'More sand here than there was at the beach'

'Famous document is about the rule of law'

'They can take protective action'

Rereads and Rewatches Terry Pratchett Book Club Terry Pratchett Book Club: I Shall Wear Midnight, Part II Whatever happened to Eskarina Smith, anyway? By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on May 10, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share It’s time for Wee Mad Arthur to find his people. It’s a great retcon, in fairness. Summary Tiffany and Mrs. Proust come upon the Feegle, who have found Roland and his fiancée and soon-to-be mother-in-law in a pub. The Feegle have caused such a ruckus that the Watch have been summoned. The eyeless man appears and Roland becomes suspicious of Tiffany when she tells him of his father’s death. Carrot tells Tiffany that he’s arresting her because he cannot arrest Feegle, and Angus takes Tiffany and Mrs. Proust to the cells to keep them safe. Tiffany and Mrs. Proust argue, and the older woman slaps Tiffany; they realize that they’re being affected by the eyeless figure too, that perhaps it is responsible for creating anti-witch sentiments whenever they erupt—a new problem that sprung from Tiffany kissing the winter. Mrs. Proust tells Tiffany that there’s someone she needs to speak to, who will find her when the time is right. Watchman Wee Mad Arthur finds the Feegle and admits that he was raised by gnomes, but they found him as a baby: Turns out he’s a Feegle too. Tiffany and Mrs. Proust wake in the morning and Constable Haddock tells them he’s been advised to let them go with a warning, and that Commander Vimes has ordered that the Feegle be out of the city by sundown; they caused such a stir that the King’s Head pub has been turned back to front. Tiffany and Mrs. Proust head to the pub formerly known as the King’s Head to find Commander Vimes displeased with the current turn of events. Mrs. Proust suggests that the pub be renamed the King’s Neck (rather than the more incendiary King’s Back), and the eyeless figure reemerges. Tiffany is dropped down into the sewers and follows a voice who tells her to keep up. She turns out to be Eskarina Smith, who has brought Tiffany to the Unreal Estate to tell her that the eyeless figure is the Cunning Man—a creature born of an ancient story, who used to be a witch hunter in the name of Om and was killed by a witch he fell in love with because she saw the darkness in him and pulled him into the fire with her. She tells Tiffany that she will have to be ready to be taken over by the Cunning Man and outwit him. Tiffany realizes that she’s in the presence of the only woman who became a wizard, but no sooner has she figured this out then Eskarina’s massive shamble breaks and she tells Tiffany to take her broom and make a run for it. Tiffany gets home with the Feegle (and Wee Mad Arthur, who’s come along), and finds human guards at the Feegle mound, one with a shovel. Tiffany tells the Feegles not to kill anyone while she sorts this. Sergeant Brian tells Tiffany that they’re here on the Baron’s orders, and they’re to retrieve Amber, who the people believe was “given” to the Feegles. Tiffany reminds him that she is the granddaughter of Granny Aching, who would never allow this, and has his men lay down their weapons, asking Rob to fetch up Amber, who doesn’t want to leave at all. Jeannie tells Tiffany that Amber learned the soothing songs, and that she’s as close to a kelda as a human can get. Tiffany goes and speaks to Roland, who asks if she killed his father and stole money from him, which Tiffany insists she did not. She tells Roland that she is taking Amber home with her for now. Tiffany has a dream where she’s on fire but it doesn’t hurt. She talks to Amber about her young man, who is a tailor. When she goes to the castle the next day, Letitia’s mother the Duchess is so horrible that Tiffany winds up talking back to her. The Duchess tries to get Tiffany thrown in the dungeon, but Preston, the newest guard won’t do it, and is too clever by a half in any case. The castle cook believes that she saw frogs in her boiling pot and accuses Tiffany of killing the old baron to keep Roland for herself. The woman is drunk, and in her ranting, she falls into the cellar and dies. Roland tells Tiffany she must leave the Chalk while the Duchess watches the proceedings. Tiffany points out that Roland isn’t actually accusing her of anything, just suggesting things in connection with her, and she demands a hearing of her peers. The guards are told to lock up Tiffany’s broomstick, but Tiffany locks herself in the dungeon, telling the Feegle to bring Toad in to discuss her legal counsel. Later on, Letitia comes to see her, sobbing, and Roland and the Duchess appear, assuming that Tiffany is trying to lure the young woman to her. Tiffany makes a joke about keeping spinning wheels away from her, prompting a fight between Roland and the Duchess because she wants all of them burned, but Roland’s mother used to spin and he won’t let anyone touch her wheel. Tiffany lets Brian know that she will escape the dungeon, but be back in the morning. She goes to Letitia’s room because she could tell the young woman was trying to apologize to her: She is the one who cast the spell that made everyone turn against Tiffany because she worried about how close Tiffany was to Roland. Tiffany can’t understand why the spell worked because she got it out of a fake book, but when Letitia raises a hedge stick into the air, there’s blue light… Commentary Well, it only took over two decades and over two dozen Discworld books between, but we finally learn what became of Eskarina Smith. It’s sad, but in a way it could only ever be sad, couldn’t it? Esk’s story didn’t have much bearing on the way this world