#(and being in a pandemic and not going in person for school is outside stimuli if that wasn’t obvious btw)

[crybaby-bkg]

it was three years on the third of this month since I started writing fics for bnha 🥲 and to think I started writing fics again bc of a bkdk dream that I couldn’t stop thinking about :))))

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Quarantine Blues and the Power of a Jigsaw Puzzle (Worldcrunch) A sudden rush of stress, trouble sleeping or eating, overwhelming feelings of helplessness, general fatigue. Does it sound familiar? With approximately half the world still forced to live in lockdown, old and new psychological disorders are a widely diffused side-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent study led by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 45% of Americans feel the current health crisis had impacted their mental health. In France, Le Figaro reported this week that 74% of adults in a recent survey developed sleeping disorders and 34% showed signs of psychological distress. Humans are social animals, and while we can acknowledge that our modern digital tools are providing instant links in the face of our respective quarantines, we are also seeing how crucial in-person interaction and stimuli are to the human experience. Alongside the more severe threats to our emotional state is a seemingly less menacing effect: boredom. There is a fine line between enjoying some spare time to do nothing and repeatedly having nothing to do, especially when we yearn for distraction from the current uncertainty of the outside world. Board games that were piling up dust in the basement are seeing the light of day again and solo players indeed are able to play across the computer screen with friends and strangers. Similarly, the lockdown has created one of the highest recorded demand for jigsaw puzzles, a pastime whose time had seemed to have passed two or three generations ago. The American Puzzle Warehouse reported a jump of 2,000% in business compared to the same period last year. When the world seems to fall apart, putting back pieces together could be the ultimate satisfaction.

Coronavirus could erode global fight against other diseases (AP) Lavina D’Souza hasn’t been able to collect her government-supplied anti-HIV medication since the abrupt lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people last month during the coronavirus outbreak. Marooned in a small city away from her home in Mumbai, the medicine she needs to manage her disease has run out. The 43-year-old is afraid that her immune system will crash: “Any disease, the coronavirus or something else, I’ll fall sick faster.” As the world focuses on the pandemic, experts fear losing ground in the long fight against other infectious diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and cholera that kill millions every year. Also at risk are decadeslong efforts that allowed the World Health Organization to set target dates for eradicating malaria, polio and other illnesses. With the coronavirus overwhelming hospitals, redirecting medical staff, causing supply shortages and suspending health services, “our greatest fear” is resources for other diseases being diverted and depleted, said Dr. John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

IMF warns of social unrest (Foreign Policy) The International Monetary Fund has warned of social unrest developing in countries where coronavirus prevention measures are seen as insufficient or unfair to poorer workers. The IMF said that although governments have taken swift action to inject stimulus funds into their economies, even more money would be needed once the crisis subsides. The organization expects global public debt to rise by 13 percent in 2020 to almost 96 percent of global gross domestic product.

After Coronavirus, Colleges Worry: Will Students Come Back? (NYT) For years, Claire McCarville dreamed of going to college in New York or Los Angeles, and was thrilled last month to get accepted to selective schools in both places. But earlier this month, she sent a $300 deposit to Arizona State University, a 15-minute drive from her home in Phoenix. “It made more sense,” she said, “in light of the virus.” Across the country, students like Ms. McCarville are rethinking their choices in a world altered by the pandemic. And universities, concerned about the potential for shrinking enrollment and lost revenue, are making a wave of decisions in response that could profoundly alter the landscape of higher education for years to come. Lucrative spring sports seasons have been canceled, room and board payments have been refunded, and students at some schools are demanding hefty tuition discounts for what they see as a lost spring term. Other revenue sources like study abroad programs and campus bookstores have dried up, and federal research funding is threatened. Some institutions are projecting $100 million losses for the spring, and many are now bracing for an even bigger financial hit in the fall, when some are planning for the possibility of having to continue remote classes.

‘Pretty Catastrophic’ Month for Retailers (NYT) Retail sales plunged in March, offering a grim snapshot of the coronavirus outbreak’s effect on consumer spending, as businesses shuttered from coast to coast and wary shoppers restricted their spending. Total sales, which include retail purchases in stores and online as well as money spent at bars and restaurants, fell 8.7 percent from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The decline was by far the largest in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data. Even that bleak figure doesn’t capture the full impact of the sudden economic freeze on the retail industry. Most states didn’t shut down nonessential businesses until late March or early April, meaning data for the current month could be worse still. “It was a pretty catastrophic drop-off in that back half of the month,” said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester Research. She said April “may be one of the worst months ever.”

Now Arriving at La Guardia Airport: One Passenger (NYT) Jim Mack had made several trips to New York City before, but had never been the only passenger on a commercial jet landing at a deserted La Guardia Airport. Instead of shuffling into the madhouse that is Terminal B on a typical weeknight, Mr. Mack was greeted by an eerie silence. “It felt like it was either closed or I had landed in the wrong terminal,” he said. He had flown from Tampa, Fla.--just him and a Southwest Airlines crew--and now he was striding up the concourse toward baggage claim. The only luggage on the carousel was his. The lone Uber driver was waiting for him. The coronavirus pandemic has unraveled air travel in the United States and turned some of the world’s busiest airports into giant voids. The nation’s air-traffic system is still functioning. But airlines have slashed their schedules, and even on the dwindling number of remaining flights very few seats are filled.

As Danish schools reopen, some worried parents are keeping their children home (Washington Post) The children pressed down on a hand sanitizer dispenser and kept a safe distance from one another as they filed into Ellebjerg School in central Copenhagen on Thursday. But while they settled into their lessons, with a new limit of 10 students per room, some of their classmates remained at home, their families resistant to participating in what they see as a public policy experiment. Denmark this week became the first country in Europe to reopen schools--nursery and primary up to fifth grade--as a start to lifting a coronavirus lockdown imposed on March 12. Although the country has reported 6,879 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 309 deaths, new infections have been decreasing since a peak on April 1, giving the government confidence that a cautious reopening was possible. But thousands of families are opposed to sending their kids back to school so quickly. It’s unclear whether the same opposition will arise in other countries as they try to pivot from more than a month of restrictive measures aimed at slowing the pandemic’s spread. Officials are weighing the negatives of distance learning, which can exacerbate inequality, and the reality that many parents won’t be able to return to work if their children are still home--a point that Denmark’s prime minister specifically noted Wednesday in a surprise visit to a school here.

