 Very slowly, for the camera, this is a keto exercise from Terry Dobson, very first exercise, very slowly punch each other in the belly, taking turns to do that. And to notice the reaction, which was like, belly draws in, breath freezes, body draws back. And he said, how's your ability to move now? Of course, there is none. And so the practice was to learn to relax. And as the blow would come in, turn aside and let it go by. And to keep relaxed and to keep breathing. And that's a kind of fearlessness, Jerry, that you're talking about. And then there was the ability to move and do something else. And for me, that's kind of been core to all the work with a keto and frankly everything else is to be able to find that calm in the face of, you know, imagined or psychological or physical or, you know, planetary threat. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Thanks Gil, love that. This is the OGM weekly call for Thursday, September 14th, 2023. We were just talking a little bit about keto, about IKeto because mid-October I'm supposed to test for first Q, which is the end of the Q ranks in the beginning of the Dan ranks. And when you get your Hakama, which is a dark overskirt that you put over your gi, makes you look fancier, but I was relating that I had somebody film me recently and I just didn't feel like I've internalized the art that much. But there's a lot of other benefits, including a whole bunch of very nice metaphoric benefits. And I've seen a couple of speeches given about IKeto as a metaphor for business or for ecology or for society, and they're pretty good. But I think there's a lot of good juice there because IKeto is so much about blending with forces that are coming at you. And instead of blocking the forces, and very often the best way to manage change is not to try to stop it from happening, but rather to shape it, blend it, direct it, do whatever else. It's metaphoric, but I've also, it has saved my life more than two or three times on the highway. On a bicycle or walking? On a bicycle, maybe in a car. On a streetway. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. I've never practiced car at IKeto, so that's a whole thing. Don't do that, it'll just show up when it shows up. I know, I know. And I'm figuring the other drivers aren't going to be that pleased if I try. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us on this in Portland, a beautiful day today and tomorrow are going to be pretty warm and then I think it tapers off again. We are in check-in mode today and I was going to say let's use the S protocol with a modification for Doug Carmichael's bigger question because when we do the S protocol, often we're just doing, hey, what's happening in your life? It's OGM-y, which is fine, but sometimes takes a while. And I'd love to sort of go through the check-in to get to the conversation today with a little more Christmas and direction. So the question that Doug offers us, which I will find here now, is what's on your mind that's worthy of serious conversation? Because he used to run a group in Palo Alto called Serious Conversations. And so as we check in, I'd love to do what's on your mind that's worthy of serious conversation. I will paste that into the chat and don't like when I highlight everything in the chat. It disables the return keys and the arrow keys and all that. They've changed the formatting of how the chat works in a way that wasn't that functional for me chatting months ago. Anyway, so and then the S protocol is, which I've pasted into the invite, but it basically says, raise your Zoom hand. Actually, what's your preference, folks? Do you want to do the raise your Zoom hand to step into the queue, or shall we have the last person who checked in pick the next person to check in? That one. Okay, good. So whenever you're done, and I've discovered that whenever you ask somebody to do something, and then you ask them to pick the next person, we always forget. So I might sort of remind us a little bit because that's a little hard to do. But when you're done checking in, please name the next person. There's few enough of us on the call that will probably notice like who's gone and who hasn't gone. And the trick is to ask, hey, who hasn't gone yet, raise your hand. And like that shows you who's missing in case you lose track. So that'll work. So our practice will be to, I will randomly pick somebody to check in first, and then that person will pick the next person will go through the room that way. Before you jump in, please pause. Silence is helpful here. Take a pause coming in. I will not step in to do traffic control. So when you're done, please pick the next person, and I will prompt in the chat about please pick the next person if we need to. And then when we're only no conversation during the check in phase, just go once. And after the check in, we'll jump into conversation, possibly picking one of the questions that came up. So please pick, please sort of mind what we're talking about as we go, and feel free. In Doug's protocol, we don't use the chat during that check in round, but I'm thinking let's be okay with using the chat both to memorialize what each person is offering to the conversation and to release our energies around chatting and sharing links and whatever else as we go. And then when we're done with the check ins, we will launch into regular conversation as we do. So Doug Breitbart, would you be so kind as to lead off, be the lead off batter in this process? I can do that. So worthy of conversation, I recently had a couple of conversations that brought up sort of an interesting fundamental twist. So the starting place was in relation to the Kogis were Indigenous tribe, I think, called the guys who were a greater or lesser extents. And the idea of the meme at the center being individual authority agency empowerment as a dimension of being in existence in Western culture. And in the Kogi context, that not really existing, that they have mamans who are oracles basically, mamans consult source, they have a water ceremony through which they do that. And so the question floats to the mom and the mom and consult source, source comes back, they read the bubbles and decision thumbs up, thumbs down. And there is no dimension whatsoever. There isn't even a conception or a possibility of someone in the tribe questioning, challenging, complaining, reacting to a thumbs up or thumbs down answer. It is what it is. It's the natural order and alignment with natural law. Along comes Western culture. And we eat the apple, right? It's the Garden of Eden time. And out of that comes ego, identity, out of that comes self determination, empowerment, individuation, out of that comes separation. And fast forward to today. And what's missing connection, what's missing is recognition awareness of collective need, commons need, natural law, the planet, what's in alignment, what's destructive, extractive. And it's not a matter of going back to Kogi's, like that's not relevant or particularly helpful. It's a question of with individuation, with ego and identity and self empowerment. What's the ingredient that maps to collective survival and change, which has to do with purpose, transcendent of self, transcendent of individual, me being in service to something bigger than just me and my interests. And with that, I'm complete. And I will hand off to Kevin. Wow. I mean, did we record that? That was, that was amazing. I found that fun. Fascinating. Well, I've been working for a while here in Moncombe County locally. And when it's been separate from my work with neighborhood economics. And so on a watershed fund, it's a zero interest loan to local farmers. And then we had just one of our former employees now leads a food festival that was just had for food entrepreneurs, of which there are many, many here. And they struggle. A lot of them have to, you know, share kitchens and don't have kitchens and things, but they have this great circle where they were showing you all that food, you know, in these in this tent and then a big festival about it and everything else. And so we're going to create a neighborhood economics food economy fund that'll be reciprocal. And so if you're a struggling entrepreneur and you get these zero interest loans, when you pay it back, you'll know which entrepreneur your money's been allocated to. So we're going to create it on reciprocity and then with some benefit dinners as the way to do it. And you have to have 20,000, I mean, $10,000 of social capital in the network to qualify for a dinner. So it's a, it's a fund based on monetizing social capital and then and turning farmers labor into a reciprocal revolving fund. So I think it's going to be pretty interesting. And then we're going to experiment with venture philanthropy around it, you know, with our local colonization wants to experiment on learning how to give to invest