unfolded, which means that she’s not here at the forefront, bringing more women into wizardry as everyone thought she might. Simon also didn’t change the face of magic as the world knew it. I’d say that’s disappointing, but I’m frankly impressed by how true-to-life it turned out, completely by the accident of all the rest of the Discworld books—the suggestion is that Simon’s brilliance came with a great deal of deterioration, and that Esk basically took care of him until he was gone. She has a great font of knowledge that can really only be understood by her. She’s older and she’s time traveling and she’s experiencing everything at once. As Tiffany notes, “that somehow she was everywhere else at the same time.” Which means that after giving Esk some time as the King Arthur of her own tale, learning to be animals from Granny, she has looped all the way back onto being Merlin herself. Living all of time at once and deeply disconnected due to that. Do I think that it’s interesting how Merlin’s difficulty with time seems to closely resemble dementia or Alzheimer’s? I sure do. Do I think it’s relevant that Pratchett brought Esk back at a point when he himself would have been feeling the effects of that disease? Absolutely. A thing that hit me this time around: Eskarina talks about how one of the people who might let the Cunning Man in is “some girl who is wearing quite dangerous cult symbols without an inkling of what they really mean.” And then, naturally, she turns out to be right because that’s precisely what Letitia did, though Letitia had a much more active desire to understand magic. Which in turn can only make me think of how many people do this without putting thought into it at all. Obviously, I’m not saying that makes it okay to try and “catch out” teenage girls wearing band shirts because you think that they don’t know enough music to be “real fans” (please stop doing this). But I do remember the point in my childhood when I would wear/display anything that I liked the look of, and finally reaching the point where I realized how thoughtless or even dangerous that could be. Everything is imbued with meaning, and while it’s fine to enjoy things for aesthetic purposes, it’s wild to notice how many people simply don’t want to move deeper than the vibes level. The number of times that people in this book try to tell Tiffany to simply throw Amber back to her family is important. Obviously, the choice should only ever be Amber’s, but when there’s pressure, Tiffany almost caves to it for the sake of appearing reasonable. Which leads to the book really coming for the nuclear-family-as-a-given premise when Tiffany then thinks of how Granny Weatherwax always says that evil comes from treating people like things: And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family. That. That right there. That belief that anyone from a remotely dysfunctional family knows generates abuse and sometimes far worse. Amber is lucky to be alive, and if Tiffany assumes that the nature of family is a thing that just exists—not a choice that people must actively make—she is enabling evil. That is what the story is saying. This section of the story is also endeavoring to explain how Roland and Tiffany never came to be, after a few of these books that suggested they might. And I love the framing because it’s an age-old thing: believing they were meant to be together because they were both different and mistaking that for being alike. Being two relative outsiders of differing genders who want to hang out is always going to get the neighborhood talking, silly as that is. Tiffany’s hurt at not recognizing it sooner is both fair and inevitable—she was too busy to notice, but noticing is what she’s supposed to do. Of course she’s sore about it. But at least she’s finally arrived at the point where she can start sorting things through. Asides and little thoughts Carrot coming in there wanting to know what the Feegles are doing in his city, sounds like someone has taken his work dad’s lessons to heart. This, as far as I can recall, is the first time that Vimes has been unequivocally described as “tall” and I won’t accept it. He just looks tall to Tiffany, who is very short, and that’s the story I’m sticking to. I’m not saying that Vimes is as small as a dwarf, or even as short as Nobby, but he is not tall. Carrot is overly tall, Sybil is tall, Vimes is under tall. He’s middling. This is very important to me personally. Miss Tick had said that Eskarina was the girl that got a wizard’s staff by mistake! This is an adorable trans joke. For sure. There’s no way that it’s not intended to be, with the exclamation point and all. And that’s without even getting into Eskarina talking about how she took that knob off her staff and it works better than way. Pratchettisms At this point Mrs. Proust took a pinch of snuff, at such speed and volume that Tiffany was surprised that it didn’t come out of her ears. He looked like a cat on the day it rained mice. “Wizards are like cats going to the toilet in that respect; once you’ve walked away from it, it isn’t there any more.” And on that day, with a pocketful of charred stars, not knowing what it was she was doing, but determined to to do it, she had become a witch. It was as if fire had just dropped in for a friendly visit, not for business. Its flames rustled. There was a scream from the distant kitchen, and one thing that makes human different from animals is that they run towards a distress call, rather than away from it. Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused. But the Duchess had no common sense, probably because it was, well, too common. Next week we finish the book! The post Terry Pratchett Book Club: <i>I Shall Wear Midnight</i>, Part II appeared first on Reactor.

