Q&A at noon. So make sure you swing on by say hi to those of you who were regular viewers last year, ask some questions and get set for what should be a fun slate. 11 games, a lot of good pitching options, obviously the being opening day. So it should be a fun one, but because we have those two shows, it's important to make sure you are subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed, but also YouTube, Facebook and Twitch to get those questions in as things go along. With opening day finally being here, that means it's time for Daily Fantasy Baseball and there is no better place to play than on Fandall. For only $4, you have a chance to compete for a part of the $500,000 prize pool with first place taking home $100,000, turning $4 into 100K, not bad. Set your lineup by Thursday at 1 PM Eastern and compete for Daily Fantasy Baseball Prizes. Head over to Fandall.com and start the season off right. For more details, visit Fandall.com or download the Fandall app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Let's start things off here with our pitching preview for this Thursday Slade, Shane Bieber, highest salary pitcher over on Fandall. He is $11,500. Garrett Coles, $11,000. Hugh Darvish is $10,7. Tyler Glasnow is $10,000. Kenton Maeda is $9,400. Aaron Nola is $92. Kyle Hendricks, $91. And Clayton Kershaw rounds at the top group at $9,000. Now, one important note here is because we're recording on Wednesday and the Slade is on Thursday, it does mean you wanna go to numberfire.com sometime Thursday, check out the weather. The rule of thumb is you want your pitchers in colder weather and you want your hitters in warmer weather.  So I'll be talking about weather throughout the podcast for today because it is very important, but I would make sure you circle back on Thursday, check out the temperatures again. Cold, good for pitching, cold, bad for hitting. If we're gonna make things as basic as possible. And that does play into our first pitcher here for the main slate. We got a lot of good options here for sure, which will always be the case. But the number one option will be Shane Bieber at 11.5. And he is the highest salary guy for a good reason. He's facing the Tigers. And I think this lineup will be much better than the perception this year because they've actually got some decent dudes across the board. But what I also know is they're gonna strike out. That's what we care about most for DFS. Their current active roster, which you can find over at fangraphs.com. There is an active roster button. Just toggle that. That means it'll pull in the players who are currently on their roster for 2021, what they did in 2020. Once you do that, their current active roster at a 26% strikeout versus righties last year, which is tied for second highest on the main slate versus the opposing pitcher's hand in this. They also had an 86 WRC plus. So while they will be better, they're not a team we have to avoid. WRC plus does account for park 100 as average. They were below that last year. Higher than 100 is better than average. Lower than 100 is worse than average. They were 86, so about 14% below average last year. Bieber's full season numbers last year were disgusting. He had a 41% strikeout rate, 2.52 skill interactive ERA, skill interactive ERA takes out luck, takes out defense, stuff like that. Strikeout rate matters a lot for MLB DFS. We'll go more in depth on that in things to watch for today. And we did see Bieber make a late season tweak where he was throwing fewer cutters and fewer sliders. And the strikeout rate did come down, but it was still 38.5%. That was second highest on this main slate for each pitcher's most relevant sample. That's good enough to still be very good, especially against a high strikeout team like the Tigers. When you're putting that up against a strikeout or a lineup that projects a strikeout plenty in a great park for pitching with the temperatures being in the 30s, it's really hard to say no. Another important thing for opening day is to make sure guys are fully ramped up. No workload concerns here for Bieber. He faced 24 batters in his final tune-up. He should have a full leash on Thursday. So yes, the salary is high, but I think Bieber's worth at 11.5. He is definitely one of my top three pitchers for this main slate. But I can also understand why you may not want to fork over 11.5 to get to Bieber. And I also, if I have one lineup, won't be doing so. My number one pitcher, if we're talking considering salary, considering everything for the main slate, is going to be Tyler Glassnau because the Dodgers are a course field. And if I want to stack the Dodgers, I might need more salary flexibility than Bieber can get me, but Glassnau is 10,000. Now, Glassnau's pitching environment is not as good as Bieber's because Glassnau's Miami. Miami is a pitcher's park for sure, but not this time of year because it's so cold elsewhere. It makes Miami a better environment relative to other ones. So it's either warm or it's indoors. Neither of those is ideal this time of year, but everything else is really good for Tyler Glassnau. I mentioned earlier in this podcast that Bieber has the second highest strikeout rate on the slate in each pitcher's most relevant sample. The only guy ahead of him is Glassnau at 39%. Glassnau did that over his