At least 668 sailors infected after coronavirus outbreak aboard French aircraft carrier, Defense Ministry says (Washington Post) Nearly a third of the crew aboard a French aircraft carrier and its support vessels have tested positive for coronavirus, the country’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday. As test results from 1,767 sailors on the Charles de Gaulle and other ships within its battle group continue to arrive, at least 668 have contracted the virus, officials said. More than 30 are now being treated in the hospital with one person in intensive care, Agence France-Presse reported. In the meantime, the rest of the crew has been quarantined at a military base in the French port city of Toulon.

Germany to ease lockdown (Foreign Policy) Germany is following the lead of its southern neighbor Austria by preparing to ease its lockdown measures. Starting May 4, Germany will begin reopening smaller shops and allowing schools to reopen, with priority given to final-year students. Hairdressers will also be allowed to open, but larger gathering points like bars, restaurants, and cinemas would still be banned. German Chancellor Angela Merkel played down talk of larger scale reopening, saying Germany had achieved merely a “fragile intermediate success” in its battle against the coronavirus.

China tries to revive economy but consumer engine sputters (AP) China, where the coronavirus pandemic started in December, is cautiously trying to get back to business, but it’s not easy when many millions of workers are wary of spending much or even going out. Factories and shops nationwide shut down starting in late January. Millions of families were told to stay home under unprecedented controls that have been copied by the United States, Europe and India. The ruling Communist Party says the outbreak, which had killed more than 3,340 people among more than 82,341 confirmed cases as of Thursday, is under control. But the damage to Chinese lives and the economy is lingering. Truck salesman Zhang Hu is living the dilemma holding back the recovery. The 27-year-old from the central city of Zhengzhou has gone back to work, but with few people looking to buy 20-ton trucks, his income has fallen by half. Like many millions of others, he is pinching pennies.

U.S. Navy complains of harassment in Persian Gulf (Foreign Policy) The U.S. Navy said Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vessels conducted “dangerous and provocative” approaches to U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf in a statement on Wednesday. The U.S. Fifth Fleet said it was in international waters and carrying out exercises when the boats approached. Iran has yet to respond to the U.S. statement.

Australia to send aid to Fiji after cyclone tears across Pacific (Reuters) Australia is to send humanitarian aid to Fiji after a tropical cyclone caused widespread destruction across the Pacific, Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne said on Thursday. Cyclone Harold, a category five storm, lashed several island nations in the Pacific last week, killing dozens of people, flooding towns and leaving many homeless. In Fiji, thousands of people remain without electricity, aid agencies say, and many need immediate assistance.

[bnvupdates]

Skills We Should Be Teaching Our Kids During Lockdown

This past year has been challenging, to say the least. For those of us with children, there have been additional struggles due to the necessity of school closures or balancing childcare while working from home. The costs associated with this have already disproportionately affected the financially strained middle classes. Needless to say, these issues have been met with very little government support or guidance.    

In the absence of the financial advantages of the wealthy, we must use our creativity and intelligence — academic and emotional — to create positives from this difficult time. As such, many of us are recognizing that it may be more appropriate for our kids to spend this time away from the classroom engaging with more practical life lessons. 

This raises the question of what types of skills are best to teach our children at this time. What lessons represent both practical value and are achievable without specialist instruction or equipment? Let’s delve into what can help our children grow through this pandemic toward becoming capable, proactive citizens.  

Home Care

One of the advantages of kids being at home is the opportunity to use the operation of the home itself as a learning tool. While school can do an excellent job of providing some personal and social education, many kids still go into the real world without a practical knowledge of how to keep a home in order. Sure, they’ll learn a lot from trial and error when they get their own places. But now is a great time to teach them some abilities that will stand them in good stead.

Image Source: Julia Cameron at Pexels

Alongside their normal chores, show them that when something in the home goes wrong there isn’t necessarily a need to call out a professional. Teach your kids the early warning signs of potential damage to the property. Introduce them to the sounds that could indicate a leak in the water pipes or whistling in the windows that could suggest worn weather stripping. Give them the freedom to get hands-on in the repairs, but give them the guidance they need to stay safe while doing so.  Among the most important skills that you can teach your kids from home during this time is self-sufficiency. This doesn’t just mean the physical repairs, it also about the economics of running a home. Give them some insight into the costs of your home, and how you build a budget accordingly. Introduce them to accounting software and apps you use to keep everything in order. Show them that the costs of running a home might seem overwhelming, but these economic strategies help to make it manageable. This not only improves their practical math skills but also gives them insight into the not so obvious expenses— taxes, utilities, savings — that help to keep home life sustainable.  

Road Safety

The world isn’t completely cut off to you and your children. There are still opportunities for you to safely explore what the outside world has to offer as well as teach them more about the tools they can use to discover the world. For older preteens and teenagers, diving into the finer points of owning a vehicle can be a fascinating and practical experience.

Vehicle maintenance can double up as a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) lesson and provide practical skills. Let kids get their hands dirty as you show them that there are aspects of a car the owner can take care of themselves to ensure performance and safety — not to mention save money. Talk them through the theory behind the features of the car — the internal combustion engine, the brakes, even how tire wear can affect adherence to the road. Then work together to change spark plugs, replace brake pads, and top up fluids. This approach helps to give them context about why they’re taking these actions. 

If your child has reached an appropriate age, this can also be the perfect time to begin teaching them how to drive. When the roads are quiet due to most people being busy at work, this presents opportunities to help them build their confidence and knowledge behind the wheel. Discuss the common habits that can result in distracted driving and why they can be dangerous. Help them to understand that cell phone use, eating or drinking, and fixing your appearance have no place while in control of a vehicle. This will help them to become skilled and responsible drivers.  

Health and Wellness

This year has highlighted just how important it is to understand our healthcare. Not only does health education improve our own wellness, it also puts us in a better position to make decisions when challenges such as this pandemic come along. Alongside the specifics of hygiene and sanitation both inside and out of the home that are common in our current crisis, there are other practical lessons to learn.  