and, but totally focused on this vertical. And so, you know, that would be, that all just happened. A lot of times before I'm struggling for a couple years on something, it's not going anywhere. And I measure social capital money, you can draw on it to have a $10,000 loan come out from a dinner from folks who care about you. So anyway, I had this idea of struggling along Rosie's touch here and it's like something, oh, it blew up. Yeah, that it works. So anyway, that happened this morning. So that was kind of wild. And I think we can create a whole interesting replicating resilient system around around the food. And you can't do that everywhere. We have a big farm to table industry, if you will, and food systems and stuff like that. So it works where this works. So that's my check in. Kevin, you get to choose who's next. Gil, why don't you go next? Sure thing. Thanks, Kevin. Hi, everybody. Check in. I've been on wall to wall calls this week somehow. Really rich and juicy stuff, individual conversations at a conference in the Netherlands last couple of days. I'm struck by advice I got from a very insightful mentor a couple of weeks ago. He said, you know, you really need to focus on closing loops and nurturing relationships. And it felt very true. I took it very much to heart. And I find that I'm sort of swinging back and forth from one to the other, like today is just wall to wall calls. And there's all this stuff that doesn't get done. And if I'm getting stuff done, I'm not in conversation with people. So I'm dancing in that. Other parts of the check in, critical path capital, my escapade to build a private equity fund for good to generate ecologically grounded and community rooted and employee owned companies has new fire under the pot this last month. Lots of momentum there of some very interesting development. So I'm really thrilled by that. That's been another pendulum swinging thing for me where I have days and weeks where I think this is just too big a lift. I'm crazy to even undertake something like this. I'm sorry, I thought we were doing a little bit of checking, Jerry. I turned to alter the format a little bit this week by having a focus on the focusing question and not do a general everything that's been going on, just to see how it goes. Okay. So I'll wrap up there. So another another swinging back and forth between feeling completely overwhelmed and feeling like this is my calling to do. The on my mind worthy of serious conversation and this came up again with this conference this morning is I hear lots of discussion about transforming the world that we're in. I'm transforming reforming dealing with with crisis and collapse and so forth and what I find really missing is is diagnoses of the problem. And I hear echoing in my head someone who once said to me that you know the prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. And so when I think about the whole sustainability matrix and the mess that we're in, I've been thinking a lot about what I'm calling the structural defects of late capitalism, not the ways to make it nicer with reform, conscious capitalism, ecological capitalism, stakeholder capitalism and so forth, all these good things that don't seem to get at the core of what's what's broken. And I've got a list of six that I've developed and I'm working and writing on. And Pete, this is one of the things I'm thinking about neobook kind of stuff for. And shall I quickly rattle through the six? So I think that's that's part of the conversation worth having. I think you've mentioned them here before, but it would be good to have a repeat. So go actually please go ahead there quick. They're quick. Built into the game. And not addressed by any of the reforms that I've heard talking about is is accumulation without limit, extraction without reciprocity, alienation without care, abstraction without ground, generation without regeneration and privatization without solidarity. And I'm claiming that unless we address those, we don't get to where we need to get to and I'm further claiming that those provide a design frame or developing and guiding and evaluating our initiatives to say, are we really getting to the core of the problem? So that's it. And I'd love to talk with people more about that. Anybody who's interested. And you get to pick who goes next. I do. Don't I? I will pick Stacy. Perfect. Thank you. So I guess this is worthy of serious conversation because it addresses the here and the now. This idea of picking the person that goes next was so incredibly uncomfortable for me for a number of reasons. And because it was so incredibly uncomfortable, it was hard for me to enjoy everything that was said. And I was really interested in what was said. And I couldn't even get there. And I want to say, if it was an exercise where before the person picks, they took the time to tune in to the energy and to sort of practice their skills at seeing who maybe should go next. I would have been all for it. But because I didn't feel it was like that, I felt like I was standing in gym waiting to be picked for dodgeball. And it was not fun. So that's what I wanted to share. So thank you. And I think it's worthy of conversation. Oh, I'm supposed to pick. I thought you were maybe getting into that spot you just described. So yeah. And by the way, feel free to modify the protocol by doing exactly that. And I urge everybody else to do that. Basically, take a moment. Maybe the pause is at the end of what you're talking about. You let that leave you and then you center into who might be next. And I appreciate your hand. I appreciate you're telling us your discomfort with the protocol. For me, it was just like just another protocol. It's just a lever. But I realized that every lever touches people in very different ways. So I really like what you said. Thank you. So I could go two ways. I could either see who wants to go next, or I could just go and say the original thing that was on my mind when I came to the call. As a topic, you mean for conversation? Gosh, I don't know. You're complicating the whole protocol. And I think we may have just done some time travel. But why don't you start the topic you thought you'd talk about when you came to the call and then pick somebody? Okay, especially because Mike is here, I do want to mention it. Because I am very concerned because I believe that there is an abundance of doctored YouTube videos coming onto the scene now more than in the, you know, in the recent past. And I'm really concerned about it because I think there needs to be some sort of coordination or a team that can authenticate these things or do something. I mean, I've kind of just pulled away from Facebook because it doesn't feel like safe. But on the other hand, that's not a good thing to leave that hope. I mean, it's like the Wild West there. And it scares me because I saw what happened in 2016. So I guess I want to throw out this idea of some sort of plan has to be put in place to be able to maybe hold accountable, you know, bigger platforms for allowing these doctors. I don't know what could be done, but I'll just share. I saw a very quick clip of Ari Milbur and he was talking to Bill Maher and he had showed him this doctored video where Bill Maher was giving an endorsement. Bill Maher was like, well, any idiot can tell that that's not real. And I was like, no, I wouldn't have questioned it. And that's really, you know, when I see something on TV and like the words are off to the to the picture, I usually think it has something to do with streaming. I don't think it's a doctored video. And maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But I think this is a big concern that that is not getting addressed enough. And even if people at least knew that it was there, that would at least be a start. So that's what's on my mind. Thank you. Oh, Mike, you can go next. Self-serving, as it may be. Thank you so much, actually. I just wanted to pile on that because my topic was quite similar, a little broader. First off, apologize for being late. We had our monthly Carnegie senior staff meeting. And I have to say it was damn depressing. We have two brand new Ukraine experts trying to talk about how we're ever going to get to reconstruction and particularly this psychic recovery. And the problems with returning Russian soldiers who will be really messed up and might possibly have guns in their house. First off, greetings from my new townhouse or our new townhouse. This has been what's been disrupting my life for the last six or eight weeks. But we finally have most things out of boxes. Now we just have to figure out how to hang all our art and figure out what we really need accessible and what can be buried in the garage. And that relates to what I'm going to talk about. And that is the decline or disappearance of business ethics. We've been buying a lot of things and