final seven starts where he worked in his curve ball more. And the reason that that is the most relevant sample for Glassnau is because he might be adding another off-speed pitch this year. He's been working on adding a slider in spring training. That would give him two off-speed pitches. And Glassnau was one of the few guys who could be great with basically just being a two-pitch pitcher. Now, it's possible he has three. Even in that sample where he had just two pitches, he had a 2.77 skill interactive ERA, which is an elite number with a lot of strikeouts. And he was also with that slider this spring. He threw 14 and 2 thirds innings and struck out 27 batters. That's disgusting. He should be pretty close to a full leash to 79 pitches for him on March 27th. So if we get the 2020 version of Glassnau, we'll be very happy. But there's the potential for him to be even better than that if that slider winds up being as good as it possibly could be and as good as it looked so far this spring. $10,000 salary gives you more flexibility to get to the Dodgers. And the ceiling is still very high with Glassnau. The one consolation, again, is that it's not as good of an environment for pitching as what Bieber has because the temperature is higher. But I think that even accounting for that, I think that Glassnau's on par with Bieber. He's a salary discount too. So I think that if I have just one lineup for Thursday, I'm probably using Tyler Glassnau as my pitcher for that lineup. Now, usually the way things work in the solo shot is I have two high salary pitchers, one lower salary. And the cutoff for that for me is $9,000 or lower. Usually I will be pretty close to that because pitching, you kind of have to pay if you want to get good stuff there over on a fan. I think that Jack Flaherty is super under salary at $8,600. And I'll talk about him and things to watch. But there is another guy I like here who is $6,700. And guys like that don't come along very often. And that guy is John Means at $6,700 for the Orioles. He's facing the Red Sox and Fenway. 52 degrees in Fenway on Thursday, so not as good as Bieber's weather, but also pretty decent for pitching. It's also not the worst matchup because the Red Sox, based on their current active roster, a 95 WRC plus against Lafty's last year, that's fine. But this is more about Means himself than his situation or his matchup because we saw Means get a lot of buzz last year because his velocity was up from previous years and that was fine, like he didn't do great to start. But I think the key thing for Means is what he did over his final four starts. He used his curveball more often and it paid massive dividends. Means is one of those guys who could get to two strikes, couldn't get that third strike. The curveball wound up being that third strike pitch for him at the end of last year. Over his final four starts, Means had a 2.74 skill interactive ERA. His strikeout rate was 35% near a 3% walk rate. He also allowed just a 4% barrel rate. So those are fantastic numbers across the board. Now it is a small sample. That's something to note here for sure. But those are all numbers that stabilize pretty quickly. Especially strikeout rate, that number can stabilize very quickly. He had good swinging strike numbers and Means was electric. He didn't really light it up during the spring. He had just 14 strikeouts and 19 innings, but I think there's potential here with Means and when you use him, you can kinda go nuts with whatever hitters you wanna use. You want Fernanda Thatis, you want the Dodgers. You can do that if you plug in John Means. And it might be the only time this year we get to use guys who are this low-salary, who have at least a path to getting you strikeouts. So I'm fine buying in, getting speculative shares of John Means at this point in the year and seeing what happens. Again, I will go through Flaherty later on because if you don't like Means, I don't blame you. I get it, totally understandable. You can still get some value elsewhere via Flaherty, but I'm at least interested in giving Means a check, see what happens. If it doesn't go well, fine. It's one slate, it's not gonna burn me too much, but if I can get in on a pitcher with strikeout upside for $6,700, I'm inclined. So I think that John Means, a worthy value play for a Thursday slate. Again, you got a lot of options. You can talk about Garrett Cole. We can talk about you, Darvish. A lot of guys we can go through here for sure, but I think that if for me, Glass now number one, if I have one lineup, Bieber number two straight up means the guy I want to consider, we'll talk about Jack Flaherty later on as well. Let's take a look at the stacks for this slate. And if you are new to MLB DFS, the reason we do it this way, pitchers and then stacks is that I don't care as much about one-off hitters. I want, if I can, every batter in my line to be tied to a teammate. And I want them to have, you know, I want to stack teams. I don't want to just use one-offs because if Jorge Ocelero hits a three-run bomb and I've got Whit Merrifield and Salvador Perez in my team, I get to double dip. So you want to stack as much as possible. If you can go two four-player stacks, sweet, try to do so. So that's why the focus for the podcast will be on stacks. And for stacking, the discussion