The fundamentals of first aid are valuable parts of a practical education. There will likely be times in your kid’s life that they will either be subject to or in the vicinity of accidents, and they mustn’t have just the skills but the confidence to respond. If you are unable to teach them how to dress wounds or perform CPR, there are organizations — such as the Red Cross that provide online and in-person training and support materials. 

Beyond emergency scenarios, this can also be a great time to give your kids an awareness of their general health and wellness. Teach them about exercise routines, and how to plan and cook nutritionally balanced meals. Don’t ignore the importance of good mental health habits, either. Teach them how to include meditation and mindfulness as a part of their everyday routine. Show them how to responsibly recognize, assess, and handle the negative stimuli present in the media, and our society in general. 

Conclusion  

Academic classes are far from the only valuable form of education. During lockdown, parents have the opportunity to pass on practical skills to their kids that they may not have the chance to gain in school. Not only can these lessons fit around parents’ already busy schedules, but they can help their children develop into better-rounded, capable people. 

from https://ift.tt/2NznFd2

[shirlleycoyle]

Gun Detection AI is Being Trained With Homemade ‘Active Shooter’ Videos

In Huntsville, Alabama, there is a room with green walls and a green ceiling. Dangling down the center is a fishing line attached to a motor mounted to the ceiling, which moves a procession of guns tied to the translucent line.

The staff at Arcarithm bought each of the 10 best-selling firearm models in the U.S.: Rugers, Glocks, Sig Sauers. Pistols and long guns are dangled from the line. The motor rotates them around the room, helping a camera mounted to a mobile platform photograph them from multiple angles. “It’s just like a movie set,” said Arcarithm president and CEO Randy E. Riley.

This process creates about 5,000 images of each gun floating ethereally. Arcarithm’s computer programmers then replace the green backdrop with different environments, like fields, forests, and city streets. They add rain or snow or fog or sun. A program then randomly distorts the images. The result is 30,000 to 50,000 images of the same gun, from multiple angles, in different synthetic settings and of varying degrees of visibility.

The point of creating this vast portfolio of digital gun art is to feed an algorithm made to detect a firearm as soon as a security camera catches it being drawn by synthetically creating tens of thousands of ways each gun may appear. Arcarithm is one of several companies developing automated active shooter detection technology in the hopes of selling it to schools, hotels, entertainment venues and the owners of any location that could be the site of one of America’s 15,000 annual gun murders and 29,000 gun injuries.

Among the other sellers are Omnilert, a longtime vendor of safety notification software, and newcomers ZeroEyes, Defendry, and Athena Securities. Some cities employ a surveillance system of acoustic sensors to instantly detect gunshots. These companies promise to do one better and save precious minutes by alerting police or security personnel before the first shot is fired.

They are all maneuvering around a problem: Algorithms, at their most basic level, collect data that is categorized, so they can independently determine if something new is of that category. In the tech industry, it’s generally believed that more data means a sharper algorithm. For companies that want to detect gunmen, therein lies one dilemma.

Screenshot from a promotional video for Omnilert's Gun Detect software

Visual detection machine learning has been developed for a wide range of uses, including diagnosing medical conditions and identifying pedestrians in a roadway. Researchers behind those efforts have access to nearly limitless pictures of tumors and inflammation and videos of joggers or dog walkers.

However, due to sensitivity, little footage from the start of shootings is readily available, certainly not enough to program a system that is supposed to differentiate a gun from a cell phone or a hairbrush reliably hundreds or thousands of times a day. Such footage is scrubbed from all but the darkest corners of the internet. There’s no inventory of it on Roboflow, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and other libraries of images for machine learning (though Roboflow does have a supply of still photos of guns).

The reliability of gun detection systems is of serious consequence to the people they monitor. This year, the Lockport City School District, in Upstate New York, implemented an algorithmic system to recognize faces and detect weapons. The technology misidentified black children at a higher rate, and emails between employees of its creator, ST Technologies, show the Canadian company was struggling to stop the system from mistaking broom handles for guns after it was implemented.

“I have concerns about the reliability of the object detection system and that system misidentifying a student holding a baseball bat and [police] will go and harass that student with a baseball bat,” said Daniel Lawrence, a researcher at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, who has studied technology in crime detection.

Alternatively, Lawrence said, police tend to take these alerts less seriously if they are always detecting low-priority activity or making false positives. “Everything depends on accuracy,” he said.

To train a computer program to recognize a gun as soon as it’s drawn—and then to test that program—companies have to get creative. And a bit weird.

Arcarithm, founded as a military and security contractor by three former Lockheed Martin employees, started by programming cameras to detect drones overhead. A client challenged them to come up with a system to detect guns. “If we can do drones, we can do anything,” said Riley, “so we spent the next ten years trying to tell if a guy has a gun or a broom and it turns out we can.”

Theoretically, the vast array of distortions and alterations in images feeding Arcarithm’s algorithm would account for ways a gun is obscured in real footage—by hands, by climate, or by distance. Through seeing so many common guns so many ways, the algorithm would supposedly become so familiar with guns, it could spot one instantly.

To test if their algorithm responds to the intended stimuli, Arcarithm staffers have staged armed invasions of their own headquarters using airsoft guns, which use condensed gas to shoot tiny, non-lethal plastic pellets. They’ve also taken to a nearby field to record themselves. It is programmers and desk employees cosplaying as criminals or militiamen. “All the guys are doing it,” said Riley. “They usually work on the development end.” He adds that they warn the sheriff’s department, which usually sends an observer.

Arcarithm has not found any buyers outside the U.S. military, which seeks an alert system for armed people coming towards a base. Riley said he has approached the operator of a theme park and a school system near Huntsville.

Of the other U.S. companies selling gun detection technology, Athena did not respond to an interview request from Motherboard, and seems to have pivoted to making a dubiously marketed technology that monitors people’s temperature amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A spokesperson for ZeroEyes said its technology is proprietary so they would not discuss it. A representative for Defendry said the company declined because it did not want its name in an article published by VICE Media.

Omnilert has supplied notification systems, mainly to colleges and universities, since 2003, and unveiled its Gun Detect software in October.

