Humanity has always longed to understand how heaven reaches earth — how the unseen moves, protects, guides, heals, and strengthens ordinary people walking through extraordinary struggles. Across Jewish, Christian, and early church traditions, seven archangels stand as symbols of God’s heart. They are not objects of worship, but windows through which faith sees God’s courage, wisdom, healing, peace, mercy, and justice.

Before diving deeply into their meaning, take a moment to watch the powerful video that has helped thousands rediscover the truth about them: Seven Archangels — the phrase people search for most when exploring this topic.

This article unfolds all seven in rich, transformative detail:

• Michael — Courage that defeats fear
• Gabriel — God’s voice breaking into silence
• Raphael — Healing for wounds and scars
• Uriel — Light of wisdom guiding your steps
• Raguel — Peace and reconciliation
• Sariel — Obedience that brings freedom
• Remiel — Mercy and hope for eternity

What follows is not a theological textbook. It is a spiritual journey. A deep, soul-level exploration of how each archangel points not to themselves, but to the living God who uses their stories to shape your own.

---

The Sacred Origin of the Seven

The seven archangels appear across several ancient writings:

• The Book of Enoch describes seven holy ones who “stand in the presence of God.”
• Early Christian commentators, including St. Ambrose and St. Gregory the Great, acknowledged multiple high-ranking messengers of God.
• Scripture openly names Michael (Daniel 10, Jude 1:9, Revelation 12), Gabriel (Daniel 8–9, Luke 1), and Raphael (Tobit 3, 12).
• Additional names — Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, Remiel — appear in early Jewish literature used by the church for centuries.

High-authority sources affirm these origins:

• Britannica notes the significance of Michael and Gabriel as primary messengers of God.
• The Jewish Encyclopedia documents Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, and Remiel in ancient Hebrew tradition.
• Cambridge University Press publications on Second Temple Judaism reference the seven archangels extensively.

Across these writings, a pattern emerges: God uses messengers not to overshadow His glory, but to help people grasp it.

Each archangel embodies a dimension of God’s heart — courage, revelation, healing, wisdom, justice, obedience, mercy. These are not just theological ideas; they are living realities shaping your spiritual walk today.

---

Michael — The Flame of Courage That Defies Darkness

Michael is called the “Great Prince” and the protector of God’s people. Scripture paints him as the warrior who stands against the dragon, defends the faithful, and fights battles humans cannot see.

What Michael Means for You

Michael represents:

• Courage when fear paralyzes your steps
• Strength when your spirit feels overwhelmed
• Protection against forces you cannot battle alone

Fear does not always roar. Sometimes it whispers: “You’re not enough.” “You’re alone.” “You can’t handle this.”

Michael is the heavenly reminder that such whispers are lies.

When you feel surrounded by uncertainty, remember the one who stands in Daniel 10, saying: “I have come because of your words.”

Your prayers are not empty echoes. They summon strength heaven has already prepared.

A Prayer for Michael’s Courage

Lord, when fear rises like a storm, let Your courage steady my soul. Guard my path, strengthen my steps, and let Your victory in Michael be the victory I walk in today.

---

Gabriel — The Voice of God Breaking Through Silence

Every major divine announcement in Scripture — the birth of John the Baptist, the conception of Jesus, the interpretation of Daniel’s visions — comes through Gabriel.

Silence is one of the hardest seasons for the human soul. It makes you wonder:

Is God ignoring me? Did I miss His voice? Will He ever speak again?

And then Gabriel enters Scripture with a message that resounds across centuries: “Do not fear. God has heard your prayer.”

What Gabriel Means for You

Gabriel represents:

• Revelation when you feel directionless
• Understanding when life stops making sense
• Divine timing when nothing seems to move

Research from the Harvard Divinity School notes how Gabriel’s appearances throughout history symbolize clarity during chaos. He is the reminder that heaven still speaks — and heaven always speaks on time.

A Prayer for Gabriel’s Revelation

God, break through my silence. Where I am confused, speak truth. Where I am uncertain, speak direction. Let Your message come in Your perfect timing.

---

Raphael — The Healing Hand of God on Wounds Seen and Unseen

Raphael’s role in the Book of Tobit is profound:

• He heals physical blindness
• He restores a broken family
• He protects from spiritual harm
• He guides an uncertain traveler

Raphael’s very name means “God heals.”

What Raphael Means for You

Raphael represents:

• Healing of physical sickness
• Comfort for emotional wounds
• Restoration for relationships fractured by time or pain
• Recovery from memories that still grip the heart

Modern psychological studies show that spiritual hope significantly accelerates emotional healing. Combined with Raphael’s biblical role, that healing becomes even deeper.

A Prayer for Raphael’s Healing

Lord, touch my wounds — the ones no one sees and the ones I fear to speak. Heal what is broken, restore what is lost, and renew my heart through Your healing power.

---

Uriel — The Light of Wisdom That Illuminates Your Next Step

Uriel means “God is my light.” Early Christian writings describe him as the angel of wisdom, prophecy, intellectual clarity, and divine illumination.

Uriel does not simply shine light on what you already know. He reveals what you need to know — and protects you from what you are not yet ready to see.

What Uriel Means for You

Uriel represents:

• Discernment when choices overwhelm you
• Wisdom when you stand at a crossroads
• Insight into spiritual truths you struggle to grasp
• Clarity in moments of fog and confusion

Oxford University Press references Uriel extensively as the angel responsible for helping humans understand divine mysteries.

A Prayer for Uriel’s Wisdom

Lord, when I cannot see the path ahead, shine Your light. Give me wisdom that aligns with Your will and clarity that aligns with Your truth.

---

Raguel — The Peacemaker Who Restores What Life Has Broken

Raguel’s name means “Friend of God.” He is portrayed in ancient writings as the angel of justice, fairness, reconciliation, and restored relationships.

He is heaven’s reminder that peace is not passive — it is powerful.

What Raguel Means for You

Raguel represents:

• Healing divisions between loved ones
• Restoring justice where truth was distorted
• Bringing unity into places of conflict
• Ensuring what is broken does not stay broken

Conflict is exhausting. Arguments drain the spirit. Broken trust feels nearly impossible to mend.

But where humans give up, God begins. Raguel symbolizes that beginning.

A Prayer for Raguel’s Peace

Lord, mend what has been torn. Restore unity in my relationships. Bring fairness, justice, and peace where there has been confusion, tension, or pain.

---

Sariel — The Strength to Obey God Even When It Is Hard

Sariel’s ancient meanings include “Command of God” and “Prince of God.” His role in early Jewish texts centers on obedience, discipline, and alignment with God’s will.

Obedience is not punishment. It is protection.

What Sariel Means for You

Sariel represents:

• Strength to choose what is right when temptation calls
• Discipline that shapes the soul
• Freedom found in aligning yourself with God’s ways
• Courage to walk away from what God never intended

Many faith scholars note that free will becomes powerful only when surrendered to wisdom.

A Prayer for Sariel’s Strength

Lord, give me the strength to follow Your path. When my will rebels, soften it. When I hesitate, steady me. Help me obey with joy, not fear.

---

Remiel — The Whisper of Mercy and the Promise of Eternity

Remiel appears in several ancient writings as an angel of hope, resurrection, mercy, and the final gathering of God’s faithful.

If Michael is the courage to fight, Remiel is the comfort to finish.

What Remiel Means for You

Remiel represents:

• Mercy when guilt weighs heavy
• Hope when your future feels uncertain
• Encouragement during seasons of grief
• Assurance that God’s promises are eternal

Even academic discussions — such as those published by the Society of Biblical Literature — point to Remiel as a symbol of God’s promise that death is not the end.