trading. We're now on phase three of our real estate adventure. I sold my house in May. We bought this house in August. And now Kathleen's house is for sale. And we're trying to make sure that that goes well and goes quickly. And it's always very anxious. We've already turned down one offer. And then you sit there thinking, well, will that be the best offer I get? And that's step one on the business ethics question. It seems like the real estate industry is just designed to give a whole bunch of people more information than you have and to actually not benefit you because of that. But that's minor compared to my big complaint, which is yesterday's experience with my auto mechanic. I've been using this mechanic for 30 years. And in the past, they were very good. Recently, I thought they were growing more and more incompetent. But in the last three months, they have put the wrong transmission fluid in my car, which led to it having all sorts of problems. And when I went back to say, what's this, they said, oh, well, it's just getting old. Probably time to buy a new one. I had to go to a different dealer, a different mechanic, an independent mechanic who said, well, I don't know who did this, but you have the wrong fluid here. And then yesterday, I went in, I'm selling this car and I had a little cosmetic work to be done and they said 249. And I show up the next day and I get a bill for 349. And they've done a bunch of things that I didn't ask them to do. And I did complain and they did get me back to 249. But I just keep seeing this. And we spent $700 getting an air conditioning unit repaired. It's worse than it was. They drilled a hole in the coil so they had to spend three hours removing the whole thing and repairing the coil. Again, I don't know how much is incompetence or how much is finding ways to make more money from you. But the incentives are all wrong. So many people will make more money if they don't do things properly or if they look at a problem and they say there's three possible problems. Let's fix the $1,500 problem first and then if that doesn't work, we'll fix the $300 problem. And if that doesn't work, we'll screw this bolt in and charge you $80. And I don't know how we get past this because not all of us are air conditioning repair people. And I sound like a moralist here. But where are the ethics? Aren't people being trained anymore to serve their fellow human beings? Maybe I'm just unlucky. Maybe it's just this year. I've just seen too much of this. I would add one more thing. And that is that when I was at Georgetown, I had a number of Chinese students and at least 60% of them seemed to have no sense of ethics. It wasn't just plagiarism. It was really quite depressing. And I've had enough experience with Americans who have done business in China to know that you just don't know what you're getting. And again, the incentives are not there. One person explained it to me as saying this is what people did to get it through cultural revolution. So the grandparents of all the people in charge now basically did whatever it took to get by and avoid being sent to a prison or killed. And so that has passed on. Again, sorry to be depressing. I can be happier later. I'm excited about a lot of other things going on in the world, particularly the fact that we have four glorious days of fall and that Hurricane Lee is not hitting Washington, DC. I hope none of you have relatives in Cape Cod, Maine, or the Canadian Maritimes because it's not going to be good. And I will identify Gil, who put his finger up, which I think means he has a response that will make me happier. So we're not in conversation mode yet and Gil has already checked in. So if you'll pick someone else or just ask who hasn't checked in yet. Oh, I see Stewart. Okay. And I see him smiling. So I will look to him for some positivity. But first I want to say thank you, Stacey, for being here. And thank you for expressing your concerns. I actually thought the picking was a great idea because it prevents me from multitasking. It means I have to always be on listening very carefully, just like paper chase. But I know it goes both ways. So Stewart, over to you. Great. I'll check in quickly because apologies to all I need to leave because Mike and maybe this will cheer you up. I'm going to teach a three hour virtual program to Sonoma County employees on ethics, which I designed, which I actually designed myself. So it's, I'm, I'm rather excited about it. I did it once in May and it had a great, a great response. So I'm happy to do it again. Things that worth talking about, I realize this is in the personal realm, but for me, it's very worth talking about. My meds are about to be cut in half. I'm going on a maintenance drug. The nasty shot that I got weekly is going away. And, and, and so all this is about being evaluated for stem cell transplant at Stanford, which I'm, I'm, I'm actually pleased with. So that's the, that's the personal check in. I think I may have mentioned this in last week's call, but you know, one of the things that I identified as a key piece going forward, if we are to reinvent the species would be, how do we change our headsets? You know, Gil, I loved your six pieces. And I want to talk to you further about that because it's congruent in some ways with something called the 10 new 10 commandments for a secular world. But one of the pieces I've been looking for is is the real capacity to change the way people think, to just change our psyches, to, to, to move from the, the, some of the, what, what, what, what Mike was just talking about to a world where humans can flower. And I've been starting to study the work of Sadguru. And it's really interesting. Because, you know, you all know that one of my, one of my teachers has been Meg Wheatley in the, in the warriors for the human spirit, which is all based upon Buddhist practices, her, her, her mentor for many, many years was Pima children. And, and the work of children, Trumpka, who founded Nairopa University. And all of a sudden she's following Sadguru. And I read his two books, one about karma and one about what he calls inner engineering. And this guy has really got a great handle, I think, on how it is that we can shift consciousness, evoke consciousness. So it's something worth talking about, because it's a critical piece of the puzzle beyond, you know, technology, beyond capitalism. I've always had this image of human beings on a conveyor belt. And when they get to a certain point on the conveyor belt, a bell jar drops, and somebody hits a gong and they come out, transform, devolve, fixed, whatever, whatever word you want to, you want to use it, but they're able to engage with life at a completely different level. So that's my, that's my check-in in terms of what's important. And I will pick Doug. I was going to pick Eric, but Doug just looked up at me with this guy's face and I said, I got a big Doug. Well, a lot of things are on my mind this morning. I'm leaving for Malaysia this afternoon for an indeterminate length of time, and I'm going, having spent a couple of months in Montenegro and looking at the Balkans, I want to see what people in Asia are really thinking about climate change. So it's going to be a big adventure. We're also doing a project up in Borneo, in the jungle of doing garden world villages. And that's going to be pretty interesting, and I'll keep you up to date with that. In the meantime, yesterday I attended a couple of seminars put on by physicians for social responsibility here in Northern California. And I was really impressed with the degree of interaction they have with new medical students, with mentors, and with very serious look at in particular the pollution effects of climate change. CO2 is actually not very good. It's heavy, and it sinks to the ground, and it replaces oxygen and can actually suffocate people and all other living creatures. And they were as forthright about this as any professional group that I've had any contact with, and I was impressed. The problem they're facing is the state rushing to support a hydrogen infrastructure when basically I think we know that that's a waste. And it goes along for me with a deeper feeling that, look, don't we know enough now, I'm going to try and say this calmly, we know enough now to know we're not going to make it. And the question is, how should we spend our time in the meanwhile? And I'm going to stop there. And who hasn't gone? Hey, Jerry. Oh, and I'm going to call on Klaus and let Jerry have the next class. Yeah. Yeah, along those same lines. I started focusing on how do you engage at community level, understanding that each community is unique in a sense of the environmental conditions they're dealing with, the socioeconomic conditions, and socioeconomic realities, and so on. So I developed a process structure of wanting to engage in a test of the TN band. And it