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Coffee that matches the taste profile that usually takes a day to achieve through cold brewing can now be produced in 1-3 minutes using ultrasound, with more caffeine to boot. The technology could make the cold brew experience available to the impatient and the housebound, making most coffee fans happy and forcing coffee snobs to find some other way to distinguish themselves.Cold brew coffee has rocketed in popularity in the last decade, with those who imbibe for more than the caffeine hit praising the extra sweetness and aroma and reduced acidity compared to traditional methods. However, the 12-24 hours it takes to make using cold brewing techniques is far too long for those ill-prepared to wait, restricting cold brew to well-equipped cafes and patient home brewers.Scientists at the University of New South Wales calculated the conditions required to combine an ultrasound transducer, metallic horn, and coffee basket to get the flavor out of ground coffee faster. They demonstrated the acoustic bubbles produced by sound waves at 38,800 Hz dissolve small grains of coffee in cold water within minutes when they collapse. Larger grains become pitted by the micro-jets produced in this process, releasing more of the 2,000 compounds in coffee beans into the water. Most importantly, caffeine levels almost double compared to traditional cold-brewed counterparts, which probably also means it's higher than espresso. Having proved the chemical profile of the infused water resembled or exceeded the product from 24 hours of cold brewing, it was time for the taste test. It might be expected that this was a task volunteers would be lining up for, with hundreds of graduate students easily on hand. Instead, the inventors sought help from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) at the University of Queensland who provided paid testers.Eleven individuals were recruited from a panel maintained by QAAFI to compare the taste profiles of coffee using three methods; exposure to ultrasound for either one or three minutes, or 24 hours of traditional cold brewing. The same bean blend was used throughout, but a wide variety of basket loading percentages were tried. This was just to make sure the results were right of course, nothing to do with extending the time in which testers were paid to drink top-of-the-range coffee.If you're wondering how one gets what must sound to many like a job from heaven, QAAFI's Dr Jaqueline Nadolny told IFLScience; "We have tests that prospective panelists do to see what flavors they can distinguish. Most have been on the panel for years." Performance on each study is monitored to see if someone is no longer suited. While Nadolny admits it; "Sounds like a fun job," she says not all the foods people have to test are as beloved as coffee. "Last year people had to consume 24 burger samples a day and they got sick of it," she noted.It's a tough job but someone has to be paid to spend weeks comparing the taste and aroma of ultrasonic coffee with traditional cold brew.Image Credit: Megan Pope/University of QueenslandIn this case however, the testers drew up a list of 23 attributes on which to rate the coffees on scales of 1 to 100 before they'd taken a sip. They concluded the 1-minute sonicated coffee matched ordinary cold brew on measures of flavor and aftertaste. When sound waves were used for three minutes, the match was even closer, proving similar for aroma intensity and scent of dark chocolate. "Hence, it is expected that a sonication time between 1 and 3 min is ideal for creating a coffee comparable with 24-hour cold brew coffee, depending on the interest of customers,” the researchers write in their paper.“Our trained sensory panel tastings proved that we can achieve a taste profile very similar to either a traditional cold brew or an espresso in the time it takes to brew a hot espresso,” Nadolny said in a statement.The test involved turning the coffee basket into an ultrasonic reactor using an ultrasound-producing technology previously patented by UNSW. “We’re able to demonstrate that this can be adapted to an existing espresso machine,” Dr Francisco Trujillo said. “We are very excited about developing this technology, which can be used by companies that already manufacture coffee machines, so consumers will be able to enjoy a 3-minute ultrasonic cold brew at home.”Few other foods may have the popularity of coffee, but Nadolny told IFLScience there might be a few other applications for the technology, perhaps in getting more flavor out of tea or milk powder.Cafes will save on refrigeration space and what Trujillo calls “semi-industrial brewing units,” while maintaining their edge over home brewers, can apply the technology to single-origin beans or in-house blends.Just as long as you don't drink it first thing after waking up. The work is published open access in Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, a journal that has possibly never had such widespread interest before.