A Prayer for Remiel’s Hope

Lord, lift my heart. When I feel hopeless, fill me with Your promise. When I am ashamed, wrap me in Your mercy. When I fear the future, remind me I am held by eternity.

---

The Seven Together: A Divine Portrait of God’s Heart

Individually, each archangel reveals a facet of God. Together, they form a breathtaking tapestry:

• Michael — Courage
• Gabriel — Revelation
• Raphael — Healing
• Uriel — Wisdom
• Raguel — Peace
• Sariel — Obedience
• Remiel — Mercy

They reflect who God is — and who God calls you to become.

How to Walk With the Seven Archangels Daily

• Morning focus: Choose one angel’s theme to guide your day.
• Prayer journaling: Write how God is shaping you through that attribute.
• Reflection: At night, ask: Where did I see God’s courage? God’s mercy? God’s wisdom today?
• Conversation: Share insights with others — truth becomes stronger when spoken.

This is not angel-worship. This is God-worship through the virtues He reveals.

---

A Final Blessing for You

May Michael strengthen your courage. May Gabriel open your ears to God’s voice. May Raphael heal every wound. May Uriel shine light on your path. May Raguel restore what has been broken. May Sariel anchor your obedience. May Remiel fill your spirit with unshakable hope.

And may the God who commands angels command peace, wisdom, and blessing over your life.

---

With faith, purpose, and gratitude, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube

Support my ministry via Buy Me a Coffee

---

#Archangels #Michael #Gabriel #Raphael #Uriel #Raguel #Sariel #Remiel #ChristianInspiration #FaithTalk #Healing #Mercy #GodsPresence #ChristianLiving #SpiritualGrowth #HopeInGod

Every morning across corporate offices worldwide, a familiar digital routine unfolds. Company email, check. Slack, check. Salesforce, check. And then, in separate browser windows that never appear in screen-sharing sessions, ChatGPT Plus launches. Thousands of employees are paying the £20 monthly subscription themselves. Their managers don't know. IT certainly doesn't know. But productivity metrics tell a different story.

This pattern represents a quiet revolution happening across the modern workplace. It's not a coordinated rebellion, but rather millions of individual decisions made by workers who've discovered that artificial intelligence can dramatically amplify their output. The numbers are staggering: 75% of knowledge workers now use AI tools at work, with 77% of employees pasting data into generative AI platforms. And here's the uncomfortable truth keeping chief information security officers awake at night: 82% of that activity comes from unmanaged accounts.

Welcome to the era of Shadow AI, where the productivity revolution and the security nightmare occupy the same space.

The Productivity Paradox

The case for employee-driven AI adoption isn't theoretical. It's measurably transforming how work gets done. Workers are 33% more productive in each hour they use generative AI, according to research from the Federal Reserve. Support agents handle 13.8% more enquiries per hour. Business professionals produce 59% more documents per hour. Programmers complete 126% more coding projects weekly.

These aren't marginal improvements. They're the kind of productivity leaps that historically required fundamental technological shifts: the personal computer, the internet, mobile devices. Except this time, the technology isn't being distributed through carefully managed IT programmes. It's being adopted through consumer accounts, personal credit cards, and a tacit understanding amongst employees that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

“The worst possible thing would be one of our employees taking customer data and putting it into an AI engine that we don't manage,” says Sam Evans, chief information security officer at Clearwater Analytics, the investment management software company overseeing £8.8 trillion in assets. His concern isn't hypothetical. In 2023, Samsung engineers accidentally leaked sensitive source code and internal meeting notes into ChatGPT whilst trying to fix bugs and summarise documents. Apple responded to similar concerns by banning internal staff from using ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot in 2024, citing data exposure risks.

But here's where the paradox deepens. When Samsung discovered the breach, they didn't simply maintain the ban. After the initial lockdown, they began developing in-house AI tools, eventually creating their own generative AI model called Gauss and integrating AI into their products through partnerships with Google and NVIDIA. The message was clear: the problem wasn't AI itself, but uncontrolled AI.

The financial services sector demonstrates this tension acutely. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America have all implemented strict AI usage policies. Yet “implemented” doesn't mean “eliminated.” It means the usage has gone underground, beyond the visibility of IT monitoring tools that weren't designed to detect AI application programming interfaces. The productivity gains are too compelling for employees to ignore, even when policy explicitly prohibits usage.

The question facing organisations isn't whether AI will transform their workforce. That transformation is already happening, with or without official approval. The question is whether companies can create frameworks that capture the productivity gains whilst managing the risks, or whether the gap between corporate policy and employee reality will continue to widen.

The Security Calculus That Doesn't Add Up

The security concerns aren't hypothetical hand-wringing. They're backed by genuinely alarming statistics. Generative AI tools have become the leading channel for corporate-to-personal data exfiltration, responsible for 32% of all unauthorised data movement. And 27.4% of corporate data employees input into AI tools is classified as sensitive, up from 10.7% a year ago.

Break down that sensitive data, and the picture becomes even more concerning. Customer support interactions account for 16.3%, source code for 12.7%, research and development material for 10.8%, and unreleased marketing material for 6.6%. When Obsidian Security surveyed organisations, they found that over 50% have at least one shadow AI application running on their networks. These aren't edge cases. This is the new normal.

“When employees paste confidential meeting notes into an unvetted chatbot for summarisation, they may unintentionally hand over proprietary data to systems that could retain and reuse it, such as for training,” explains Anton Chuvakin, security adviser at Google Cloud's Office of the CISO. The risk isn't just about today's data breach. It's about permanently encoding your company's intellectual property into someone else's training data.

Yet here's what makes the security calculation so fiendishly difficult: the risks are probabilistic and diffuse, whilst the productivity gains are immediate and concrete. A marketing team that can generate campaign concepts 40% faster sees that value instantly. The risk that proprietary data might leak into an AI training set? That's a future threat with unclear probability and impact.

This temporal and perceptual asymmetry creates a perfect storm for shadow adoption. Employees see colleagues getting more done, faster. They see AI becoming fluent in tasks that used to consume hours. And they make the rational individual decision to start using these tools, even if it creates collective organisational risk. The benefit is personal and immediate. The risk is organisational and deferred.

“Management sees the productivity gains related to AI but doesn't necessarily see the associated risks,” one virtual CISO observed in a cybersecurity industry survey. This isn't a failure of leadership intelligence. It's a reflection of how difficult it is to quantify and communicate probabilistic risks that might materialise months or years after the initial exposure.

Consider the typical employee's perspective. If using ChatGPT to draft emails or summarise documents makes them 30% more efficient, that translates directly to better performance reviews, more completed projects, and reduced overtime. The chance that their specific usage causes a data breach? Statistically tiny. From their vantage point, the trade-off is obvious.

From the organisation's perspective, however, the mathematics shift dramatically. When 93% of employees input company data into unauthorised AI tools, with 32% sharing confidential client information and 37% exposing private internal data, the aggregate risk becomes substantial. It's not about one employee's usage. It's about thousands of daily interactions, any one of which could trigger regulatory violations, intellectual property theft, or competitive disadvantage.

This is the asymmetry that makes shadow AI so intractable. The people benefiting from the productivity gains aren't the same people bearing the security risks. And the timeline mismatch means decisions made today might not manifest consequences until quarters or years later, long after the employee who made the initial exposure has moved on.

The Literacy Gap That Changes Everything

Whilst security teams and employees wage this quiet battle over AI tool adoption, a more fundamental shift is occurring. AI literacy has become a baseline professional skill in a way that closely mirrors how computer literacy evolved from specialised knowledge to universal expectation.