also is under the idea of innovations brokerage. How do you connect people? So what I've done is create a project. And I found some locals who were just some young professionals, you know, just on fire, really interested. And I ended up creating this project with them. Then I put an article into the local newspaper that stimulated interest. And then we partnered with a tech group that is also local, who decided and I convinced them that there are so many, so many changes coming through the agricultural sector. And there is such a shortage of talent, you know, tech talent in the agricultural sector, that they should really take a look at it. Also, I'm going to the local tech meeting, there may be like 35 people showing up and 30 of them are looking for work, because everything is changing so fast. And so there is really a sort of a hunger in the scope of where am I going to go now? I mean, it's serious in a sense of for them to wanting to make a living. So we event, my local team, we have a citizen climate lobby, local chapter. We ended up partnering with a local micro-poory, worthy pouring. Then the owner is very engaged now in environmental issues. He buys his hops local and so on with grains and has his own herb garden and all of those things. So make a long story short, we made enough noise to where we oversold this thing. We had 114 chairs in the room, which were solid filled, plus about 10 people standing in the back of the room. And we screened this movie, Kiss the Crown, but a shortened version. And I've been working with the Kiss the Crown organization for some time. So they created an extract that is only 45 minutes long. It's totally focused on here's how soil works and soil functions. And it's really excellent. Then I had a panel, the local school district, the director of nutrition for the local school district here in Bend, and they serve a lot of meals. They cover every school in the Bend area. Neighborhood impact, the person who is feeding about 800 little children under the age of five talking about what he's struggling with. We had the local soil and border conservation district represented. We had a farmer who is just a startup, a young farmer who a lady who is just so innovative. And they all brought their own friends. So the discussion went really well. We had a county commissioner join us. Senator Merkley sent someone from his staff to join. I actually called me once the article came out. And then we have a Republican congressperson who also sent her senior staffer to join us. And I was able to talk about the bills that are pending right now and the confrontations in Washington, this $19.5 billion fund that's supposed to help local food systems evolve, not just the farmer, but the entire system. So it was really, it was a home run. It felt so good. We had we got the county commission engaged and it turned out that our soil and border conservation district is not funded. It's completely struggling for funding so they don't really know how this works. You need this for seed money. You need to lay an infrastructure in place to access federal money and that is completely missing in the picture here. So this is a process formula that I developed. It takes about three months from building the idea, developing an abstract, creating the physical needs to find space and all of those things and then building a panel. But the process is even more important than the event itself because the process creates attention, creates excitement. People when you pick the right panel, they bring their own friends, they talk about it. So it was good. So already, they already have two groups planning the next event. We're planning the tech group now wants me to organize with them a deep dive into what's going on in terms of tech in agriculture. I mean, you think about precision agriculture. There's just a ton of moving parts. You think about carbon markets. There's just so much going on. So I'm very excited about this part. And then this is this stunning number that 40% of all foods that's being grown globally goes to waste. 40%. I mean, how is this even a number, right? But it's true. You go online and you find it's 40%. So the logo team, the CCL team, we want to talk about food waste. So we're not doing an overview. Where does it start? Where does it end? So in any case, we got to translate what we're talking about at the national level and with this organizations like Sierra Club and CCL and so on that operate nationally, we have to translate this into the community and put energy into the community. And so that that was a nice boost for me, for confidence building and so on. Yeah. And I'm going to hand it over to Kevin. We're not in conversation mode. I just wanted to say, Klaus, I'd like to offer you our funds. We have underwriting due diligence and stuff. And I'd love to engage in you being able to raise through our platform. So anyway, thank you. That's all. Thank you. That's a great offer. Klaus, who's next? Ah, who is next? How about Scott hasn't talked yet. Scott, Mary. Hi, everyone. Serious consideration. I had two that I think are interesting. The first one that I put in the chat was about what is enough? Or in other words, what areas are enough? Because I know my own tendency is to keep looking for more. And I noticed that a lot of times when we ranch out, duggle jump in and say, yeah, but we already tried that and we know that it doesn't work or we already know that this path is not going to work. And we know that this would work. And we often have things that seem to pop up like that where someone will suggest something and we say, yeah, we already know that will work and it just hasn't gotten steamed yet or it won't work. And so I just wonder if our tendency to look for a different answer is taking us away from the things that are, we actually already know. What are our focuses? Or what are the things that are okay? We're complaining about little things that are going on in our own lives. I was like, okay, is that a big deal? Really? Comparatively? And I know climate, huge. Food, huge. All of that stuff, it's so huge. And it's like, well, I just want to complain about my little thing that happened to me yesterday. Okay, I get it. But in terms of a serious thing, I was like it in movies where people are running around, someone shoots off a gun because they're trying to get the person running away and everyone ducks. And then there's one person left standing up. And it kind of feels like it's a visual metaphor, but it's a bad metaphor for what I'm trying to say, which is to say if we just turn down the volume on everything, it doesn't matter. What's left? And that's a, that's a focus thing, focusing thing I'm trying to do. Fewer things and better instead of more things than, you know, dilution across everything. So that was one that I thought was an interesting focusing question. Oh, I also have a quick personal call out. Oh, my, it's all blurry. I don't want it to be blurry. Just turn off blurring your background. It's busy. It's busy trying to find you and only you. So yeah, go to video. Oh, there we go. Okay. Perfect. There you go. Do you know what this is? This is an oil painting. I've heard of these. The only oil painting I own. Do you know who painted this? I'll give you one guess and you can see them right now. I reached out. I reached out very good Stacy. You get the gold star for today. I reached out to Doug and saw that he had all these wonderful paintings on his website. And I asked him about one because it spoke to me and now I am the very proud owner of one of Douglas Carmichael's original oils. And I'm very pleased about that. So thank you, Doug. So the second thing that I was wondering about, and this is again, these are maybe small things, maybe big things. I don't know. I was talking with my wife this morning about this and I noticed that with the rise of anxiety and young people, there's this a bunch of empowerment memes. Go get it. You're the best. Don't settle. You know, be fierce, whatever. All of those things wrapped into one and you see them just fill up feet. And on the other side, there's the images of people on vacation, people all dressed up, people with retouch, people with new clothes, people with all the things that. And I thought, you know what? Both of those are about, you're not good enough. You either don't look right or you don't have the right clothes or you need to be more. You need to speak up more. You need to do more. You need to. And I thought, you know, those things combined are, they seem like they are saying the same thing, which is, no, you need to be better tomorrow than you are today. And I wonder if that's just a hamster wheel that's causing, well, it used to be, it was particularly bad for young women. And now it's becoming young men as well, who are bombarded with images of, this is what you should be, do look like, and