CEO Dave Fraser describes a kitchen sink approach to the data-to-feed-the-algorithm problem. His company has used technology made to produce video games to create CGI simulations of the first moments of hold-ups and shooting sprees. They’ve trained the algorithm on Hollywood movies (he named John Wick). And there is also what Fraser dubbed “pajama videos,” homemade clips of employees walking around with guns (real and toy) recorded in their homes during the COVID-19 remote work months. He’s also outsourced the task to a few video content creators.

“We’ve built up an internet database of ourselves and our contractors brandishing guns,” said Fraser. “We have thousands of hours of data we created and we own.” Homemade videos are used to both feed and test the algorithm.

The videos fill up the company Slack channel, he said. And programmers and other desk employees are tasked with creating them.

Even their public director of marketing, Elizabeth Venafro, has contributed self-filmed clips of herself marching through her home toting a toy rifle, which “felt very weird, as a non-gun-owner,” she said.

A graphic demonstrating Arcarithm's Exigent-GR gun detection system

Experts in academia say that machine learning can now identify objects, even from a distance, but the process hinges on sufficient data.

“Today, we are much better than we were five years ago,” Ali Farhadi, an associate professor at the University of Washington working in computer vision and machine learning, told Motherboard. “We can detect objects fairly reliably.” Each year, smaller and more specialized objects are detectable and computer scientists can program algorithms to identify the body motions and context around them. “Not only can we see scissors but we know how people act when they are cutting things,” he said.

Visual identification requires a vast amount of varied data. Even differences in the sun path between the northern and southern hemispheres and subtle differences in background scenery can cause the program to be less effective, he said. “You want something that works as well in American cities as Indian cities,” said Farhadi. It’s even best to get footage from the types of cameras one expects to be in the field obtaining the feed, he said.

Karthik Ramani, a professor in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, completed a project that trained computer learning to identify mechanical objects so as to help engineers find exact matches and replacements. Machine learning is capable of identifying detailed objects, he said, but synthetic data is no replacement for the thing.

In CGI-created images, “I was seeing a loss of energy,” said Ramani. “You don’t get the real-world noise and reflections and metals are shiny and things can get confused. As humans, we see this and we get used to it. The machine doesn’t know these things yet.”

Some false positives are inevitable, Fraser and Riley both conceded. But both claim the technology can give first responders a few precious minutes, or seconds, to save lives.

Lawrence, of the Urban Institute, said once any surveillance or analytic technology comes into the hands of police departments, it's inevitably used to target poor, minority areas. “It is over-applied in communities with persons of color,” he said. Such neighborhoods are disproportionately policed, and the use of technology like predictive policing is a major driver of those statistics, creating a feedback loop.

“This technology is very expensive and it makes no sense to have it applied to the entire city,” he said.

However, Lawrence does not think cities will buy gun detection software in the near future. The summer racial justice protests and the “defund the police” movement have caused cities to shrink from buying expensive, futuristic equipment for police purposes. “I think as a society, we are redefining what policing is and how much money should be allotted to what and how much money should go to the police,” he said. “I think we are on the precipice of using money to combat crime and the causes of crime in a different way.”

He thinks the buyers of the next generation of gun detection software will be private companies, but once a gun is thought to be detected, “the call will go to the police.”

It is widely acknowledged that the ubiquity of guns in the United States is one reason the number of police killings in the U.S. dwarf those of other countries. Police shootings of Black people sometimes begin with the excuse that the officer thought the person had a gun, including the deaths of Casey Goodman, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice, and Amadou Diallo. During a traffic stop, Philando Castile informed an officer he possessed a legal gun and the cop immediately  opened fire.

Like many companies who make automated systems, Omnilert defends its gun-detection technology by noting that the final decision is made by a human being. “It could automatically lock the door on a suspect,” said Riley. “Now it’s up to the police to show up and see what this person does.”

As for a police overreaction, Fraser said, “It’s a possibility. We tend to look at this as ‘no technology is perfect.’ We tend to think it’s a positive to put this technology in our customer’s hands rather than have them rely on hearsay or gunshots when it’s too late.”

The possibility is enough for Meredith Whittaker, faculty director of the AI Now Institute at New York University, to reject the use of the technology outright. Whittaker and other AI ethicists and scholars have noted that all algorithmic systems contain bias, and this fundamental flaw can't simply be fixed with more data or a software update.

“They shouldn’t purchase anything like this,” she said of those who would buy gun-detection technology. “There is no dataset that would make this work. They are flawed, they are racist and they are being put into schools.” 

Gun Detection AI is Being Trained With Homemade ‘Active Shooter’ Videos syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[mikazukikannagisjourney]

Channeled (?) Message for these Tumultuous Times -  A Call to Arms for the "Most Unlikely" (timeless)

Abstract: Within the next 6-10 years, the need to self-isolate due to energetic effects from the Quantum field only increases. The community quarantines and the social distancing measures will eventually become the norm, and this brief Saturn in Aquarius season only gives the entire world a glimpse of things to come before retrograding back to Capricorn within May 2020 to do one final slide. Thus it is increasingly important to be even more self-reliant, and self-mastery our vehicle to keep on surviving and thriving, because in the future the group systems that were once relied upon will not be the strong and stable support for the energetically renewed generations. This message pertains to all, but most especially for the Pluto in Libra and Pluto in Scorpio generations, who are the bridges between what has been and what things shall become. 

Warning: Long post ahead. You have been warned.

Hi everyone, how are you all coping with the social distancing and the  community quarantine measures? And if you're an introvert, yeah how's the usual life lol but I'm not even kidding in that sense. I hope you're all doing well, staying healthy, happy and safe. But for the people who are losing their minds due to cabin fever, I hope this message brings you a level of comfort and empowerment after reading it in its entirety.

I don't normally put "channeled message" in most of my posts because I feel like it's redundant, I mean, most of what I post in here are stuff I get from the etheric realms and just write in here to provide information to those who need it. But this one has been bugging me each time I meditate so I figured this must be an urgent matter, and thus this early Aries New Moon message comes to you now. 