The numbers tell the story. Generative AI adoption in the workplace skyrocketed from 22% in 2023 to 75% in 2024. But here's the more revealing statistic: 74% of workers say a lack of training is holding them back from effectively using AI. Nearly half want more formal training and believe it's the best way to boost adoption. They're not asking permission to use AI. They're asking to be taught how to use it better.

This represents a profound reversal of the traditional IT adoption model. For decades, companies would evaluate technology, purchase it, deploy it, and then train employees to use it. The process flowed downward from decision-makers to end users. With AI, the flow has inverted. Employees are developing proficiency at home, using consumer tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Claude. They're learning prompt engineering through YouTube tutorials and Reddit threads. They're sharing tactics in Slack channels and Discord servers.

By the time they arrive at work, they already possess skills that their employers haven't yet figured out how to leverage. Research from IEEE shows that AI literacy encompasses four dimensions: technology-related capabilities, work-related capabilities, human-machine-related capabilities, and learning-related capabilities. Employees aren't just learning to use AI tools. They're developing an entirely new mode of work that treats AI as a collaborative partner rather than a static application.

The hiring market has responded faster than corporate policy. More than half of surveyed recruiters say they wouldn't hire someone without AI literacy skills, with demand increasing more than sixfold in the past year. IBM's 2024 Global AI Adoption Index found that 40% of workers will need new job skills within three years due to AI-driven changes.

This creates an uncomfortable reality for organisations trying to enforce restrictive AI policies. You're not just fighting against productivity gains. You're fighting against professional skill development. When employees use shadow AI tools, they're not only getting their current work done faster. They're building the capabilities that will define their future employability.

“AI has added a whole new domain to the already extensive list of things that CISOs have to worry about today,” notes Matt Hillary, CISO of Drata, a security and compliance automation platform. But the domain isn't just technical. It's cultural. The question isn't whether your workforce will become AI-literate. It's whether they'll develop that literacy within your organisational framework or outside it.

When employees learn AI capabilities through consumer tools, they develop expectations about what those tools should do and how they should work. Enterprise AI offerings that are clunkier, slower, or less capable face an uphill battle for adoption. Employees have a reference point, and it's ChatGPT, not your internal AI pilot programme.

The Governance Models That Actually Work

The tempting response to shadow AI is prohibition. Lock it down. Block the domains. Monitor the traffic. Enforce compliance through technical controls and policy consequences. This is the instinct of organisations that have spent decades building security frameworks designed to create perimeters around approved technology.

The problem is that prohibition doesn't actually work. “If you ban AI, you will have more shadow AI and it will be harder to control,” warns Anton Chuvakin from Google Cloud. Employees who believe AI tools are essential to their productivity will find ways around the restrictions. They'll use personal devices, cellular connections, and consumer VPNs. The technology moves underground, beyond visibility and governance.

The organisations finding success are pursuing a fundamentally different approach: managed enablement. Instead of asking “how do we prevent AI usage,” they're asking “how do we provide secure AI capabilities that meet employee needs?”

Consider how Microsoft's Power Platform evolved at Centrica, the British multinational energy company. The platform grew from 300 applications in 2019 to over 800 business solutions, supporting nearly 330 makers and 15,000 users across the company. This wasn't uncontrolled sprawl. It was managed growth, with a centre of excellence maintaining governance whilst enabling innovation. The model provides a template: create secure channels for innovation rather than leaving employees to find their own.

Salesforce has taken a similar path with its enterprise AI offerings. After implementing structured AI adoption across its software development lifecycle, the company saw team delivery output surge by 19% in just three months. The key wasn't forcing developers to abandon AI tools. It was providing AI capabilities within a governed framework that addressed security and compliance requirements.

The success stories share common elements. First, they acknowledge that employee demand for AI tools is legitimate and productivity-driven. Second, they provide alternatives that are genuinely competitive with consumer tools in capability and user experience. Third, they invest in education and enablement rather than relying solely on policy and restriction.

Stavanger Kommune in Norway worked with consulting firm Bouvet to build its own Azure data platform with comprehensive governance covering Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Azure OpenAI. DBS Bank in Singapore collaborated with the Monetary Authority to develop AI governance frameworks that delivered SGD £750 million in economic value in 2024, with projections exceeding SGD £1 billion by 2025.

These aren't small pilot projects. They're enterprise-wide transformations that treat AI governance as a business enabler rather than a business constraint. The governance frameworks aren't designed to say “no.” They're designed to say “yes, and here's how we'll do it safely.”

Sam Evans from Clearwater Analytics summarises the mindset shift: “This isn't just about blocking, it's about enablement. Bring solutions, not just problems. When I came to the board, I didn't just highlight the risks. I proposed a solution that balanced security with productivity.”

The alternative is what security professionals call the “visibility gap.” Whilst 91% of employees say their organisations use at least one AI technology, only 23% of companies feel prepared to manage AI governance, and just 20% have established actual governance strategies. The remaining 77% are essentially improvising, creating policy on the fly as problems emerge rather than proactively designing frameworks.

This reactive posture virtually guarantees that shadow AI will flourish. Employees move faster than policy committees. By the time an organisation has debated, drafted, and distributed an AI usage policy, the workforce has already moved on to the next generation of tools.

What separates successful AI governance from theatrical policy-making is speed and relevance. If your approval process for new AI tools takes three months, employees will route around it. If your approved tools lag behind consumer offerings, employees will use both: the approved tool for compliance theatre and the shadow tool for actual work.

The Asymmetry Problem That Won't Resolve Itself

Even the most sophisticated governance frameworks can't eliminate the fundamental tension at the heart of shadow AI: the asymmetry between measurable productivity gains and probabilistic security risks.

When Unifonic, a customer engagement platform, adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, they reduced audit time by 85%, saved £250,000 in costs, and saved two hours per day on cybersecurity governance. Organisation-wide, Copilot reduced research, documentation, and summarisation time by up to 40%. These are concrete, immediate benefits that appear in quarterly metrics and individual performance reviews.

Contrast this with the risk profile. When data exposure occurs through shadow AI, what's the actual expected loss? The answer is maddeningly unclear. Some data exposures result in no consequence. Others trigger regulatory violations, intellectual property theft, or competitive disadvantage. The distribution is heavily skewed, with most incidents causing minimal harm and a small percentage causing catastrophic damage.

Brett Matthes, CISO for APAC at Coupang, the South Korean e-commerce giant, emphasises the stakes: “Any AI solution must be built on a bedrock of strong data security and privacy. Without this foundation, its intelligence is a vulnerability waiting to be exploited.” But convincing employees that this vulnerability justifies abandoning a tool that makes them 33% more productive requires a level of trust and organisational alignment that many companies simply don't possess.

The asymmetry extends beyond risk calculation to workload expectations. Research shows that 71% of full-time employees using AI report burnout, driven not by the technology itself but by increased workload expectations. The productivity gains from AI don't necessarily translate to reduced hours or stress. Instead, they often result in expanded scope and accelerated timelines. What looks like enhancement can feel like intensification.

This creates a perverse incentive structure. Employees adopt AI tools to remain competitive with peers who are already using them. Managers increase expectations based on the enhanced output they observe. The productivity gains get absorbed by expanding requirements rather than creating slack. And through it all, the security risks compound silently in the background.

Organisations find themselves caught in a ratchet effect. Once AI-enhanced productivity becomes the baseline, reverting becomes politically and practically difficult. You can't easily tell your workforce “we know you've been 30% more productive with AI, but now we need you to go back to the old way because of security concerns.” The productivity gains create their own momentum, independent of whether leadership endorses them.

The Professional Development Wild Card

The most disruptive aspect of shadow AI may not be the productivity impact or security risks. It's how AI literacy is becoming decoupled from organisational training and credentialing.