on Thursday starts and ends with the Dodgers at Coors Field. It's not just because they're at Coors Field, which if, again, if you're new, it's basically like playing on the moon where you're going to score a lot of runs. Advantages for DFS, they do increase the salaries of hitters who are there, but it's generally not enough. And it's not just Coors Field. It's also because it's war, Coors Field. The temperature is projected to be 66 degrees in Denver on Thursday. That is the fourth highest temperature on the main slate. So once you put that at Coors Field, this is far and away the best environment for hitting we've got on this slate. The Dodgers are facing Adema Marquez, and I think he's a good pitcher. I like him quite a bit. I had a lot of Marquez a couple of years ago in season long, but this is a really rough spot for him. He bounced back pretty well last year, 3.75 ERA for the full season. That's good. He did that by leaning more on his sinker and limiting hard contact. Kind of just fully went in on being a guy who keeps the ball on the ground. And we especially saw Marquez lean on that over his final five starts. And that time he allowed just a 2% barrel rate league average about 7%. He was awesome. But he also had just a 19% strikeout rate with a 7% walk rate. And what that means is that he was allowing a lot of balls of play. That's what you want for DFS. A lot of balls of play, low strikeout rates, that's how you get your batter's chance to hit home runs. That's a recipe for danger at Coors Field, specifically against a team that no matter how skilled you may be at limiting hard contact, the Dodgers, they're gonna hit the ball pretty well. The Dodgers against righties last year based on their current active roster, a 132 WRC plus against righties, a 43% hard hit rate, just a 20% strikeout rate. So they will put the ball in play and it'll likely be well-struck. And with this game being at Coors Field, that's really tough for me to turn down. So to me, the Dodgers are a no-brainer at the top of this list. And you can get to them if you have Glassnow. You can get there with Flaherty, you can get there with Means for sure. And I think that you can at least give it a shot with Bieber as long as your second stack is lower. Sorry, you pepper in some value plays. I would at least try to make it work with a couple of Dodgers and with Shane Bieber. But overall, if you're going to Glassnow, you can make it work pretty easily, which is reassuring for sure. And what helps is that there are a lot of mid-range plays with this Dodgers team, which is why I'm not giving up on using them with Bieber. Justin Turner is $3,500. Will Smith is 35. In the past, he has not caught Clayton Kershaw, but we may see that change this year, especially in opening day. Hoping Smith plays for $3,500 because last year, both Turner and Smith had a hard hit rate and a fly ball rate of at least 40% against righties. If they do play, especially Smith, they should hit a however spot in the order. So there are two guys you can use regardless of what you do at pitcher. A.J. Pollock, likely to bat 7th, 35% hard hit rate for him against righties last year, a 40% fly ball rate. Gavin Lux is $3,000, probably going to bat eighth, which means he's in front of the pitcher. Not ideal, but of course I can take that for sure.  And if you decide to go at Glassnow, you can get to Corey Seeger, Cody Bellinger, Max Muncie, not all of them obviously, but you can get some of them for sure. So start with the Dodgers and go from there, from a stacking perspective on this slate. The second stack is not a value one.  That's the Padres against Madison Bumgarner. Now Bumgarner looked very good this spring, but I'm still a bit skeptical of what he's going to look like here in the regular season. He had 16 strikeouts and 11 and a third innings, and that's great. And I do value strikeouts in the spring. Again, you want to look for numbers to stabilize quickly. Strikeout rate does, and Bumgarner got strikeouts in the spring, but it was also just 11 and a one-third innings. His velocity is up from where it was last year, and it's in line with what it was over his final two starts. When you read about Madison Bumgarner this all season, they were saying, we want to get him back where he was for those two starts because he was good in those two starts. He allowed no runs across 10 innings, and that's the positive. The negative is that his swinging strike rate was still very low in those starts. It was 7.5%. The rule of thumb is you take swinging strike rate, and you multiply it by two, that roughly gets you the projected strikeout rate for a pitcher. That'd be 15% for Bumgarner, and one of those starts is against the Rockies, and they're a pretty bad offense. So I'm not convinced that if Bumgarner gets back to what he was in those final two starts, that he'll be someone we should avoid. So I think that we're gonna get a good read on Bumgarner for sure on Thursday, given the team he's facing, given that it's a regular season game, but I'm not quite convinced yet that Bumgarner is back to being the 2018, 2019 Bumgarner. I think it's something we can stack against. Even in those years, he's still allowed a lot of hard contact. Such as me, I'm pretty comfortable sacking against him with this Padre's offense. Fernando