go get them, because if you aren't, then you're wasting your potential or whatever it happens to be. So it's difficult to have a movement of any kind, if people are wallowing in their own heads with messages about this is what you need to be going after, as opposed to being okay with themselves and understanding that they are good enough, and that there are other things that they could spend their time doing that might actually make them feel better in a way that they didn't expect. So those are my two callouts for topics of serious consideration. Oh, and I suppose it's my turn. I don't believe Pete has gone, has he? No, Pete, I love your background. It's so, it's so 50s space future. I always love that push-pull. So Pete, the floor is yours. Thank you, Scott. So if anything about my background, it's, I like some other ones. This one is bright actually, bright as good as a background. I've got some older looking ones that don't work as well. They're almost cooler. Thank you, Stacey, for talking about the picking people. I think picking people can work, and I like your idea of fighting down and reflecting on who you should pick, and thanks, Scott, for picking me. I had severe trauma from dodgeball in middle school and being picked and stuff like that. I actually got out of it. I begged the teachers and they gave me independent study reading a book or something like that. I must have been a release. I was like crying at the teachers. I have a, there would be kind of interesting to reflect on how this call went. I think it's interesting instead of, you asked an interesting question. I know the whole thing was emergent and thank you for being a wonderful host, and this has been a wonderful call. You asked an interesting question, which is Doug's protocol. What's an important thing to talk about? That means we've talked about a whole bunch of different things. At this point, I don't even know if my thing is worthwhile bringing up, and then there's four or five or six different things that I feel like we could talk about. It diverges super quick. I read an email from a mailing list today, and I said, wow, this is a little bit different than stuff that I've read before. It's what we talk about in OGM, and I want to share this with OGM. I wasn't thinking I would do it on this call, but here we are. I tried to summarize the important parts of an email that called to me. There's a link to the whole email, and there's a little bit of a thread about it. Brian Holmes said a couple of interesting things about truth. Everybody knows truth is under siege or something like that. We talk about what does truth mean? How do we find it in this group? A thing that I really like that he said is that truth has to circulate socially if it's going to become common property. He talks about small groups, small and an interesting, the best thing out of the email that I found was this idea of growing inwards. You need small groups to come together. You need them to be internally diverse, not just in race or something like that, but viewpoints and experiences and backgrounds and temperaments and things like that. When you've got small groups incubating ideas, he says this is from an Argentinian person who studied a revolution, and the small groups coming together can think in a way that the larger society cannot. Then they can build something that makes sense, then it can bubble out into the world. I'm watching a group that needs to say something and needs to have a voice in a really important topic in the world, not saving the world, but it's still a really important topic. I can see there's a set of, I am kind of by proxy, I have a view of 100 or so people who kind of all know a truth that they can't yet share with the world because it's too revolutionary, too different or too much of a throwback to the old days or something like that. It's just too different. They kibitz and complain to each other because they can't complain to anybody else because the truth is too big. I can see this process. They really need to kind of come together. They need to kind of come to an internal understanding and agreement about the truth because each of them has a little bit different view of it like blind people in an elephant. Each of them, when they tell the story, they tell the story of this truth and pinching on their world and then the way that they react to it. And some of those things aren't the important parts, but together, all of them, they can collectively come to what the important parts are and how you could communicate that to the rest of the world. So the way he expressed that really hit for me because I can see it happening in real time and I apologize for being obtuse and obscure and not naming the truth or the group. It's not my place to do it and it's not their time yet to do it, but I can see that it needs to happen. And a little bit, I try to push and say, hey, you guys need to collect your truth and hone it and be able to express it in a way that the world can hear it because it's an important one. So the last thing he said that I pulled out of his email was that, especially for people like us, science and enlightenment reasons aren't enough to constitute the truth that people can own. Especially those of us who grew up in scientific backgrounds and scientific educations, it's like, guys, come on, there's a truth. There is absolute objective truth. I don't know why. When I tell you something like carbon is going to kill us, I don't know why you just don't go, oh, yeah, of course. Why don't we all figure out how not to do CO2 poisoning of the planet? That makes so much sense to us. That's not the way humans work. So he says humans need cosmologies and that we actually don't even know how to create cosmologies anymore. Those of us who have gotten so seduced by science and enlightenment have forgotten how to actually be humans and be with the rest of humanity in the innumerate and consonant cosmologies that we need to face the world. I've had a feeling that I was going to pick Eric for a while and I choose Eric. Thanks, everybody. It's been hard for me to get here due to work, but I'm here today. Thanks. I want to pick up on what Stacey and Peter were talking about. Stacey talked about YouTube issues with deep fakes and Pete's theme of truth. Well, let's think about what happens when truth can no longer be known. What happens to our society when people are all being manipulated in different ways and no one can know what is the real truth of any situation. So it leads me to the current time of the year, Jewish holidays are starting tomorrow. And regardless of what you believe, where is your spirit? Do you have a spirit? And what is it? Does it guide your life? Is there more than just our brains? And yeah, I'm just looking at my notes here. Related to truth is paradigm shifts or do we need to shift our paradigms at this time? Related to the fake deep fakes, reminds me of the fake banana concept by Leo Biscoglia. And another thing is like, is there a blind self to any of us, things we don't know that people are seeing that they don't tell us. So just a lot of concepts connecting there. So this time of the year, it should be a time of reflection and thinking, well, where am I going now? It's really acknowledging our past, letting it go. And Rabbi once told me, oh, you want to make different mistakes this next year coming up. Don't make the same ones over again. So with that, yeah, I see it's about really relating to people locally and finding my purpose where I am. And I'm going to just post some videos for people who have the time to look at who are interested in other things I'm thinking about. So with that, I'm complete. So who else hasn't gone? Jerry, go ahead. And also Carl. I don't know if Carl wants to skip or not, but I will go and then I will ask Carl to go after me. How about that? Thanks, Eric. This has been a messier call than I was hoping, but a lovely call in different ways. Pete, I'd love a debrief about it, but not right the second. Stacey again, thanks for jumping in and saying, hey, this is not so good. It feels like dodgeball or whatever. Pete, I can't believe that PE teachers had you go sit and read like they could have given you something physical to go do. No, no. Anyway, my question is kind of a hybrid inspired by partly what showed up in the room and partly what I brought into the conversation. And I don't know exactly how to phrase it. So I'm going to say it as how might we explore identity as a path toward larger solutions? And partly here I'm saying, hey, early in the call, there was this thing about how the Kogi, Doug B talked about how the Kogi don't really have a sense of identity and separate agency and that their actions are more collective. And I think all these words are freighted and inaccurate, but I'm sort of trying to aim toward that. And then religion, which Scott brought