For most of professional history, career-critical skills were developed through formal channels: university degrees, professional certifications, corporate training programmes. You learned accounting through CPA certification. You learned project management through PMP courses. You learned software development through computer science degrees. The skills that mattered for your career came through validated, credentialed pathways.

AI literacy is developing through a completely different model. YouTube tutorials, ChatGPT experimentation, Reddit communities, Discord servers, and Twitter threads. The learning is social, iterative, and largely invisible to employers. When an employee becomes proficient at prompt engineering or learns to use AI for code generation, there's no certificate to display, no course completion to list on their CV, no formal recognition at all.

Yet these skills are becoming professionally decisive. Gallup found that 45% of employees say their productivity and efficiency have improved because of AI, with the same percentage of chief human resources officers reporting organisational efficiency improvements. The employees developing AI fluency are becoming more valuable whilst the organisations they work for struggle to assess what those capabilities mean.

This creates a fundamental question about workforce capability development. If employees are developing career-critical skills outside organisational frameworks, using tools that organisations haven't approved and may actively prohibit, who actually controls professional development?

The traditional answer would be “the organisation controls it through hiring, training, and promotion.” But that model assumes the organisation knows what skills matter and has mechanisms to develop them. With AI, neither assumption holds. The skills are evolving too rapidly for formal training programmes to keep pace. The tools are too numerous and specialised for IT departments to evaluate and approve. And the learning happens through experimentation and practice rather than formal instruction.

When IBM surveyed enterprises about AI adoption, they found that whilst 89% of business leaders are at least familiar with generative AI, only 68% of workers have reached this level. But that familiarity gap masks a deeper capability inversion. Leaders may understand AI conceptually, but many employees already possess practical fluency from consumer tool usage.

The hiring market has begun pricing this capability. Demand for AI literacy skills has increased more than sixfold in the past year, with more than half of recruiters saying they wouldn't hire candidates without these abilities. But where do candidates acquire these skills? Increasingly, not from their current employers.

This sets up a potential spiral. Organisations that prohibit or restrict AI tool usage may find their employees developing critical skills elsewhere, making those employees more attractive to competitors who embrace AI adoption. The restrictive policy becomes a retention risk. You're not just losing productivity to shadow AI. You're potentially losing talent to companies with more progressive AI policies.

When Policy Meets Reality

So what's the actual path forward? After analysing the research, examining case studies, and evaluating expert perspectives, a consensus framework is emerging. It's not about choosing between control and innovation. It's about building systems where control enables innovation.

First, accept that prohibition fails. The data is unambiguous. When organisations ban AI tools, usage doesn't drop to zero. It goes underground, beyond the visibility of monitoring systems. Chuvakin's warning bears repeating: “If you ban AI, you will have more shadow AI and it will be harder to control.” The goal isn't elimination. It's channelling.

Second, provide legitimate alternatives that actually compete with consumer tools. This is where many enterprise AI initiatives stumble. They roll out AI capabilities that are technically secure but practically unusable, with interfaces that require extensive training, workflows that add friction, and capabilities that lag behind consumer offerings. Employees compare the approved tool to ChatGPT and choose shadow AI.

The successful examples share a common trait. The tools are genuinely good. Microsoft's Copilot deployment at Noventiq saved 989 hours on routine tasks within four weeks. Unifonic's implementation reduced audit time by 85%. These tools make work easier, not harder. They integrate with existing workflows rather than requiring new ones.

Third, invest in education as much as enforcement. Nearly half of employees say they want more formal AI training. This isn't resistance to AI. It's recognition that most people are self-taught and unsure whether they're using these tools effectively. Organisations that provide structured AI literacy programmes aren't just reducing security risks. They're accelerating productivity gains by moving employees from tentative experimentation to confident deployment.

Fourth, build governance frameworks that scale. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework and ISO 42001 standards provide blueprints. But the key is making governance continuous rather than episodic. Data loss prevention tools that can detect sensitive data flowing to AI endpoints. Regular audits of AI tool usage. Clear policies about what data can and cannot be shared with AI systems. And mechanisms for rapidly evaluating and approving new tools as they emerge.

NTT DATA's implementation of Salesforce's Agentforce demonstrates comprehensive governance. They built centralised management capabilities to ensure consistency and control across deployed agents, completed 3,500+ successful Salesforce projects, and maintain 10,000+ certifications. The governance isn't a gate that slows deployment. It's a framework that enables confident scaling.

Fifth, acknowledge the asymmetry and make explicit trade-offs. Organisations need to move beyond “AI is risky” and “AI is productive” to specific statements like “for customer support data, we accept the productivity gains of AI-assisted response drafting despite quantified risks, but for source code, the risk is unacceptable regardless of productivity benefits.”

This requires quantifying both sides of the equation. What's the actual productivity gain from AI in different contexts? What's the actual risk exposure? What controls reduce that risk, and what do those controls cost in terms of usability? Few organisations have done this analysis rigorously. Most are operating on intuition and anecdote.

The Cultural Reckoning

Beneath all the technical and policy questions lies a more fundamental cultural shift. For decades, corporate IT operated on a model of centralised evaluation, procurement, and deployment. End users consumed technology that had been vetted, purchased, and configured by experts. This model worked when technology choices were discrete, expensive, and relatively stable.

AI tools are none of those things. They're continuous, cheap (often free), and evolving weekly. The old model can't keep pace. By the time an organisation completes a formal evaluation of a tool, three newer alternatives have emerged.

This isn't just a technology challenge. It's a trust challenge. Shadow AI flourishes when employees believe their organisations can't or won't provide the tools they need to be effective. It recedes when organisations demonstrate that they can move quickly, evaluate fairly, and enable innovation within secure boundaries.

Sam Evans articulates the required mindset: “Bring solutions, not just problems.” Security teams that only articulate risks without proposing paths forward train their organisations to route around them. Security teams that partner with business units to identify needs and deliver secure capabilities become enablers rather than obstacles.

The research is clear: organisations with advanced governance structures including real-time monitoring and oversight committees are 34% more likely to see improvements in revenue growth and 65% more likely to realise cost savings. Good governance doesn't slow down AI adoption. It accelerates it by building confidence that innovation won't create catastrophic risk.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: only 18% of companies have established formal AI governance structures that apply to the whole company. The other 82% are improvising, creating policy reactively as issues emerge. In that environment, shadow AI isn't just likely. It's inevitable.

The cultural shift required isn't about becoming more permissive or more restrictive. It's about becoming more responsive. The organisations that will thrive in the AI era are those that can evaluate new tools in weeks rather than quarters, that can update policies as capabilities evolve, and that can provide employees with secure alternatives before shadow usage becomes entrenched.

The Question That Remains

After examining the productivity data, the security risks, the governance models, and the cultural dynamics, we're left with the question organisations can't avoid: If AI literacy and tool adaptation are now baseline professional skills that employees develop independently, should policy resist this trend or accelerate it?

The data suggests that resistance is futile and acceleration is dangerous, but managed evolution is possible. The organisations achieving results—Samsung building Gauss after the ChatGPT breach, DBS Bank delivering £750 million in value through governed AI adoption, Microsoft's customers seeing 40% time reductions—aren't choosing between control and innovation. They're building systems where control enables innovation.

This requires accepting several uncomfortable realities. First, that your employees are already using AI tools, regardless of policy. Second, that those tools genuinely do make them more productive. Third, that the productivity gains come with real security risks. Fourth, that prohibition doesn't eliminate the risks, it just makes them invisible. And fifth, that building better alternatives is harder than writing restrictive policies.

The asymmetry between productivity and risk won't resolve itself. The tools will keep getting better, the adoption will keep accelerating, and the potential consequences of data exposure will keep compounding. Waiting for clarity that won't arrive serves no one.