Patius Jr., $4,300. I think he's pretty heavily under salad. I think that Corey Segar at 45 obviously makes a ton of sense too at Coors Field, but Tati's $4,300, that makes a lot of sense. I wanna get there for sure. There are other options here too. Tommy Pham has had a 46% hard hit rate against the lefties since the start of 2019. He has as many walks of strikeouts. You do worry about Pham during day games because of his eyes, but I still think that I would like to get there because he's $3,000. Will Myers is 29. He has a 50% hard hit rate since the start of 2019 against the lefties. I could tolerate Jurickson Profar at $2,300 if he were to hit higher than ninth or higher than eighth, I should say. You know, it's a value play. It's not gonna be great, but you do have options down here. So I think it's realistic to get to guys like Tati's and Machado here for sure, especially if you plug into Pham and Myers first and go from there. Also, I did fill out a lineup with Glassnow and I was able to stack the Dodgers and the Padres. So you can make this work. It does mean you'll have to make some consolations and use some players you might not want to use otherwise, but I think that given the upside in those two offenses specifically, I'm gonna try to do so for Thursday's sleight.  The good thing is that this park is not as bad this time of year as other parks are when they're super cold. So I'm okay actually stacking the raise here against the Marlins. They're facing Sandy Alcantra and he was really solid last year. He had a sub four ERA for the third consecutive year. Two of those were in smaller samples, but Alcantra was still very good. He's not a big strikeout guy though and that's the raise major weakness. I don't wanna stack the raise ever against the high strikeout pitcher because they strike out a lot. We also see Alcantra lose a lot of his batted ball suppression when he's facing lefties and the raise have a lot of lefties. The ground ball rate versus lefties since the start of 2019 for Alcantra is 28%. It is 66% against righties. So if you put him up against a super lefty heavy lineup with guys who can crush when they make contact, you're gonna get some damage here. Now Alcantra's working a lot on a change up this spring, trying to counter lefties, but kinda wanna see it before I avoid lefties who are facing. It's not the best matchup on the board, but I think that it's the best one in an acceptable weather situation with a team that can actually hit a bit. So I will be in on the raise here, especially the left-handed batters. That's not to say I'm not gonna use Randy Rosarena, but I'm gonna skew toward the lefties when picking through this line. And we have some good value at spots in the order here. I specifically love Yoshi Tsutsugo. He's $2,600, seems likely to bat lead off for this team. He had a really bad batting average last year. It was actually below the Mendoza line, but hit for some power. He had a 9.3% barrel rate, that's above average. And that was largely because he just put the ball in the air a time, a 47% fly ball rate against righties. And that's great. So I think that Tsutsugo, one of the better value plays in the slate, I can get behind Austin Meadows in a bounce back here. COVID seemed to really affect him last year. Brandon Lauze, a good mid-range play. Not a big Joey Wendell guy in general, but he had a little bit of pop and spring training. It was against weak competition, but he's $2,500, I guess I can go there at a time. So we had to make consolations if we wanted to jam in the Dodgers and the Padres. If that means he's in Joey Wendell, I'll do it this one time a year. I might not do it anytime again this year, kind of similar to John Means, but I think desperate times call for desperate measures. So we might be using Joey Wendell in a couple of lineups on Thursday Slate. Avoid it if you can, but if you can't, he's at least an option just because I think this Raze team should be able to do some damage against Alcantra. Let's finish up here with things to watch for this Thursday Slate. And if you're a new listener and a new DFS player, I want to explain why I'm not in on Kyle Hendricks for Thursday because he has the optimal situation. He is at home, he's facing the pirates, and it's in super cool temperatures. So if you told me right now on Wednesday that Kyle Hendricks throws a no-hitter on Thursday, I'm not gonna flinch, but he's not someone who posts big DFS totals because in seven starts last year where Hendricks was throwing his curve ball more often, he had a 21% strikeout rate. Let's say that Hendricks goes out and throws nine shutout innings with five strikeouts. That's 52 fan dual points if you're adding the win and the quality start. A player gets 52 fan dual points, they go six innings, but get eight strikeouts. That's how valuable strikeouts are on fan dual. They matter a ton. And Hendricks doesn't generally get a lot of strikeouts. So he's one of those guys where his real world value does not translate as well to DFS as you would hope. So again, Hendricks could throw a no-hitter, but we want higher upside for DFS. We get upside via strikeouts. So I respect Hendricks. I think he's a very good pitcher. He's not someone I tend to use a lot in DFS because I want guys who get a lot of strikeouts. Hendricks not that