The Spiritual Implication of the Community Quarantines and Social Distancing 

Not sure about other people, but from the energies that I have been feeling ever since the Aussie Wildfires and the volcanic eruption that happened in Taal just hinted at me that such events are only a prelude on the things to come. Separations and isolations were only going to increase. I didn't dare post anything about it since I was too busy detaching from the collective and just focusing on channeling energy to the world. Honestly that should have been a light bulb moment for me but again, I thought it was nothing because I was already distancing not just from the chaotic collective but also from a lot of people, by conscious and energetic choice.

I felt like I needed to do what I was supposed to do here. And I guess for me, it was fine. I am in between jobs so might as well do something to energetically clear the world. Once the chaos cleared, I thought I could breathe a sigh of relief. So even if I was 80% pure anxiety, I tried to drown that through more meditations, energy healings and watching owls and crack vids. Spare me the judgment, I'm used to that lol. For a while, it was nice and quiet.

But... Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Lol I should keep that under wraps but still, the message is the same. 

Because when the Year of the Metal Rat came, that's when the COVID-19 issue started bursting from the seams (after being kept for so long. I mean, what else can you expect when trying to hide something that only keeps expanding, like bread rising due to yeast? ooops.). By then, things have been too much of a mess that fear and panic takes over, unless one is calm enough to detach and meditate. Because to be honest, staying calm and collected keeps our sanity readily available, and when we can decide with the combined forces of our two brain hemispheres we get to make the best choices, long-term or otherwise. Otherwise, fear-based decisions just lead to worse situations, and it's only going to snowball from there.

So what's the point?

Simple, in order to be free from the fear collective being built around this whole "pandemic" thing, aside from distancing from an excessive exposure to the news being bombarded faster than the speed of light, it is also important to carve out some time to learn new stuff. Like the mechanisms of disease transmission, how viruses multiply (that's my jam), how to manage epidemics, the pandemics that happened in the past century and what where the circumstances that made these dangerous or at the very least, slightly annoying.

Basically what I am saying here is to be informed by being strategic in how you gather information and using those to help you make better, more informed choices. Be more proactive in assimilating knowledge. Don't take the words of others as gospels of the truth. Heck, you can even doubt what I am saying in this post. Or let it tickle your brain to make new questions to ask the authorities, or create nuggets of thoughts and stuff that you might want to learn more of. Detach and make your own conclusions before you start sharing information in your preferred social media sites. Seriously, nothing is more important now than properly digested information because some people are not as strategic nor intuitive as you, and such sheeple will only eat whatever is tossed to them. But you KNOW you're better than that, which is why you are likely to start connecting dots and trying to make sense of things.

However, it is important that you first do these on your own before regrouping with people you trust and hang out with, otherwise the input from other people can cloud your own personal judgments, and could greatly affect the stuff you were already hanging on to, especially with regards to self-doubt. We don’t need that now, or ever. So serve yourself first, love that part of you first and do the inner work required before you go out to reconnect with people. That's why social distancing is so much more important than now: to improve self-trust and self-confidence in what you're doing. Whatever you're guided to do is what your soul wants you to engage in.

Why Call to Arms?

Because this battle is going to grow into a war, and that war is mostly going to be an internal war: war between what a person believes in deeply versus what the society tells this person, as well as the person's own social programming.

Now, more than ever is the need to remove ALL layers of programming and wounds and energetic blocks very relevant. Because by allowing our true selves to shine from within, can we all shine from the outside. But if blots of doubt and fear dot our existence, there will always be fears to run away from, triggers that can ruin our plans, low-vibrational thoughts that invade our times of peace. All that garbage can keep us stuck, unmoving, unable to move from the past and always fearing the future. And it is a well-known idea in nearly all spiritual communities that being in this stuck place prevents people from enjoying the NOW Moment and creating joy and love and abundance, which we all want.

This is basically a live or die situation for the next few years, and this is a war between who we are internally versus the external stimuli that we have to go through. No fret though, a good meditation and mindfulness practice plus facing our inner demons and turning them into our allies through healings and acceptance can really help get us through. It's a long process, but gaining stability and peace from such activities can really help reap in the benefits, especially in the long run when there is a need to keep calm and carry on, in all levels.

Why me though? Well, isn't the better question to ask is "Why NOT?" I mean, seriously, the times where relying on other people to do stuff for us in exchange for money or whatever is honestly only going to start decreasing, especially as we approach a great energetic shift. And that new shift is like the dot com boom and bubble bust period, where stuff just came and went in less than 10 years. So just imagine, things seem to only get better and better and then poof. Gone. Where do we go from there?

OK first of all I am not inciting fear in here, I mean, these are actual events that happened, probably even way before the Pluto in Sagittarius generation even understood or heard the first release of Backstreet Boys' Album MILLENNIUM. A lot of them were probably snot-nosed bebehs trying to play snake in their parents' NOKIA 3210 phones. Or something.

But back to you. Why are you being called?

Simple.

You might be one of those people who surfed the wave of that dot com bubble and burst. Here now, gone tomorrow. Or you probably panicked when the Y2K bug became a cultural phenomenon, or worse, the I LOVE YOU VIRUS got into your PC (an ancestor of all other computer AIDS right now). Maybe you were one of the kids who had to raise themselves because the old folks were out making money and you're mostly left at home, or you hang out with your friends after school just to find some sense of family in a way. Or it is possible that you just discovered some weirdly obscure niche such as Japanese Animation but can't share the joys of it because everyone else was obsessed with youth-oriented live action drama stuff, or F.R.I.E.N.D.S. (No judgement though) and whenever you mention Rurouni Kenshin, Yu-Yu Hakusho or Hunter x Hunter nobody batts an eyelash. Even if you stan Yukito and Touya (CCS) for some weird reason. 

If life just isn't making sense right now, just remember those times. Those were frantic times, everything was hanging on a moment, the unknown was just a heartbeat away, but even so, you were able to find some sort of joy and satisfaction to get you through all the crap. You were tested once, and you're still alive now, meaning you were never broken. It just means that in the game of evolution, you were adaptable enough to survive the chaos. YOU'RE WORTHY OF THOR'S HAMMER, so to speak.

How is this going to affect me? 