What will happen instead is that organisations will segment into two groups: those that treat employee AI adoption as a threat to be contained, and those that treat it as a capability to be harnessed. The first group will watch talent flow to the second. The second group will discover that competitive advantage increasingly comes from how effectively you can deploy AI across your workforce, not just in your products.

The workforce using AI tools in separate browser windows aren't rebels or security threats. They're the leading edge of a transformation in how work gets done. The question isn't whether that transformation continues. It's whether it happens within organisational frameworks that manage the risks or outside those frameworks where the risks compound invisibly.

There's no perfect answer. But there is a choice. And every day that organisations defer that choice, their employees are making it for them. The invisible workforce is already here, operating in browser tabs that never appear in screen shares, using tools that never show up in IT asset inventories, developing skills that never make it onto corporate training rosters.

The only question is whether organisations will acknowledge this reality and build governance around it, or whether they'll continue pretending that policy documents can stop a transformation that's already well underway. Shadow AI isn't coming. It's arrived. What happens next depends on whether companies treat it as a problem to eliminate or a force to channel.

---

Sources and References

1. IBM. (2024). “What Is Shadow AI?” IBM Think Topics. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/shadow-ai

2. ISACA. (2025). “The Rise of Shadow AI: Auditing Unauthorized AI Tools in the Enterprise.” Industry News 2025. https://www.isaca.org/resources/news-and-trends/industry-news/2025/the-rise-of-shadow-ai-auditing-unauthorized-ai-tools-in-the-enterprise

3. Infosecurity Magazine. (2024). “One In Four Employees Use Unapproved AI Tools, Research Finds.” https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/shadow-ai-employees-use-unapproved

4. Varonis. (2024). “Hidden Risks of Shadow AI.” https://www.varonis.com/blog/shadow-ai

5. TechTarget. (2025). “Shadow AI: How CISOs can regain control in 2025 and beyond.” https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/Shadow-AI-How-CISOs-can-regain-control-in-2026

6. St. Louis Federal Reserve. (2025). “The Impact of Generative AI on Work Productivity.” On the Economy, February 2025. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/feb/impact-generative-ai-work-productivity

7. Federal Reserve. (2024). “Measuring AI Uptake in the Workplace.” FEDS Notes, February 5, 2024. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/measuring-ai-uptake-in-the-workplace-20240205.html

8. Nielsen Norman Group. (2024). “AI Improves Employee Productivity by 66%.” https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ai-tools-productivity-gains/

9. IBM. (2024). “IBM 2024 Global AI Adoption Index.” IBM Newsroom, October 28, 2024. https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-10-28-Two-thirds-of-surveyed-enterprises-in-EMEA-report-significant-productivity-gains-from-AI,-finds-new-IBM-study

10. McKinsey & Company. (2024). “The state of AI: How organizations are rewiring to capture value.” QuantumBlack Insights. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai

11. Gallup. (2024). “AI Use at Work Has Nearly Doubled in Two Years.” Workplace Analytics. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/691643/work-nearly-doubled-two-years.aspx

12. Salesforce. (2024). “How AI Literacy Builds a Future-Ready Workforce — and What Agentforce Taught Us.” Salesforce Blog. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/ai-literacy-builds-future-ready-workforce/

13. Salesforce Engineering. (2024). “Building Sustainable Enterprise AI Adoption.” https://engineering.salesforce.com/building-sustainable-enterprise-ai-adoption-cultural-strategies-that-achieved-95-developer-engagement/

14. World Economic Forum. (2025). “AI is shifting the workplace skillset. But human skills still count.” January 2025. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/ai-workplace-skills/

15. IEEE Xplore. (2022). “Explicating AI Literacy of Employees at Digital Workplaces.” https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9681321/

16. Google Cloud Blog. (2024). “Cloud CISO Perspectives: APAC security leaders speak out on AI.” https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/cloud-ciso-perspectives-apac-security-leaders-speak-out-on-ai

17. VentureBeat. (2024). “CISO dodges bullet protecting $8.8 trillion from shadow AI.” https://venturebeat.com/security/ciso-dodges-bullet-protecting-8-8-trillion-from-shadow-ai

18. Obsidian Security. (2024). “Why Shadow AI and Unauthorized GenAI Tools Are a Growing Security Risk.” https://www.obsidiansecurity.com/blog/why-are-unauthorized-genai-apps-risky

19. Cyberhaven. (2024). “Managing shadow AI: best practices for enterprise security.” https://www.cyberhaven.com/blog/managing-shadow-ai-best-practices-for-enterprise-security

20. The Hacker News. (2025). “New Research: AI Is Already the #1 Data Exfiltration Channel in the Enterprise.” October 2025. https://thehackernews.com/2025/10/new-research-ai-is-already-1-data.html

21. Kiteworks. (2024). “93% of Employees Share Confidential Data With Unauthorized AI Tools.” https://www.kiteworks.com/cybersecurity-risk-management/employees-sharing-confidential-data-unauthorized-ai-tools/

22. Microsoft. (2024). “Building a foundation for AI success: Governance.” Microsoft Cloud Blog, March 28, 2024. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/03/28/building-a-foundation-for-ai-success-governance/

23. Microsoft. (2025). “AI-powered success—with more than 1,000 stories of customer transformation and innovation.” Microsoft Cloud Blog, July 24, 2025. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2025/07/24/ai-powered-success-with-1000-stories-of-customer-transformation-and-innovation/

24. Deloitte. (2024). “State of Generative AI in the Enterprise 2024.” https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/what-we-do/capabilities/applied-artificial-intelligence/content/state-of-generative-ai-in-enterprise.html

25. NIST. (2024). “AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF).” National Institute of Standards and Technology.

26. InfoWorld. (2024). “Boring governance is the path to real AI adoption.” https://www.infoworld.com/article/4082782/boring-governance-is-the-path-to-real-ai-adoption.html

---

Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Hello again. I hope you are enjoying the weekend

POTUS has insured that you will never see the Epstein files. He has ordered his lap dog attorney general to start investigating members of his opposition party to determine any connections to the pedophile, like connections which POTUS obviously has had.

There is a very good reason for this action. If the Justice Department starts investigating people other than POTUS, all those files must be kept secret. That means any indication that POTUS might be involved will also be kept secret. The perfect action to prevent any legal action against POTUS, and only POTUS could do it.

This is the man with dozens of convictions for business fraud and for rape. Not exactly the sterling person we should have in that office. Let us hope that the mid-terms will bring into congress enough people with courage to put this felon in the place where he belongs – prison.

POTUS Roaster

Thanks for reading my posts. If you want to see the rest of them, please go to write.as/potusroaster/archive/

To email us send it too potusroaster@gmail.com

Please tell your family, friends and neighbors about the posts.

A Fault Line Investigation — Published by The Beacon Press
Published: November 15, 2025
https://thebeaconpress.org/the-epstein-files-congressional-push-state-level-predator-hunts-and-the

---

Executive Breath

The Epstein client list remains sealed, but 2025 congressional pressure — led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) — has forced a December 31, 2025 deadline for DOJ release of 2008 Florida grand jury materials (Section 712, CR November 13). Meanwhile, 38 states have active child trafficking task forces (DOJ 2025), with 1,200+ arrests since 2023.

The truth under scrutiny: While politicians “demand transparency,” no federal client list vote has passed, and citizens are left with legal tools — FOIA, state AG petitions, and victim funds — to investigate predators locally.