guy. So it's a great matchup, great situation. I'm gonna prioritize guys like Bieber, Laznow, Flaherty and Means over him. So let's talk about Jack Flaherty here. I do like him a lot. I think a big reason for liking Flaherty is that he's just under salaried and it makes sense. It's opening day, not everybody can be $10,000, but Flaherty's $8,600, which is just too low for his talents. But Flaherty had a weird year last year. He, the whole team had that long stretch off because of COVID-19. But when Flaherty got on later in the year, he did hit a groove. And over his final five starts, he was throwing more foreseamers, fewer sinkers, and he had a 33% strikeout rate. He also had a 12% walk rate. That's higher than he want. And walks have been an issue for him before. The Reds are a team who will draw walks. So that's why Flaherty is not going to grade out as well for me as Glasgow. But the Reds will strike out 25% strikeout rate for them last year against Reds. Flaherty, again, a 33% strikeout rate in that sample. That's enough for me to be in on him for tournaments. Again, I'm going to rank him below Glasgow, below Bieber, right on par with Means for me. But I think that he's still worth exposure because if you told me Jack Flaherty is the highest scoring pitcher on the slate, again, not going to flinch. I think that's very much within the range of outcomes. And if you can get that for $8,600, you should take it for sure. Finally here, outside of the Dodgers, the Padres and the Reyes, other spots you could turn to for potential stacks or one offs, the Cubs have the best matchup on the slates. They're facing Chad Cool. The reason that I didn't want the Cubs and stacks is that their weather is kind of a nightmare. It looks like the wind might be blowing in and they have super cold temperatures. So they're an option, but that forecast really does negatively impact their outlook from a heading perspective. I'm also okay with some exposure to the Rangers and the Royals. The Rangers tough to stack because their offense is so, so bad. Nick Solak, he works at $2,700. Joey Gallows 35, I can get on board with them because they're individually good. Just the offense is terrible. The Royals are facing Kyle Gibson, not gonna get a lot of strikeouts. I don't think their offense is too bad this year. I'm skeptical of Andrew Benintendi because I can write off 2020, but you didn't show a lot of power during the spring. So skeptical of Benintendi, but I'm on board with Carlos Santana as a being guy, I think $2,700, Jorge Solera $3,000. Those guys have some power. So I can get on board with them and get on board with someone else in the Royals. But I think from a full team stack perspective, it's a Dodgers one, Padres two, Reyes three, and then the Cubs, Royals, Rangers, all teams where I can go, but not as inclined to go as I would be with the others. Again, if you have questions about Tomorrow's Slate, feel free to tune in at noon Eastern on the Fandale YouTube, Twitch and Facebook pages. Answer your questions live on air. We'll have probably most lineups in by then. So you can, if you have questions about individual value plays or other pitches I did not discuss, come back then at noon Eastern. We'll get you set for Thursday's Slate. That is all that we have for the solo shop for today's solo shop. Back with you 9 a.m. Eastern on the Fandale YouTube page, also up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Immediately after that, make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed to get that right as it is posted. Outside of the Q&A, if you have questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandale Podcast Network at Fandale Podcast. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald, our video producer for running the video side of things here today. Thank you, Cal, as always. And thank you to everyone for tuning in. We finally made it, opening day here once again. It's going to be a fun one. Just watch the baseball and hopefully winning some money as well. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the solo shop right here on the Fandale Podcast Network.


The most important election of all time. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. The 2024 presidential election will be the most important election of all time. Because if Americans don't make the correct choice between the two candidates, something terrible might happen to their country. The U.S. might even turn into an abusive totalitarian dystopia, where everyone's mind is controlled by propaganda engineered to shape them into unthinking gear-turners for a globe-spanning empire. People on one side of the partisan divide are being trained to fear a future fascist takeover. People on the other side are being trained to fear a future communist takeover. Both sides are being trained to overlook the oligarchic totalitarian takeover that has already occurred. Three things are certain when there's a major international conflict. One, the Western Empire will be involved and on the wrong side. Two, the Western media will insist the Empire is on the right side. Three, Westerners will tell you, you don't get it. This time we're the good guys. It always gets spun as supporting Russia to say the U.S. and its allies provoked the war in Ukraine, but that's moronic. You don't