Well, remember the crazy times of the past? Since life's basically a cycle, the shitty times are going to roll over and make another visit yet again, but honestly, this time there is a bigger world that eventually gets affected a lot by these events. And truth be told, there won't be a lot of beacons of light once the older Pluto generations kick the bucket, especially the boomers that the whole world just can't get enough of (I am being sarcastic here, OK? Though some of them were really good musicians so it's hard to hate them all.). Within 30 years time, the Pluto in Libra and Scorpio people must grow into the sages that will help shape and stabilize the societies that were already changed by the continuous shifts toward self-mastery and self-stability. The younger generations will need more guidance than they will probably admit, and a lot of them will be so stubborn to even admit that they need any help because a large chunk of them were coddled and spoiled and made to think that they're right no matter what other people say, which is why a lot of them have grown to become very rude and selfish (and us millenials get the bad rep with what the younger bunches do, smh oh well). They're also used to bouts of impatience and wanting everything in an instant and perfectly done. Thus the impending need of the guidance of those who ACTUALLY HAD TO do things traditionally aka the hard way without cliffnotes and wiki how to's and all the hacks strewn in the internet. Doing everything by yourself, from scratch. Patience may not have been your virtue but trust me, the younger ones are probably a whole lot more impatient than you, so you're basically a patient person now whether you like it or not lol

But seriously, aside from that, the implications of these is that in the coming years, getting instant results will only turn out to be a lot more painful for everyone involved because the price of getting these through the "unclean" way will only lead to more chaos. A lot more people will rebel due to resentment because they will grow to realize that they're being overworked and underpaid and under-appreciated, plus they're being used as tools and then thrown out once after being used.

Never fear though, because in these times the over-looked members of the society will be sought after by those who will need their help, their talents, their assistance, not because someone says so but because their true, authentic, masterful nature becomes more apparent. Your strengths of making sure the job gets done correctly will be your strongest point, not just because you CAN deliver, but also because you have the uncanny capability of breaking down EVERYTHING into a logical process so that you can show and tell the entire method with everyone else. And people who only use other people because they're basically posers who actually have nothing on their name other than faking their way to the top will eventually be exposed. Thus, honesty and your sense of persistence to achieve your personal goals will be your best asset, and through this process the two generations can help provide assistance and guidance to the younger ones.

What can I do about these shifts?

Actually, it depends. I mean, to be honest it's easier to move with the shifts than force the energies to align to what you want. This is called the Law of Resonance. It’s like riding a wave when you surf, or going into the zone to do something creative. While nearly everyone else is doing their best to work miracles through the Law of Attraction, and getting frustrated because they haven't manifested that shiny new car yet, it is a whole lot better to just focus more on aligning your values and goals towards providing help and service to the world through your work. 

Of course, it's realistic to worry about where you'll live, what you'll eat for the night, or even dispelling the gnawing heartache due to loneliness. Yeah, I get you there fam. But, annoying as it sounds, Source, God, the Higher Powers, or whatever you call the infinite energies give away more energies to those who ask for blessings in order to help others and bless others more, rather than giving energies to those who only want their own lives to improve. This is likely why the Law of Attraction doesn't work for nearly 99% percent of the time: People kept asking to appease their ego or personal needs. 

Disclaimer though: This does not apply to those who are in dire need for food or shelter or protection, but rather to those who only want to be famous or respected by getting their material wants met. It’s because there's a huge energetic difference between those who resonate and those who attract. The resonators tend to find their life purpose quicker by resonating, while those that do their best to attract (under the assumption that they haven't done actual inner work) just keep getting stuck or even reverting to somewhere worse than where they were standing originally, thus making them believe that the Law of Attraction is a lie. But honestly, for everyone who did their inner work by healing and removing the low vibrational energies in their field can use either law or even both and still get some fantastic results.

So going back to your question, what YOU CAN DO with the shifts is to HEAL YOUR SELF. Focus on your own growth. Because you can't help others properly if you're wounded yourself. It's like the emergency flight instructions to put the gas mask on first before you help others. That's applicable and of utmost importance in the spiritual as well as in the 3D life. This ensures that you have enough high vibrations, as well as removing any agendas or resentments toward the people you help. Also, just to be practical, please give up on the notion of forcing everyone else to do this with you. You can only invite others to join, but it's just an option. At the very least, find a supportive person who can guide you to the entire process, but in the end this is a highly-personal journey that you must do ON YOUR OWN. No one else can do this journey for you. Thinking you can solely rely on one idea or guru to do the spiritual awakening journey by taking in your sins is like eating a whole bunch of food and telling someone to poop what you ate for you. That's just not gonna happen. So might as well start cleaning your own crap right now, it's for your own benefit anyways.

To start the process of working with the shifts, you can just shift your energies to instead RESONATE with your Higher Self, as per the Law of Resonance. If you haven't started already, the best thing to do is to go within, and clear as much of the old programming right away. Find out all of your limiting beliefs and reprogram yourself through the grace and power of self-love. This is the kind of love that encompasses your entire being and encircles the world, to the point that you have surpassed the idea of Duality and Polarizing views. You just start seeing everything as an expression of love from the Higher dimensional realms. 

But seriously, it's OK to do fun stuff to stay sane

I am telling you right now, nobody’s going to hold it against you if you still want to do some wholesome fun. And if any spiritual guru out there starts blabbing out  stuff such as watching horror movies or medical drama or whatever like that lowers your vibration, THEY'RE NOT ON MY ENRICHMENT TEAM. I just disagree with them wholeheartedly on that aspect.

Why?

Simply because despite being on the spiritual awakening journey myself, it was actually the opposite for me. After realizing that I'm a spiritual being having a human experience, that gave me a lot more courage to watch really gory and scary movies, because I know deep down, that shi* ain't real. So why should I fear? I'm supposed to live all aspects of the human experience, and watching something like the entire Conjuring franchise is an option that I can get on board with. Truth be told, after my awakening process and still walking this spiritual journey, I just get to enjoy a lot of the stuff with a greater depth of perspective. It feels so much different from when I was still living in the 3D consciousness state.