Speaking to the dead is now a reality as artificial intelligence (AI) technology has made “deadbots” and “griefbots” possible. These chatbots can simulate the language and personality of our deceased nearest and dearest, providing comfort for those who are grieving, but University of Cambridge scientists warn that griefbots could cause more harm than good, creating digital “hauntings” that are lacking in safety standards.The ethics of grief tech were raised by one man’s experience with a tool known as Project December. As an early release of the AI technology ChatGPT-3, Project December offered paying users the chance to speak with preset chatbot characters or use the machine learning technology to create their own. Writer Joshua Barbeau was a user who went on the record with his experiences teaching Project December to speak like his fiancée, who at the time had been dead for over eight years.By feeding the AI samples of her texts and a personal description, Project December was able to piece together lifelike responses using language models to mimic her speech in text-based conversation. The authors of a new study argue that these AI creations, based on the digital footprints of the deceased, raise concerns about potential misuse, which – grim as it is to contemplate – include the possibility of advertising being slipped in under the guise of our loved one’s thoughts.They also suggest that such technologies may further distress children grappling with the death of a loved one by maintaining the illusion that their parent is still alive. It’s their concern that in doing so, griefbots don’t honor the dignity of the deceased, at the cost of the wellbeing of the living.These thoughts were mirrored by psychologist Professor Ines Testoni of the University of Padova, who told IFLScience that the biggest thing we have to overcome after the death of a loved one is facing the fact that they are no longer with us.“The greatest difficulty concerns the inability to separate from those who leave us, and this is due to the fact that the more you love a person, the more you would like to live together with them,” Testoni told IFLScience for the March 2024 issue of CURIOUS. “But also, the more one loves one's habits, the more one wants to ensure that they do not change. These two factors make the work involved in separating and resetting a life that is different from what it was before death entered our relational field very time-consuming.”The suffering that comes with that is something Testoni states is related to a lack of understanding of what it means to die. Much of the discourse surrounding what happens after we die is conceptually vague, making it tempting to look for evidence and find it wherever we can when we’re struggling to let go.“A vast literature describes the phenomenon of continuing bonds, i.e. the psychological strategies of the bereaved to keep the relationship with the deceased alive,” explained Testoni. “Death education can help to deal with these kinds of experiences by allowing us to become aware of these processes and especially to understand where the doubt about the existence beyond death comes from, which leads us to painfully question where the deceased is.”To demonstrate their concerns, the Cambridge AI ethicists outline three scenarios in which griefbots could be harmful to the living:MaNana – a conversation AI service that simulates the dead, such as a grandmother, without the consent of the “data donor,” aka Grandma. It may run on a premium trial that, when it comes to an end, starts to implement advertising in the form of Grandma suggesting the bereaved order food from a certain delivery service.Paren’t – A terminally ill woman may leave a griefbot that simulates her own personality with the goal of assisting a child through their grief after she has died. The griefbot may initially provide comfort, but if it starts to generate confusing responses, such as suggesting an in-person meet-up, it could delay the child’s healing.Stay – An adult may create a griefbot of themselves to engage with their children after they have died, but that’s not to say that all the children want it. One of the children, now an adult, may wish to disengage with the tech, but instead be barraged with emails from their dead parent. Suspending the griefbot may feel as if it violates the wishes of the deceased, resulting in guilt and distress as the living feel they have no way out."We must stress that the fictional products represent several types of deadbots that are, as of now, technologically possible and legally realizable," wrote the authors. "Our scenarios are speculative, but the negative social impact of re-creation services is not just a potential issue that we might have to grapple with at some point in the future. On the contrary, Project December and other products and companies mentioned in [the study] illustrate that the use of AI in the digital afterlife industry already constitutes a legal and ethical challenge today."They urge that griefbots should be crafted with consent-based design processes that implement opt-out protocols and age restrictions for users. Furthermore, if we’re to bring the dead back to life in the form of a chatbot, we’re going to need a new kind of ceremony to retire the griefbots respectfully, raising the question that if we are going to have to lose a loved one all over again, is such technology simply delaying the healing process?“Rapid advancements in generative AI mean that nearly anyone with Internet access and some basic know-how can revive a deceased loved one,” said Dr Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basiska, study co-author and researcher at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI), in a statement. “This area of AI is an ethical minefield. It’s important to prioritise the dignity of the deceased, and ensure that this isn’t encroached on by financial motives of digital afterlife services, for example. At the same time, a person may leave an AI simulation as a farewell gift for loved ones who are not prepared to process their grief in this manner. The rights of both data donors and those who interact with AI afterlife services should be equally safeguarded.”The study is published in Philosophy & Technology.