have to support Russia at all to acknowledge the well-documented ways the U.S. Empire provoked and sustained this war to advance its own agendas. You can hate Putin with all your heart, mind, body, and soul, and still acknowledge those extensively documented and glaringly obvious facts. Spinning the acknowledgement of obvious facts as a sinister support for a foreign government is done solely to prevent criticism of our own rulers. The only people who use phrases like Putin Apologist are U.S. Empire apologists, and I'm not just reversing the accusation I'm highlighting a fact. Their accusations are seldom, if ever, directed at those who love Russia. They're directed at those who criticize U.S. foreign policy. The overwhelming majority of accusations of Kremlin loyalty are directed not at those who cheer for Russia and support Putin. They're directed at those who criticize things the U.S. Empire is doing. This tendency could only arise from a fierce loyalty to that Empire.  And today we are ruled by a giant Empire who does exactly that. The U.S. Empire has all the personality characteristics of a malignant narcissist. It sees people as resources to exploit instead of humans to relate to. It communicates to manipulate and control rather than to connect and understand. And anyone who doesn't center its desires as a priority above all else becomes its enemy. U.S. foreign policy in the 2000s emphasized giant overt ground invasions, Iraq, Afghanistan. In the 2010s it shifted emphasis to arming proxies, Yemen, Libya, Syria. In the 2020s it's moved to staging massive proxy conflicts on the borders of its top two rivals. Ukraine, Taiwan. With each adjustment it gets harder to perceive the depravity of the Empire. It was easy when it was just bush style smash and grab ground invasions, but it's been getting sneakier and sneakier about its murderousness to maintain international support and avoid anti-war sentiment. And yet the Empire is still just as murderous and destructive as it was under the Bush administration. Its creation of the Ukraine conflict is just as evil as anything Bush or Obama did. More so really because now we're getting closer and closer to nuclear annihilation. The task of opposing the Empire's warmongering has thus become more and more difficult, but it's also getting more and more important. We do need to keep helping the public see what these bastards are doing and the destruction they're causing and the Armageddon they're risking. And people are getting left behind as the warmongering gets sneakier. Many people who opposed Bush's warmongering are now cheerleaders for the US proxy warriors orchestrating conflicts with Russia and China. It's important to work to keep the manipulators from confusing people. Imperial information control has two major components, secrecy and manipulation. Government secrecy keeps people from knowing about all the evil things the Empire is doing. Propaganda and censorship manipulate public thought about the evil things that can't be kept secret. Imperial secrecy takes the form of government classification and opacity and the brutal persecution of whistleblowers and journalists who transgress it. Imperial manipulation takes the form of propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and mass media blackouts. Empire managers work to keep as much information as possible about the Empire from being made public. But once it is public, they can still keep the information from having a major impact by manipulating whether people pay attention to it and by manipulating how people see it. In this way, public understanding of the Empire's abuses is continuously obfuscated. Even after the information makes it past the walls of opacity, there's still a whole other line of defense which is arguably more of an obstacle because the impact of the information can be neutralized. Whistleblowers, leak publishers and investigative journalists are very important in getting information past the walls of secrecy. But after they've done that, there's a whole other battle that needs to be fought, getting the public to notice, understand and think clearly about the information. But what's cool is that anyone can play a role in that second battle. Not everyone can be a whistleblower or leak publisher or investigative journalist investigative journalist with a massive scoop. But everyone can help fight against imperial information manipulation by working to circulate the truth. You can do this by spreading awareness of the information that's publicly available about the abuses of our rulers. Spread it online and offline in whatever ways you can think of. Disrupt the manipulation machine with hard facts and with robust and attention-grabbing arguments. That's where I find I'm best used in this fight. I'm not out there breaking stories and talking to sources and spending weeks combing through FOIA documents, though I'm grateful to anyone who does. But I do have a knack for using words to help people see the information that has been made public with more clarity. One huge obstacle to revolutionary change is that people can't really see the depravity of the empire because they've been conditioned not to look at it too closely and because they've been habituated to it their entire lives. It's possible to help them see it with fresh eyes.