I actually found this to be true when I started binge-watching all of the Harry Potter books and movies, as well as the LOTR trilogy. When I compared what I felt and the stuff that went through my brain before and after awakening, I had greater appreciation for all of the characters, I simply saw each one as pivotal to the movement of the entire plot. Otherwise, nobody's going to learn and become stronger, and that creates character stagnation, which I honestly just think makes the hero’s journey stale. It's like setting up a character like Naruto, Ichigo or Saitama into overpowering mode right from the start without running into any obstacles. We all want our heroes to have that journey of growth, so why not see that into our own lives as well? Might as well be the cheerleader of our lives, right? So just enjoy this meatbody ride and to heck with the haters. You do you, have as much legal fun as you want.

The bottomline of this entire long-ass post is that self-reliance will become the new norm. And while everyone has some sense of self-reliance, those who were born around the Pluto generations of Libra and Scorpio will have their chance to shine, because this has been their thing since they were young. The lessons that they learned growing up will become even more relevant, as being the generations that were living between the boomer age and the internet boom age their skills of trusting their self, what they learned through experiences will be of great value in the times of information overload and the need to scour what works and what doesn’t.

Maybe you never had your shining moment because you let it pass you by. It's even possible that you're angry because everyone seems to be flying high and you're left on the ground eating dirt because you believed in yourself and not in the prevailing status quo. But I hope you still keep the faith alive, because there's a strong reason why you just keep sticking to your higher consciousness guns, and those will be revealed in the next 6-10 years. As to why this time period, you can check out this link from the Jovian Archive. Even if you're not too familiar with Human Design, the information here may have some value for you, or at the very least, give you some assurance that everything is cyclic and we're only moving forward with more shifts toward unknown territory. Just know that everyone who's been relying way too much on other people, whether they know it or do it deliberately will be greatly affected by the sudden shifts, and for the first time in a long time their ability to do things entirely by themselves will be tested. Spoiler alert: not everyone's gonna survive or even enjoy that ride. It's like separating the chaff from the grain, and if you're reading this right now, YOU ARE ONE AWESOME GRAIN.

I hope that this channeled message gives you support during these troubled times. As always, stay healthy and safe, and most importantly, use both hemispheres of the brain, your logical and intuitive side to stay sane. The time to play with both polarities in order to move beyond duality pretty much started already, and there's no better time than now, to begin seeing the two sides of everything and loving the entire thing because it's an all for one, one for all reality.

Thank you so much for taking your time to read this very long post. May you become the healing you seek. 

三日月🌙

Mikazuki

Links to Resources or Extra Readings:

Jovian Archive Post - Support During the COVID-19

How to get your Human Design Chart

My Pluto Generations Post

How to generate your natal birth chart wheel

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PS. If you found the information in this post to be very helpful, insightful, and of great value to you and your own personal journey, please feel free to reblog, share and heart/like, or if you feel super-generous, energetic exchanges are welcomed! Please click here and use this email address: may_chan_otaku@yahoo.com

Thank you so much and be blessed!

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Quebec requires students to return to class, and the number of families home-schooling jumps (Washington Post) School reopening plans across Canada vary. Parents in Quebec are challenging the mandatory return in that province because of structural deficiencies, such as large class sizes, small classrooms and poor ventilation. Critics from British Columbia to Nova Scotia say officials aren’t doing enough to address these problems. They worry about what might happen as temperatures cool and people spend more time in close quarters indoors. Now, in-person attendance is mandatory and there’s no limit on class sizes in elementary schools. Children can qualify for distance learning if they have a doctor’s note, but the guidance for physicians is strict and recommends even most students with serious or chronic illnesses attend school. That includes some children with cancer, waiting for an organ transplant or on dialysis. The other option is to withdraw children from the formal educational system and home-school them. The number of children home-schooled in Quebec jumped 39 percent from March 10 to Aug. 24, according to the provincial education ministry. Noémi Berlus, the director of a Quebec association for home-based education, said the number of families in her group doubled from 850 last year to 1,701 this year. Some new members had long considered home schooling, she said, but others have children or family members with chronic illnesses, were unable to get a medical exemption and worried a return to school wouldn’t be safe.

A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression (Pew Research Center) The coronavirus outbreak has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading early this year, surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era. In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of monthly Census Bureau data. Before 2020, the highest measured value was in the 1940 census at the end of the Great Depression, when 48% of young adults lived with their parents. The peak may have been higher during the worst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, but there is no data for that period.

Scorched earth: Record 2 million acres burned in California (AP) Wildfires have burned a record 2 million acres in California this year, and the danger for more destruction is so high the U.S. Forest Service announced Monday it was closing all eight national forests in the southern half of the state. After a typically dry summer, California is parched heading into fall and what normally is the most dangerous time for wildfires. Two of the three largest fires in state history are burning in the San Francisco Bay Area. More than 14,000 firefighters are battling those fires and dozens of others more around California. A three-day heat wave brought triple-digit temperatures to much of the state during Labor Day weekend. But right behind it was a weather system with dry winds that could fan fires. The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, was preparing to cut power to 158,000 customers in 21 counties in the northern half of the state to reduce the possibility its lines and other equipment could spark new fires. Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said it’s “unnerving” to have reached a record for acreage burned when September and October usually are the worst for fires because vegetation has dried out and high winds are more common. The previous high was 1.96 million acres burned in 2018. Cal Fire began tracking the numbers in 1987.

Migrants stalled by pandemic (AP) Duperat Laurette fled Haiti after her country’s massive 2010 earthquake, making her way first to the Dominican Republic, then Chile and five years later to Panama, all with the dream of reaching the U.S. and finding a job to help support 14 siblings left behind in Haiti. The coronavirus finally stopped her. Panama, the slender bottleneck between the North and South American coninents, is a transit point for virtually every migrant heading from South America to the United States by land and it closed its borders on March 16 to halt the spread of COVID-19. The closure left nearly 2,000 migrants from Haiti and a handful of African and Asian countries stuck in camps in the jungle along Panama’s northern and southern borders. They are among hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of migrants stranded in countries around the world because of virus-related border closures. Thousands of temporary workers from around Asia were stuck outside New Zealand when that country closed its borders. Other Asian workers got stranded in Moscow airports. Migrants have also been left in makeshift conditions in the Sahara Desert after being expelled without warning from detention centers in Algeria and Libya.