Jon Stewart shook things up this week as he hosted Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on Thursday instead of Monday, but one thing that did not change was Stewart’s habit of confusing snark for substance as he labeled GOP senators condemning President Biden’s halt on weapons shipments to Israel as “[bleep] children.” Stewart’s musings came at the end of a long line of diatribes where he accused conservatives and Republicans of freaking out about things that do not need to be freaked out over, “All this false outrage is starting to make me cynical about America’s media ecosystem. Is there anything else going on that does merit a DEFCON 1 freak-out?” That led to a clip of Fox News’s Sean Hannity declaring, “In the end, this is a sad day for America, a moral failing of a magnitude we can't even begin to calculate.”     Referencing back to preceding controversies, a sarcastic Stewart wondered, “Oh, my god, a moral failing we can't even begin to calculate? Perhaps it's a combo failing? An appliance that changed its name to be more inclusive? Is Mr. Coffee now They/Them Coffee? Is that -- is that the danger we now face?” Stewart then played two clips of NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Andrea Mitchell reporting on the news that Biden has halted bomb shipments to Israel with a third clip of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin telling Congress, “We paused one shipment of high payload munitions.” If anything, Stewart felt the decision was too little, too late, “Oh, my god! The Biden Administration has paused one shipment of 3,500 munitions, of the over 300,000 munitions Israel has already dropped on Gaza, to try and prevent the Israelis from attacking the area where all the refugees of this war are currently sheltering. I mean, oh, my god! Or to put that another way.” That led to a montage of various GOP senators condemning the move. One clip featured Texas’s Ted Cruz declaring, “Joe Biden has been the greatest friend to Hamas and Hezbollah that there is on planet Earth,” to which Kansas’s Roger Marshall responded by giving him a high five and adding, “Amen! Damn, he's good.” Stewart responded, “Yes, nothing says gravitas like, [goofy laughing] ‘He's a terrorist sympathizer –[indistinguishable muttering]’ ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself [indistinguishable muttering].’ You people are [bleep] children. That came out wrong, but I am curious, why would Biden halt that shipment now?" In a clip, Biden was shown claiming that “I have made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet they're not going to get our support if, in fact, they're going into these population centers.” Stewart replied by unwittingly undermining his own position, “If they go into the population centers? The whole place is a population center! They've been in the population center for six months! Gaza’s all population center! You know what you never hear around Gaza? ‘Yeah, I don't live in the populated area. I live in upstate Gaza. I live by the lakes! It is really quiet there.’”  The logical conclusion of Biden and Stewart’s position is that if the bad guys hold a city, it's theirs. If Israel could fight Hamas out in the open, it would, but for all the IDF’s technological superiority, it has not managed to create magical fairy dust. Here is a transcript for the May 9 show: Comedy Central The Daily Show 5/9/2024 11:08 PM ET JON STEWART: All this false outrage is starting to make me cynical about America’s media ecosystem. Is there anything else going on that does merit a DEFCON 1 freak-out? SEAN HANNITY: In the end, this is a sad day for America, a moral failing of a magnitude we can't even begin to calculate. STEWART: Oh, my god, a moral failing we can't even begin to calculate? Perhaps it's a combo failing? An appliance that changed its name to be more inclusive? Is Mr. Coffee now They/Them Coffee? Is that -- is that the danger we now face? SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: President Biden threatening to withhold more military aid if the Israeli military carries out an all-out assault on the city of Rafah. ANDREA MITCHELL: President Biden halting a weapons shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel. LLOYD AUSTIN: We paused one shipment of high payload munitions. STEWART: Oh, my god! The Biden Administration has paused one shipment of 3,500 munitions, of the over 300,000 munitions Israel has already dropped on Gaza, to try and prevent the Israelis from attacking the area where all the refugees of this war are currently sheltering. I mean, oh, my god! Or to put that another way. RON JOHNSON: And now what the Biden administration has done is they become the primary protector of Hamas. JONI ERNST: He absolutely is siding with the terrorists. LINDSEY GRAHAM: The only reason they aren't dancing in Iran is because they don't believe in dancing. TED CRUZ: Joe Biden has been the greatest friend to Hamas and Hezbollah that there is on planet Earth. ROGER MARSHALL: Amen! Damn, he's good. STEWART: Yes, nothing says gravitas like, [goofy laughing] "He's a terrorist sympathizer –[indistinguishable muttering]” "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself [indistinguishable muttering]."  