up in the chat, but not in the conversation about, hey, maybe even the religion is flawed, we're missing some kind of binding agent. One of the things that one of the many things that religion does is it gives people identity, but also apparently Christianity gave us a sense of individualism and individual identity, which we didn't have before, which I find is a flawed narrative, but but it's many people's reason for loving the Christian sort of approaches toward and maybe I'm wrong. And it's just Protestantism that did that. But like this whole idea of us as individuals with a personal relationship to God, et cetera, et cetera, that's mixed into how we see identity, not the identity that religions give us, but the other angle of it of, do we see ourselves as part of a group or not? And I think my quest around consumerism for the last 30 years has taught me that, oh my God, we taught people that their identity is everything they should buy markers of identity like Nike, not Puma. They should separate themselves from others by declaring their identity, that we have the all consuming value of you as a unique human being, et cetera, et cetera, has fueled this mad rush into the dissolution of all the filaments. And the reason we use the metaphor of the fabric of society is that all those little connections are interdependencies that hold us together. And we have been busy snipping those away over the years over and over and over, often to sculpt a personal identity at the cost of society. And famously, the Iron Lady Maggie Trudeau, Maggie Trudeau, Maggie Thatcher said, there is no such thing as society. In part of that movement, sort of to dissolve our offering money into how to fix society together, which a lot of conservatives object to, because money is taxes are taking, but even participating together, that there's this series of economic theories that say, no, greed is good. And everybody acting in their own independent greedy identity seeking fulfillment seeking interest works out in the end, because there's this invisible hand. I think all these messy things are all factored in together into the mess that we're looking at. And I'll add the thing that I brought into the conversation, which is it feels to me like a lot of the fear in the in the room, and the room I'm talking about here is the planet is about identity, that a lot of deeply conservative people feel that white America, which is what it should be is being overrun by just demographics by numbers, it's going to become a majority white country soon. Oh my God, terrible, this should be a white like seriously, do they know no history? But every then I'm in a conversation with a much more conservative person than I am right now, who wants to ignore all the identity politics that are coming up and say, look, this is all about class warfare and and economics, if we just fix the economics, all the other problems dissolve. And my little inner voice is like, no, no, no, like there's a whole bunch of people whose identity is being squished, ignored, rolled over. And how do we come into a world that is plural, yet unified and inter twingled and interdependent? And how do we stop trying to be separate and broken and different and actually come back into being like a planet with a bunch of humans on it who are busy wrecking the planet who could in fact, if they shifted their mindset, which also came up in the call, how do we shift our way of seeing being thinking of ourselves, we could in fact shift that entirely on a moment's notice, it wouldn't happen, you know, it wouldn't need to take like decades and decades of change, we can just shift how we look at each other and see each other, how we identify with each other, how we see ourselves in the crowd. All of that. And then I again, I'm just poking at the question from all these different directions, because I don't know how to say it properly. But it feels like the quest for identity is really important here. And I don't mean the establishment of my personal identity against the others as a unique human. I mean the very notion of how I identify in society and whether I see the society or not, and what my responsibilities are toward it. All of that is kind of baked into the question for me. So that was a way longer explanation of the question that I intended, because I was hoping this round would be kind of a crisp set of questions. But that's where I am. And I'm going to go quickly to Carl, so we can complete our cruise. And then Kevin, the floor will be yours after that. Carl, the whole world hinges on your participation right now. So actually picking up on what Pete said, I actually did a copy of thoughts that I've just captured today. And I've been using the brain since 1999, I think. So hopefully this will work. Are you doing a screen share? Or what are you doing? Yeah, I'm trying to do a screen share. It should work, but you're not sharing your screen yet. We're not seeing your screen. Okay, let me do it. Yeah. Let me do a shared screen. Share your full, yeah. Sometimes if you share only the brain, it doesn't work. There you go. You're on. Okay. So one of the things that's always intriguing about the brain is all about the structure. And when you get the structure right, there's like this elegance that emerges and things. So I've captured the people attending the call. I just remembered I had to add Stuart because he was here earlier. And then I actually can make connections. So Doug talked about the OG World View, which is then linked to things that Jerry said. The things I've tagged as top topics are the things that got brought to my or came to me as I was plus the things I wanted to talk about. So I've mentioned it numerous times, but Marjorie Kelley's book came out on Tuesday and she actually was interviewed at the Aspen Institute here in DC. I didn't have a chance to go to it in person, but it is recorded. And she actually brought up Danela Meadows and the whole systemic leverage points and stuff. The other big thing for me has been getting back into the power of storytelling. In fact, I posted a link to it. This is a TED talk that Mary Alice Arthur gave. And she calls herself a story activist. So it's about taking back the power of your story and things. She actually mentions a group she was part of in like 20 years ago. And that's this Golden Fleece group that I've been part of. We actually used to organize the Smithsonian Storytelling Weekend and stuff. So I'm really getting back into the looking at that power of story and working on telling my telling my own event. Many of you know, Jack Park, he scolded me about 10 years ago because I have two of my mentors have had such a transformative impact on the world. One is Doug Engelbart. Many of you know too. And the other one is William Smith who has this appreciation, influence, and control framework. He did a lot of work in Columbia with the energy system down there in the 70s. And I was like, man, if the Koji people knew about Bill and vice versa, we would be in a much different world now. He told, his group told Ray Crock that McDonald's had to hire women. He did a UN project about the role of women in Thai society and led to them amending their constitution to allow the right to peacefully assemble. Of course, we've had a military coup since then. So what constitution? They are. But anyway, Jack criticized me and was like, stop telling Doug a Bill story. You've got to figure it. Find your own. So that's one of those major things, like Scott was talking about really hone in on just a few things and try to become a master of those. So that's one of them. The other thing that I've run across, just no way to really get into it, but there's actually this whole evidence-based policy-making activity out there. There was actually a law that was signed back in 2018 by then President Trump. Hard to believe, but that's something I'm looking at and things. And then I said that Marjorie Kelly and her well supremacy, and I mean, she just zeroes in on strategic leverage points the way Donnella Meadows to. So I think I'm really looking at that. And I think that is an area to start with. Like Scott, I think there's a lot of insights you could get there to figure out what is really important and stuff. So I'll stop there and stuff. But the huge problem I have with databases and everything else is can you have the like monolithic brain? I've seen it referred to like Jerry has, or just this one this one thing. Or I mean, you're over what a half a million thoughts now in that one, right? And I'm more like having 500 brains that have a thousand thoughts. 550,000. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah. So that's the struggle I've always had because you have that trade-off between duplication versus having everything together. But how do you share it? I mean, yeah. So I got, I'm capturing a lot of stuff like Pete was saying that I'm not ready to share yet. So I can't just, I can't just have Carl's brain that I open up like you have. So so that the brain I just started, I mean, a little copied out a dozen thoughts or so that I captured today. So I do have an OGM like starter brain or mini brain like Mark Trexler talks about. So I could give that to people and people could take that and kind of run with it if they're interested. So, well, it turned the floor over to Kevin then. Thanks, Carl. I'll step back in as moderator Kevin. Yeah. Just a brief thought about, you know, identity being closed off. I think identity in a world, you know, post enclosures, private property centric and private property privileged world is different than a world where you live in an indigenous world of reciprocity. And we are all relations. We share this land. And so I think, you know, identity in a world of reciprocity and multi-generational thinking on the planet is different than a world where private property is privileged. And ownership is a word as vital as identity here. It's like, I think that those things are very, very tied together, like you said, Kevin. Yeah. And so, you know, we're finding that, you know, rights of a river and we just river is because that's where people focus is countering the corporate power and the people are really kind of liking that idea. So we think that's got something. Thanks. Thanks, Kevin. Stacey. Yeah, I heard something earlier today that I was like, this is so key to what I try to say all the time, which was, as a species, we really need to learn how to talk through our triggers. And that doesn't mean like the really big, big huge ones, but just the little things, just to be able to notice for ourselves when we're being triggered and to be able to mention it and have somebody hear it and not themselves feel triggered and then react. Just it has to be like a whole cultural shift of just acknowledging what is and also seeing what is, you know, Eric was asking like, well, I don't remember the words he used, but who are we inside? Well, I don't think most of us know 100%. And it's anyway, I just wanted to mention that whole idea, because that's what's nice about small groups. Had there been 100 people here, unless I was really in crusader mode, I would not have said, oh, I'm not comfortable with this, but because it's a few people that I've gotten to know. And I, you know, I just wanted to mention that. Thank you. One of my practices is gratitude. So I think that I wanted to say that I forgot to say is that I know it often feels like we are living in cursed times. There are many curses we seem to have plaguing us. And yet I am super appreciative. I feel super blessed to live in a time when we have so much, so much richness around us, so much going on, so much wonderful, like, awesome, amazing things, so much connectivity to other people around the world. It's just, it's just mind blowing the call. And it's, it's such a time of abundance that that has become the primary problem for humanity is too much. You know, can you imagine like going back in time 100 years or 500 years or 1000 years and telling your, your ancestors, you know, you have ancestors that lived back then, hey, mom, dad, I have so much, you would not believe it's actually kind of become a problem, you know, and they would be gone like to, you know, that's a problem. That's a problem that you have, you know, like I didn't eat last week. I didn't eat the week before that, you know, and that's your problem. Work it out guys, you know, figure it out. It's, it's not that big of a deal, you know, be blessed. Don't be cursed. Thank you. Thanks Pete. Koss, whenever you want to step in. Yeah, it's, it's, I just posted, you know, something that we have transitioned six of the planetary boundaries. And when you, when you look around realistically, you can't put that Chini back into the box, right? I mean, the ice has melted, the glaciers are going, the sea ice has its lowest point ever. So we have created disruptions to the, to the biosphere that have created a new normal already. You can't put it back in. And it's, it is starting to run much faster than we're ready for. So, and I truly appreciate what Pete was just saying, because you have this amazing connectivity where you can talk with someone at the other end of the world and engage in conversations and the tools that we have are just stunning, right? When you, when you work with chat GPT and see what you, what you can do, it is just, it's just incredible. But the, how do you, how do you capture the urgency of the moment in ways that's constructive? Because the last thing we want is to wait so long until, I mean, when you go into Libya and Morocco right now, for them it's too late. I mean, how do you rebuild from there? And we capture the moment. And we have sort of a really small closing window of time to prepare for what is invariably going to hit us now. And it's, it's totally inescapable and it's much faster than we, than we're prepared for this, this climate shift now is running at a pace that is just incredible. And truly we know that the one thing we can do is basically put roots into the ground. Now it's to put, to restore the biosphere back to life as fast and as intelligently as we, as we can do and as we can, as we know how to do. But we don't, I don't sense, you know, that, that level of urgency. But then when I came into the community and you point, you point out there that water is connected to soil and the damage we're doing to soil is completely preventable. It's not necessary, but we can do this differently. And then you have this, you know, big response, which we now experience in the community. So it means we really have to get, there is this top down, bottom up intelligence that we need to develop to where we bring the information from the top to the base. And then the community has to deal with that and the community has to, has to work with that. And people want to, you know, you see that they want to, they just don't know how to go about it. And so I mean, how do you capture, make people understand what is happening without creating paralysis in the process, right? Where it's just so horrible, I can't deal with it. And so that's what I'm missing, you know, is conversations that are focused and appreciate the complete urgency of the moment. I mean, and I know it's not just me feeling this, right? I mean, when you look at the data, it's just, it's just absolutely stunning. And so I'm like mesmerized when I watch the news, you know, it's like I'm, it's like watching a train wreck in motion. So anyway, I'm sorry, I don't mean to just depress, create any kind of depressive thoughts here, but hey, we're in deep trouble. I want deep shit. And we have to figure out, you know, how to create, to mobilize and create a collective response that actually stabilizes your community, stabilizes your local environment, you know, creates community that, where people protect each other. And so it's happening in a lot of communities. But it's not universal and it's not supported in the way that it needs to be supported to really make a difference and to really capture the urgency of the moment. I leave it there. Thanks, Carl. Carl has his hand up. Yes. So we're building on Scott's thing. I mean, one of the core things that from Doug Engelbart is about our augmentation systems and stuff. So there is the idea of, he thought it was, I mean, that came out in 1962. So he was thinking about at the individual level, when come to augment first, and it was computer programmers, so they could build the tools to help build better tools and really generated a positive feeding back loop of innovation and stuff. And the next step in that is, he talked about networked improvement communities. Communities are systematically trying to improve the improvement process. And actually a Carnegie, he liked with the teaching, the guy who was heading that really picked up on that. And when I did a search, there was 14 dissertations out there that had networked improvement community in the title, all kind of coming out of that school of thought. So he talked about HLAMT, Language, Artifacts, and Methodologies, and what you're trained, which by trained he really meant the gaining the skill set so that you could minimize the cognitive load to perform a task at hand. And so then is there a Nick Hamlet or whatever. So that's what Scott was getting to. So it's like Carl and Carl augmented by the brain, Jerry augmented by the brain. There's this whole thing about second brains out there and things. So I think that's another area that I'm kind of getting into is how that just wanted to bring those ideas up. Thanks, Carl. We're near the end of our call here. Ken, I think with his wife are traveling in Tuscany for a bit. I think that's why they're not here and they won't be here for a couple of weeks. And