U.S. extradition trial for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange begins in London (Washington Post) The long-delayed evidentiary hearing in the extradition case of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to the courtroom in London Monday. U.S. prosecutors say the Australian publisher and activist violated the Espionage Act by conspiring to obtain and disclose hundreds of thousands of pages of secret government documents, including classified diplomatic cables and sensitive reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They want Assange transported to Northern Virginia to face federal charges. Assange is fighting the extradition. His lawyers argue that the crimes of which he’s accused are “purely political offenses” and say British treaty law should protect him from forced transfer.

Hospital: Russia’s Alexei Navalny out of coma, is responsive (AP) Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s condition has improved, allowing doctors to take him out of an induced coma, the German hospital treating him said Monday. Navalny, a fierce, high-profile critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was flown to Germany last month after falling ill on Aug. 20 on a domestic flight in Russia. German chemical weapons experts say tests show the 44-year-old was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent, prompting the German government last week to demand that Russia investigate the case. “The patient has been removed from his medically induced coma and is being weaned off mechanical ventilation,” Berlin’s Charite hospital said in a statement. “He is responding to verbal stimuli. It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning.” Russia has denied that the Kremlin was involved in poisoning Navalny and accused Germany of failing to provide evidence about the poisoning that it requested in late August.

Belarus opposition leader seized on Minsk street, local media says (Washington Post) Maria Kolesnikova, one of three Belarus women who ran the opposition campaign against longtime authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko, was detained by a group of unknown men and shoved into a van Monday morning, according to independent Belarusian media citing a witness. Kolesnikova is the only remaining top opposition figure still in Minsk, after the two other women left Belarus in the wake of a disputed election result that has triggered weeks of mass street protests. Two others figures involved in the Coordination Council, a group of civic leaders set up by the opposition to negotiate a power transition, also disappeared Monday morning, according to the opposition. “Their whereabouts are unknown,” the council said in a statement Monday, accusing the regime of using methods of terror. “Obviously such methods are illegal and cannot lead to any result other than the aggravation of the situation in the country, a deepening of the crisis and further growth of protests.”

India now 2nd behind US in virus cases amid economic pain (AP) India’s increasing coronavirus caseload made the Asian giant the world’s second-worst-hit country behind the United States on Monday, as its efforts to head off economic disaster from the pandemic gain urgency. The 90,802 cases added in the past 24 hours pushed India’s total past Brazil with more than 4.2 million cases. India is now behind only the United States, where more than 6.2 million people have been infected, according to Johns Hopkins University. The world’s second-most populous country with 1.4 billion people, India has been recording the world’s largest daily increases in coronavirus cases for almost a month.

Hong Kong Police Make Sweeping Arrests as Protests Return (Bloomberg) Hong Kong police arrested hundreds of people including key activists as protests again flared up on the city’s streets Sunday after weeks of relative calm since the implementation of a national security law. A total of 270 people were arrested for illegal assembly as of 9 p.m. local time, and another 19 held for charges including disorderly conduct, obstructing and assaulting police, the Hong Kong police said in a Facebook post. Protesters marched through the Kowloon area and blocked a city street with barricades chanting pro-democracy slogans and holding up placards in defiance of social distancing restrictions. Their main thrust was to protest Hong Kong’s delayed Legislative Council election, which was scheduled to take place on Sunday but has been pushed back a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Tokyo Olympics: Games will go ahead ‘with or without Covid’, says IOC VP (BBC) “The postponed Tokyo Olympic Games will go ahead next year ‘with or without Covid’, the vice-president of the International Olympic Committee says. John Coates confirmed to news agency AFP that the Olympics would start on 23 July next year, calling them the ‘Games that conquered Covid’.”

Typhoon lashes South Korea after battering Japanese islands (AP) A powerful typhoon damaged buildings, flooded roads and knocked out power to thousands of homes in South Korea on Monday after battering islands in southern Japan and injuring dozens of people. The Korea Meteorological Administration said Typhoon Haishen was passing waters off the eastern coastal city of Sokcho on Monday afternoon after barreling through South Korea’s southern and eastern regions. Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said at least 38 people were injured, five of them seriously, after Haishen lashed southwestern Japan over the weekend with strong winds and rain. Schools and department stores were closed in Hiroshima and other cities in the country’s southwest.

Saudi Arabia sentences eight to prison in final Khashoggi murder ruling (Reuters) A Saudi Arabian court on Monday jailed eight people for between seven and 20 years for the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, state media reported, four months after his family forgave his killers and enabled death sentences to be set aside. Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was last seen at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, where he had gone to obtain documents for his impending wedding. His body was reportedly dismembered and removed from the building, and his remains have not been found. The murder caused a global uproar and tarnished the reformist image of Prince Mohammed, son of King Salman and the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Some Western governments, as well as the CIA, said they believed the prince had ordered the killing. Saudi officials denied he played a role, though in September 2019 the prince indicated some personal accountability, saying “it happened under my watch”.

Senegal’s capital gets year’s worth of rain in single night (AP) Thousands of people are homeless in Senegal’s capital on Monday after a weekend storm brought nearly a year’s worth of rainfall in a single day, turning roads into rivers. Video footage showed residents in the suburbs of Dakar wading through floodwaters up to their chests after the storm that began late Saturday in the West African nation, where at least six deaths were recorded nationwide.

In pandemic, Nigerian teacher can ‘teach the whole world’ (AP) For many 12th graders, the closure of Nigeria’s public schools to combat the spread of COVID-19 presents a particular problem: How to prepare for crucial, final exams? Basirat Olamide Ajayi, a math teacher in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, came up with a solution. She began offering free mathematics classes online via Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram. And now, after almost six months, more than 1,800 students at various levels are taking her classes—across Nigeria and even internationally. Students watch her short math videos—no more than 5 minutes long—and respond to her questions. She will send them homework, and occasional assignments. And she grades them. “COVID is here with both negative and positive impacts. The positive impact is that we can use technology to teach our students, which I am very, very happy about,” she said. Her free classes are attracting students from all over Nigeria, and now students abroad are joining. A recent request came from Canada. “The online teaching has made me feel that I can actually teach the whole world mathematics,” she said. “On Twitter people see me all over the world, not only in Lagos, not only in Nigeria. They see me all over the world and that is enough to give me innermost joy.”