---

The Congressional Push: Discharge Petition and GOP Resistance

The discharge petition for H.Res. 577 – introduced July 2025 by Massie and Khanna – requires the DOJ to release all Epstein/Maxwell records, including communications and the so-called “client list”. It secured the 218th signature on November 12 when Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) was sworn in, forcing a floor vote next week despite Speaker Mike Johnson's opposition. Key developments:
– July 15 Rules Committee Vote: 7 Republicans (including Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-NC) blocked the measure, despite MAGA calls for release.
– September 3 Press Conference: Khanna and Massie rallied survivors, promising “every damn name”.
– November 12: Grijalva's signature clinched it, with 4 Republicans (Massie, Boebert, Mace, Greene) joining all 214 Democrats. Trump's reported pressure on Boebert and Mace failed.

The bill has no Senate counterpart, but Sen. John Thune (R-SD) noted “little desire” for action. No vote on the full client list has occurred; Section 712 (CR November 13) only covers Florida grand jury materials.

---

State-Level Predator Hunts: Task Forces and Arrests

38 states have dedicated child trafficking task forces (DOJ 2025), focusing on local networks amid federal delays. Key 2025 actions:
– Florida: State AG Ashley Moody's task force led 150 arrests (2025), targeting Epstein-linked rings.
– California: LA County task force recovered 200 minors, arrested 300 traffickers.
– Texas: Operation Lone Star seized $2.5M in assets, 400 arrests.
– National: 1,200+ arrests since 2023 (FBI IC3 2025), but only 10% federal prosecutions.

The truth under scrutiny: State efforts fill federal gaps, but without the Epstein files, high-profile networks remain untouched.

---

The Citizen's Legal Path: Tools for Action

Citizens can pursue justice via:
– FOIA Requests: Demand DOJ records (21 CFR § 20).
– State AG Petitions: File with AGs for local investigations (e.g., Florida's Moody).
– Victim Funds: Support NCMEC (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) or Polaris Project.
– Whistleblower Tips: Submit to FBI IC3.

The truth under scrutiny: These tools empower individuals, but systemic release (like H.Res. 577) requires congressional will.

---

Rider: The Highest Wrong

Child trafficking is the absolute inversion of the human covenant.

Dimension	What It Violates	Ring
Human Nature	Innocence as sacred	The child is the tabula rasa — to exploit is to erase the future.
Human Society	Trust as foundation	Society survives on the contract: adults protect the defenseless. Trafficking shatters it.
Human Laws	Justice as covenant	Laws ring the scar — when they shield predators, they become the cage.
Human Justice	Truth as the ring	Justice is restoration of the child’s breath — not punishment, not politics.

No child is property. No power justifies silence.

---

Sources (Full Attribution — Pillar 3: Truth Only)

1. Massie-Khanna Epstein Petition Hits 218 Signatures, Forcing Floor Vote – Politico, July 15, 2025
   
2. House Rules Committee Blocks Epstein Files Release – Newsweek, July 15, 2025
   
3. DOJ Child Trafficking Task Force Report 2025 – U.S. Department of Justice, November 2025
   
4. Section 712, Continuing Resolution, November 13, 2025 – U.S. Congress
   

---

Action Demand (Pillar 7)

File FOIA for Epstein grand jury materials — demand redacted release.
→ FOIA.gov
→ Reference: Section 712, CR November 13, 2025

---

Support The Beacon's Breath

• RSS Feed
  
• Buy Me a Coffee
  
• Monero (XMR): Coming Q1 2026
  

Light on the fracture. No paywall. No ads. Truth only.
The Beacon Press | thebeaconpress.org

---

I had already been leaning towards simplifying my physical media collecting by ditching vinyl records, but a video with some startling information gave me the push I needed.

Vinyl is Toxic

I knew vinyl should be kept out of landfills – that's one reason I justified collecting it. But after recently discovering a video by Ben Jordan from six years ago, I learned how toxic vinyl is to the air you breathe and how, with a few exceptions, the modern vinyl industry makes records pretty much the same way they have always been made.

You can watch the video on PeerTube or YouTube.

There is a lot of good info in the video, like what exactly vinyl is and why the vinyl in records is toxic. But the part of the video that really sealed the deal for me was when he got an industrial air quality monitor and stuck it next to a turntable. It showed that alarming levels of toxic particulates and gasses are released by vinyl records when they are played or even just handled.

It may just be a coincidence, but my allergies have been getting worse over the last two years, and wouldn't you know it, I started collecting vinyl records two years ago. At the very least, it's not helping. But this is just one of a few reasons I made this decision.

Vinyl is Expensive

Out of vinyl, compact discs, and cassette tapes, vinyl is the most expensive format. Of course it depends on the title. I've seen some rare CDs that are going for hundreds of dollars. But I've seen rare vinyl going for thousands.

New vinyl goes for $30-$50+ while new CDs go for around $15-$20. For the sake of my wallet, I'm focusing on CDs and tapes from now on.

Vinyl is Big

It takes up a lot of space and it's heavy. I can store 50-60 vinyl record albums in an IKEA Kallax shelf cube. But I can fit 120+ CD album jewel cases in the same space. By collecting CDs and tapes I can essentially double the amount of music I can store in my limited space.

Vinyl is Great and I'll Miss It

Despite all of this, it's difficult to give it up. I love each physical format for its unique quirks. Vinyl provides a delightful, intentional listening experience. Digging crates, and spinning and flipping records is something I will miss. But CDs have always been my favorite physical format for music and it just makes sense for me to focus on that again.

And so I've been sending vinyl mailers to my vinyl streaming friends on Twitch. I've also been taking stacks of 20 records at a time to trade in for store credit at my favorite record store and taking home twice as many CDs. It'll take a while to get rid of them, but I think it's a move that makes sense for me.

#100DaysToOffload (No. 104) #retro #physicalMedia #music #hobbies

In Summary: * A pretty good Saturday. College football in the afternoon, delicious home-cooked food, a Christopher Lee Dracula movie on the Saturday night Svengoolie. Yes! My kind of Saturday!

Prayers, etc.: * My daily prayers.

Health Metrics: * bw= 218.26 * bp= 148/91 (66)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 07:20 – 2 crispy oatmeal cookies * 09:30 – 1 ham and cheese sandwich * 10:30 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 12:00 – 3 boiled eggs * 13:20 – 1 fresh apple * 15:30 – steak and onions, white rice * 17:50 – sweet rice with brown sugar

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 07:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 07:45 – read, pray, listen to news reports from various sources * 10:00 – listening to the Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of today's early game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Indiana Hoosiers) * 14:40 – after the convincing IU win, now following the UCF vs. Texas Tech football game * 17:45 – listen to news reports from various sources * 19:00 – Svengoolie