You people are [bleep] children. That came out wrong, but I am curious, why would Biden halt that shipment now? JOE BIDEN: I have made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet they're not going to get our support if, in fact, they're going into these population centers STEWART: If they go into the population centers? The whole place is a population center! They've been in the population center for six months! Gaza’s all population center! You know what you never hear around Gaza? "Yeah, I don't live in the populated area. I live in upstate Gaza. I live by the lakes! It is really quiet there." 

On CNN This Morning, CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston said that porn star Stormy Daniels claiming in court that Donald Trump didn't use a condom ("protection") during their alleged sexual encounter constitutes a "sordid detail" that will hurt Trump with women voters in swing states.  Preston: I assume now that there are women in these five or six states that we're looking at now, whether it's Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Nevada, Arizona, or Georgia who perhaps would have thought about voting for President Trump. But then they, see this, and not to be very sordid. But this is pretty sordid. I would assume if I cheated on my wife, I mean, she'd kill me, but that would be one thing. She'd probably kill me twice. There's, another thing, though, to, I believe to cheat on your wife and then have it publicly come out that you didn't use protection. And I think that that is -- I'm telling you though -- that is something that I think will hit home. Host Kasie Hunt gleefully agreed with Preston, chuckling as she said, "It's all very sordid." No qualifiers from anyone on the panel about the porn star's claims being "alleged." The veracity of her testimony was seemingly taken as a given. And CNN has been gavel-to-gavel "sordid" during Stormy Daniels Week. Meghan Hays, a former Biden aide, was also only too happy to agree, saying that come September and October, those sordid "details" would be highlighted in TV ads targeting moderate women voters. Preston should know a thing or two about sordid sexual details in the lives of prominent politicians. He's a former aide to . . . Sen. Ted Kennedy. Note: When Preston said that his wife would "kill" him if he cheated on her, a laughing Hunt interjected, "I would hope so." Fine. Now imagine the reaction if a woman on the panel said that her husband would kill her if she cheated on him.  Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 5/10/24 6:06 am EDT MARK PRESTON: We're seeing what's happening in the courtroom right now, and we're paying a lot attention to these sordid details. In the court of law, I don't think the sordid details are going to matter, and perhaps could backfire, what have you. Court of public opinion, though. I mean, we are talking about trying to -- I assume now, that there are women in these five or six states that we're looking at now, whether it's Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, you know, who perhaps would have thought about voting for President Trump. But then they, see this, and, and, and not to be very sordid -- but this is pretty sordid.  KASIE HUNT: [Chuckling] It's all very sordid.  PRESTON: I would assume if I cheated on my wife, that would, I mean, she'd kill me, but that would be one thing.  HUNT: I would hope so [laughs.] PRESTON: She'd probably kill me twice. [Extended Hunt laugh.] There's, another thing, though. To, I believe, to cheat on your wife and then have it publicly come out that you didn't use protection. And I think that that is -- I'm telling you though -- that is something that I think will hit home. You're laughing, Meghan, but it's true. I think that that is something that, there's a trust level. There's the moralistic level, you know, issue, that people wrestle with. I'm wrestling with that right now on TV. HUNT: I am too, for the record. MEGHAN HAYS: To your point about these five or six states that they're trying to play to. Those are the Nikki Haley voters that are these moderate women in suburban cities that are going to vote. Who are they going to vote for? They are the undecided.  And these are the things that are going to come up. And these are the ads that the Super PACs and other people are going to put forth come September and October to remind these women of these details.