that means we won't have a Ken poem at the end. So anybody else who would like to forward for poems and possibly bring one in would be great. Go ahead, Scott. All right. I only have one, but it's one I wrote a bunch of years ago. It's a haiku. It's a haiku. And it was put out by the world's strongest librarian. Yes, he's an actual personality out there. But the haiku challenge was to write a haiku under the theme short romance. And so I will copy it and put it in the chat, but I will also read it because it's short. Eyes meet through the glass. Twinkle speak silently, but the train rolls away. So again, the theme is short romance. And I know that we all have seen someone from across the room and had a short romance, maybe only a few seconds, but you saw them, they saw you. And that's all it was. And that's all it needed to be. Love that. There was a meme also, a six word memoirs is a thing. And my friend Charles Warren has a funny story about six word memoirs that I don't remember right now. I wish I kind of remember it, but it's not coming back. Anyone with a thought to wrap this call? Well, I just posted it, but that triggered a friend of mine had a phrase, familiar strangers. Right. And unlikely allies. And strange bedfellows. That seems like it should be a section in your brain, Jerry. The strange bedfellows? Just all of those phrases that show our connection even when we don't realize that we have it or should have it. And Emily Dickinson, Eric posts to our chat. Thank you. Mike. Public service announcement. The organization of economic cooperation development in Paris is doing some of the very best work on AI, what its social impacts are, and particularly what governments should do to shape how AI is used and prepare to the impacts. They're having a, it's a five day meeting. They just wrapped up for the day, but tomorrow they'll have two very interesting sessions. For those of them, the West Coast, I don't think you want to be up at midnight, but you could tune into the, the replays and it's OECD.ai. Really, really the right people asking the right questions and not totally diluted. Wow. Much better than Schumer's meeting from what I hear. You think, because it seemed like Schumer's meeting didn't go badly. It seemed like they were interesting things other than not sort of grandstanding, but it certainly drew a lot of attention and certainly everybody seemed to agree on some, like there should be some government involvement in regulating AI seem like a consensus view. And we all agree that we should do something about social media. Which goes back to Stacy's question earlier. Go ahead, Stacy. I feel really naive saying this, but it's something I think about all the time. So I'll just throw it out. I often wonder why we can't, why the tax code can't be used to sort of shape what happens with big tech companies and AI. And part of me knows it's not going to happen because the people working on it are not incentivized to do it. And that leads me to wanting there to be like this other philanthropic kind of agency that gets these great minds together to write up the plan so then the people can push it to those people that are then in full transparency have to either get behind it or not. So I'm just throwing that out there to you greater minds. I would definitely propose that at some point in the near future we ask that question. What are the systemic things that lead us to this venture capital led winner take all tech economy? Tax code is a big part of it because it really favors stock options and the companies that move fast and get first mover advantage, but the other one is patent policy and the ability to create artificial monopolies. Carried interest, Citizens United. There is a large bag of precursor things here. Well, and just one other thing to add. I'm also very concerned about the number of jobs that are being lost through technology. And if there was again, it doesn't seem that taxes have anything to do with how much money goes into the community where a business is. And I'm wondering why that can't be. Just things that would be good to just talk about. But we're talking about jobs that are lost. Why don't we talk about the jobs that are gained, right? Because there is such an urgent need for people to deploy these technologies as they emerge and make a difference here. So I would focus on the opportunities that are available now. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking about going to a supermarket and where I knew people that were making a decent living because they had been at the supermarket for a long time. Now we're all standing next to this machine and there's people just watching and the people that at least were in a union that were at least earning a decent wage. They can't do that anymore. It seems there's a lot going on in the labor movement. So I'm not against technology. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to say there needs to be some way to make sure the money is staying in the community. I told a story yesterday that I need to go fact check. But it's about longshoremen and containerization in shipping. New York City, Manhattan proper and San Francisco used to be major working ports. The reason that San Francisco has neighborhoods called China Basin and India Basin is that the China Clippers and the India Kippler Clippers used to come into those places and that's where all the goods would sort of get taken off and so forth. There were customs houses, the whole thing. At some point recently, much more recently, Sea Land I think pioneered the use of containers and all of a sudden container shipping ate the world and these companies were trying to and the cities were trying to negotiate with longshoremen who were like, no, you are not taking away our ability to load and unload ships. That is what we've been doing. We have a trade and I think what happened was they basically reached an agreement where the longshoremen's union agreed never to hire another person. Like they were going to be no new longshoremen. They guaranteed those people whatever benefits they thought they were getting. They basically made it so that their lives were going to play out the way they thought their lives would play out. And then the port of Newark and the port of Oakland became fully automated containerized ports, became huge working ports and took over and now there's no trade like this happening in Manhattan or San Francisco, none whatsoever. And so all the shipping transformed and changed and the people being displaced were for one generation only sort of made content and allowed to move to something else or to go become automated port operators sitting up in the booth going, whatever, I don't know. But the story of how labor transitions happen is brutal and ugly and long and intricate and interesting actually fascinating and government and union and other attempts to fight that are also fascinating and that is a really interesting piece of how things work. And the fact that you can ship a container or at least pre-pandemic you could move a container of anything anywhere between two ports for $3,000 roughly was a piece of globalization's magic that made things really super cheap anyplace that and underpaying everybody along the way. So anyway, sorry you opened a can of worms in my head because this is one of those issues that leads us down to the place that we're in right now is is how and right now we're facing a tremendous number of labor displacements and we're not having these conversations. We're not talking about useful productive and interesting ways and the the auto union strike that's probably going to start tomorrow, one of their points alongside other points like, hey we want a 32 hour working week with 40 hours of pay. But one of their working points is EV production requires many fewer workers, what's going to happen to the workers which reminds me of the longshoremen's problem. And the unions are trying to figure out how to protect the number of workers that are in the union because union membership size is one of their power bases that's how they that's how they look strong and big. And EV seems inevitable so there's this real messy thing going on. Well with the image of the can of worms in my head and everybody's minds right now I think that's a good place for us to wrap this call. See you in a week and we'll I think next week we'll come back to our sort of collapse and renewal topic and see if we can't pick a pick a piece of it and chew on it if you have good ideas for how to make that more useful fruitful productive enjoyable let us know on the matter most channel talk out loud over there or on the mailing list but I'd love to sort of go back there another time so let's be careful out there thanks all wax on wax off you look like you're cleaning your screen a little bit get this little smudge off and this smudge thanks