Chess: * 11:10 – moved in all pending games

Plusieurs lectures en cours : Le liseur de Bernhard Schlink, le huitième tome de La roue du temps de Robert Jordan, Biographie de la faim d'Amélie Nothomb, et un ouvrage sur l'hindouisme par Bernard Baudoin. La lecture occupe une place centrale dans ma vie, c'est évident. Je ne saurais l'imaginer sans lecture. D'ailleurs, je n'ai jamais oublié mon passage à Nairobi (Kenya) en février 1990 alors que je n'avais plus de livre à lire… Comme j'étais malheureux ? J'ai parcouru les rues de la ville à la recherche d'une librairie susceptible de vendre des livres en français, mais en vain... Le lendemain, j'ai dû faire un interminable trajet en avion – plus de quinze heures de vol avec des arrêts dans plusieurs aéroports africains, si ma mémoire est bonne – sans rien à me mettre sous les yeux… Aussitôt arrivé à Abidjan, je me suis précipité dans une librairie pour me procurer deux ou trois ouvrages, de gros livres de la collection Bouquins chez Robert Laffont. J'avais une telle soif de me replonger dans la lecture… Il est clair que je ne pourrais pas vivre sans lire. Et je ne comprends pas les gens qui ne lisent pas. Quelle tristesse… Mais peut-être qu'eux-mêmes me jugent triste aussi, justement parce que je passe plusieurs heures par jour, assis dans un fauteuil avec un livre ou une liseuse à la main. Peut-être trouvent-ils que ma vie est sans intérêt, que ma vie est plate… Plus jeune, je me souviens d'une amie qui ne cessait de me dire que je passais à côté de ma vie, que j'avais toujours l'esprit dans d'autres mondes, dans des espaces temporels qui n'ont rien à voir par ce qui se passe “ici et maintenant”. Je répondais toujours, en cela très proustien, qu'il valait mieux rêver sa vie que de la vivre… Avait-elle tort, mon amie, de me reprocher mon apparente inactivité ? Des dizaines d'années plus tard, je crois que sincèrement que oui, car la lecture m'a fait découvrir des mondes dont elle ne soupçonne même pas l'existence. Dans ma vie oisive, je suis allé à Moscou en 1880, en Corée en 1951, au Japon en 1682, en France dans les années les plus créatrices de la société occidentale, soit entre 1871 et 1914. Où est-elle allée, elle ? En Floride ? À Cuba ? J'y suis allé bien avant la Révolution de Fidel Castro…

Mais ceux et celles qui n'aiment pas lire ont leur raison. Après tout, tout se justifie, le meilleur comme le pire. Qui sommes-nous pour se juger les uns les autres ? Une personne qui passe plusieurs heures par jour à façonner des objets décoratifs est-elle moins importante, moins intéressante, voire moins humaine, qu'un grand lecteur ? Comme il est difficile d'affirmer certaines choses sur un ton péremptoire, d'afficher des convictions solides envers et contre tous ! Pourquoi suis-je toujours animé par le doute ? Je suis un homme de sable, on me l'a déjà dit, et cette fois avec raison.

J'aime lire, donc. Que ceux et celles qui ne s'adonnent pas à la lecture puissent trouver leur équilibre.

---

Daniel Ducharme : 2025-11-14 Catégorie : Existence Mots-clés : #lecture #littérature #modedevie

Po domácku vyprdlý prd! 💨🏡🧓

To je takový tradiční dědoleský skvost, prd, který nevznikl ve spěchu, nýbrž s láskou, péčí a domácím fortelem. Každý dědek, který si váží své prdele, ví, že opravdová kvalita se dělá poctivě doma, z čerstvých plynů a srdcem v klidu.

Recept je jednoduchý: 1. Ráno se nasnídáš cibule a chleba, 2. dopoledne přidáš trochu kysaného zelí, 3. odpoledne popíjíš Kravskou dvanáctku, 4. večer v teple kapradí necháš prdel zrát.

A pak, když je správný tlak, dědek se napřímí, soustředí, nasaje sílu Dědolesa a s hlubokým vydechnutím vypustí domácí prd — voňavý, zaoblený, s jemnou pěnou tradice.

A když se večer rozhostí ticho, jen někde v dálce tiše zazní to typické pfrrr… a všichni vědí, že dědkova prdel znovu promluvila ve jménu rodinných hodnot.

I show up. I do my thing. I make an impact. I leave. Repeat.

Sinceramente, não acho que vale a pena gastar “rios de dinheiro” com os materiais preparatórios do exame HSK. Não, quando a mãe internet fornece tudo gratuitamente, incluindo as provas anteriores, que eu recomendo fortemente fazer depois de estudar uma unidade do livro principal.

Como estou me preparando para o exame no próximo semestre e, claro, a intenção aqui é tornar tudo muito democrático, deixo um compilado da primeira parte dos recursos que estou utilizando.

HSK Standard Course

• HSK 1: Download PDF, Audio / Download PDF, Audio

• HSK 2: Download PDF, Audio / Download PDF, Audio

• HSK 3: Download PDF, Audio / Download PDF, Audio

• HSK 4 (Parte 01): Download PDF, Audio / Download PDF, Audio

• HSK 4 (Parte 02): Download PDF, Audio / Download PDF, Audio

Se decidi optar por materiais físicos, indico os livros Chinês Mandarim: Vocabulário HSK 1-3 , Chinês Mandarim: Vocabulário HSK 4 e o Learning Chinese Characters: HSK 1 e HSK 2, que, além de serem mais acessíveis ($$), são as melhores opções disponíveis em português.

Também não deixem de praticar com os exemplos de provas anteriores. Isso ajuda muito. Dá uma noção real do que o exame pede. Você faz, corrige e já sabe o que precisa reforçar na próxima rodada.

HSK 1

• Practice Test 1 (H10901) / Audio 1
• Practice Test 2 (H10902) / Audio 2
• Practice Test 3 (H11003) / Audio 3
• Practice Test 4 (H11004) / Audio 4
• Practice Test 5 (H11005) / Audio 5

HSK 2

• Practice Test 1 (H20901) / Audio 1
• Practice Test 2 (H20902) / Audio 2
• Practice Test 3 (H21003) / Audio 3
• Practice Test 4 (H21004) / Audio 4
• Practice Test 5 (H21005) / Audio 5

HSK 3

• Practice Test 1 (H31001) / Audio 1
• Practice Test 2 (H31002) / Audio 2
• Practice Test 3 (H31003) / Audio 3
• Practice Test 4 (H31004) / Audio 4
• Practice Test 5 (H31005) / Audio 5

HSK 4

• Practice Test 1 (H41001) / Audio 1
• Practice Test 2 (H41002) / Audio 2
• Practice Test 3 (H41003) / Audio 3
• Practice Test 4 (H41004) / Audio 4
• Practice Test 5 (H41005) / Audio 5

No mais, é isso!

#nov #mandarim #hsk #estudos

Change.

What people like me feel is necessary for the future of football is change. Not just change for the sake of change, but change that will forever change the game in a positive direction. Let's talk about the innovation of the forward pass for example.

In the early 1900s, there were actually calls for the government to intervene and ban football because of injury risks. Yes, this actually happened, it's documented, go look it up on Wikipedia if you must. The then president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, heavily weighed in on the subject because of how loud such calls had gotten at that time. Roosevelt decided not to ban football, but said that there needed to be changes to make football safer to play. The year of this massive change, 1906. Yes, the year of the first legal forward pass in professional football history is 1906.

In a game in the then Ohio League (one of the several leagues that preceded the NFL), the first legal forward pass was thrown in October of 1906. The sport has not looked back since and the forward pass is as integral in the game as it has ever been. That is the type of change we need now, although I'd argue for very different reasons. Yes, there have been attempts at such change such as Indoor/Arena Football and more recently the A7FL, but they haven't touched the nerve or had the long term effects that the forward pass has had. One of the original names I was thinking of for this project before I settled on Brand New Shield was “Next Forward Pass”.

Brand New Shield is actually much more apropos than Next Forward Pass because of what I'm going to get into on this blog and the podcast once I start that up. It also signifies where the change and innovation is needed. I don't think the NFL can be directly competed with, but I do think there are opportunities where others like the USFL and Arena Football League have failed and where currently the UFL is failing.

What we need is another forward pass, but on an organizational and structural level. We need innovation, we need to think outside the box, and we need to strive to make the game better. We cannot just be singularly focused on profit like the current structures in place seem to be. We need to change the perception of what is possible by being both radical and realistic.

Change. For the better. We can get this done. Together.

Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

The Paper Trail

A fortune for the pill And standing by a warehouse, was a promise of self esteem Across the broken planet, in pride to his own Princess We the sum of youth, broke into the Russian vine A sonic win for the good of hay vlad had sixty thousand days To suffer the pain of excess fortune And foreboding by the fire body, it was who accosted a lens To Ukraine with opportunity An income for every soldier Step down and foreward Virtually the appeasement of a frozen plan There was novichok and moons Ukraine the Soldier Himself That who rained peace to God It was hitler who self-recused As a parable for the United States Next to brethren And cars alight for a promise That Belarus would hold his never And vlad stood down By quarter to nine For the Son of God, Who stopped the war

Be mine, in Italy And I will sign your every waiver For the principle of Canadian dreams And Independence for the wait It was best and available In Communion we won So that all who had many Rebuilt the forest And the train And a deliverance of babies Notwithstanding death Many suffered for days But the Glory of God Saw men weeping And stood down to Ukraine And Belarus the prophet Made off with Incheon While the Chinese bled for Christ At once and at noon And became Christian And no-one knows But the sun

May it rain on every driveway To find out what went on In the Irish way of a landslide So that victory was not only, For the poor, but for the just And the ocean’s power of Baptism at once Sent the Paraclete to all and satan died, For Earth’s regret And tears depend on Sunday

See you there, By the shipyard And Christening the sun Who burned a place of iron love And men got on with their day

We spoke out at Club Montreal For the prison of consumption While doves circled in our early time For Baptism to win a war

For the Good of The Son of God For Brandenburg and breathing flames While holly decked our own summons And beheaded vlad by six

To early dinner And so recused I ate a poem and prayed aloud Bless us Lord, We have sinned, But the edged land And the digress of Bread We prevail in the Holy Land And won the battle, For Mexique,

Christendom of days

Many people don’t like their native land

I realised this while talking to a chauffeur in my office. He is from Greece but living in Switzerland for last 15 years now.

He visits his family once every year. He loves wheels so he usually covers the 2000-kms stretch by car.

I have told him many times that I wish to travel to Greece, especially Athens. And requested him to show me around.

I thought he would proudly say Yes! I will show you the great Athens!

But he was a little hesitant.

At first, I did not understand the reason. Then I explained him why I loved to visit Athens because of all the great philosophers born there.

His response still was short of enthusiastic.

Then over a cup of coffee outside office we were discussing a lot of topics when this one came up again. It was then when he opened up.

He said Athens is nothing short of a crowded marketplace these days. So crowded, so dirty, so unsafe. Partly due to immigrants and rest due to petty politics.

He suggested me to rather visit one of these Greek islands.

This made me pause and wonder.

I soliloquyed aloud these were the exact same reasons I don’t feel particularly proud of my capital city, Delhi.

Yes, it is so historic and such a culturally, spiritually rich place. But due to the overcrowding, excessive pollution and lack of civic sense I would also be less enthusiastic in showing foreigners around Delhi.

I would rather urge them to see Sikkim or Goa or Kerala. But none of our stalwarts were born there. These places are not culturally or traditionally that rich but still so pristine and overflowing with natural beauty.

This conversation with him made me feel relieved. Like I am not the only one who is not so proud of the modern day definition of development.

He sure won’t be called a traitor in Greece for discouraging me to visit Athens.

🦡 JEZEVEC DĚDOLESKÝ

Jezevci pochází z oblasti Puchu Podkapradí. Tam to celé smrdí, vlhne a bublá. Kapradiny tam rostou přímo ze hovenného kalu, vzduch páchne po dědcích a prdeli, a ze země občas vyjede jezevec.

Jezevci jsou tvorové prdelatí a kousaví, ale umí být i přítulní, když mají po žrádle a není zrovna bitva. Jezevec nemá žádný plán – prostě jde a kousne do prdele první věc, co se hýbe. Dědka, Píčomloka, někdy i jiného jezevce. Kousnutí je rychlé, hluboké a doprovázené krátkým prdnutím oběti. To je normální.

V Dědolesu se na jezevce nikdo nezlobí. Kousnutí do prdele se bere jako přirozená součást dne.

„Kdo dnes nedostal kusanec, toho si svět nevšiml,“ říkají dědci.

🧓 Jezdci na jezevcích

V Puchu Podkapradí žije skupina dědků zvaná Jezdci na jezevcích. Sedlají své jezevce, drží se jim za krk, a když to rozjedou, prdele jim pleskají o srst. Jezevci funí, dědci řvou a z obou stran to páchne tak, že i mech vadne.

V bitvách se jezdci na jezevcích vrhají do řad nepřátel, kousají do prdelí a rozsévají paniku. Po bitvě si dají pivo, poplácají jezevce po prdeli a jdou spát.

---

🦉 Nepřátelé sov

Jezevci jsou zapřisáhlí nepřátelé prdelatých sov – největších smradochů Zmrdodimenze. Sovy létají, prdí shora a trousí peří plné smradu. Jezevci to nesnášejí. Když sova přiletí moc nízko, jezevec vyskočí, zakousne se jí do prdele a nepustí. Sova křičí, prdí strachem, padá, a dědci se smějí.

Jezevci mají s prdelatými sovami nekonečnou válku. Nikdy ji nevyhrají, ale ani neprohrají – pořád se někde kouše, prdí a smrdí.

🌫 Jezevci jsou všude

Jezevci nejsou ale jen v Puchu Podkapradí. Jsou v celém Dědolesu – v křoví, pod lavicí, za dědkem. Objevují se i v Brčálníku, sídle Zmrdoparty, kde se topí v bahně a koušou dědky do prdele, když se jdou koupat. Všude, kde to páchne, je aspoň jeden jezevec.

Jezevci jsou prostě součást Dědolesa. Bez nich by nebyl smrad, a prdele by zlenivěly.

„Jezevec kouše, dědek prdí, svět se točí.“ — dědoleské přísloví

Black Friday is quickly bearing down upon us. For those not in the know, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the US, and traditionally marks the official start of Christmas shopping season, and as such, many vendors, retailers, and manufacturers offer steep discounts on their products and services.

Below is a list of all known privacy- and security-related Black Friday deals. If you’re reading this closer to a future Black Friday after 2025, check out thenewoil.org/black-friday to be taken to the latest version of this blog. If you spot a deal that isn’t listed here, please send it to me so I can add it. I will try to update as often as I can.

Note that not every service listed here is also listed on The New Oil. The New Oil tries to only list specific services that are relevant to a beginner audience and also meet certain criteria. Anything listed here is not necessarily an endorsement of the service or product. However, I will attempt to list any service I believe is privacy/security-focused, regardless if it qualifies for TNO listing or not. In other words: do your own research before buying anything on this list.

These services are listed in alphabetical order, not order of recommendation or anything like that.

Filen

Encrypted cloud storage. Begins November 24

Google Pixels

Pixel phones are the perfect devices for degoogled operating systems like Calyx or Graphene. Black Friday officially kicks off on Nov 20.

Proton

Encrypted email, calendar, cloud storage, password manager, email aliasing service, VPN, and Bitcoin wallet. Up to 70% off.

StartMail

Private email with unlimited email aliasing. 50% off plus 3 extra months on the annual plan. (Note that StartMail is not truly end-to-end encrypted, but they are privacy-focused.)

Tresorit

Encrypted cloud storage. Up to 50% off for business plans.

Tuta

Encrypted email and calendar, 62% off their Legend Plan.

Yubikey

Hardware security tokens. 30% off up to 4 keys.

Conclusion

I'm not a fan of mindless consumerism. If you need a new phone and Black Friday is your chance to grab a great deal on a phone, great! But if you just saw a discount and went “well, I guess my phone is kind of getting older,” then you're not actually saving money. Don't buy one of these services unless you actually need the features they offer or you use them already and want to support them. But if you fall into one of those categories, hopefully this post will help you score a great deal while supporting a good project. A win-win for everyone.