[Music]
Hello and welcome to another episode of Chaos Family.
This time...
Now let me start over.
What we want to do with this show is present you or get you interested in all the people and groups and operating centers
and all the interesting people on the campgrounds that do stuff to show you how diverse and how big and how interesting the event is and the people running around here.
With me on the couch we have three members of Milleways, one of the largest groups at the camp.
Let's start with Zornem, then we have Klaun and Emerson.
Thanks for joining.
We'll do the casting.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not sure... yeah, okay, whatever.
I have to emphasize all three of them are here voluntarily. We did not force them to join us here.
It's a lie.
So let's start with you.
The decide between the three of us who's going to take the question.
Could you describe me what Milleways is?
I love the way everyone points at me.
This feels profoundly unfair.
So Milleways is a running joke that became a thing.
So, okay, to understand this you have to go back a ways.
First there was the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started out as a British radio play,
then became a novel, big global hit, absurd, existentialist comedy, science fiction comedy.
And right from the very earliest days of the camps and right from the earliest days of the CCC,
this ancient, absurd, English language, profoundly British science fiction comedy
has had a real influence throughout the whole history really of the CCC.
Because they all date from about the same era, which is the late 70s.
And Milleways is the restaurant at the end of the universe from first the radio play and then the book
and then the TV series and then the movie and so on and so forth.
All of which, by the way, are great. They really haven't aged at all.
So totally recommend go away, read those, watch those.
And so what happened was that over the years the Hockey community obviously is very international.
It spans most of the continents of the world.
In fact, actually we even went to Antarctica together with the tour camp folks.
And what ended up happening was that there was kind of like a coming together of a bunch of folks from the US
who came over to one of the first camps in the early 2000s.
And basically their organization was a complete disaster, like a, you know, like dreadful.
And they found themselves kind of like weirdly stranded and really in need of like a friendly face.
And that's really how it all got going. We were literally like all thrown together.
I ended up cooking for the very first iteration of Milleways, literally because the Americans had brought nothing.
And it was just like, okay, right, well, clearly we need to feed you guys.
We're all just going to go to Métro and just go and do a massive run.
And out of this sort of like bubbling chaos, this idea of like, well, actually, you know what?
We really enjoy each other's company.
And so what's happened over the years is that the Europeans have spent, go every year to the States,
usually for DEFCON or tour camp, tour con, or any one of the other sort of crazy adventures, including the Antarctic one.
And then the Americans who run events in the States come here.
And Milleways is kind of this sort of like weird agglomerate, running joke that came in an agglomeration
that's now sort of metamorphosed into a big thing.
Because most of us actually are experienced conference organizers, experienced event organizers,
or like come from different backgrounds, which basically means that, you know,
we can kind of come around the things that actually really kind of like unite us as a group of people,
which is a love of eating, drinking and like absurdist jokes and technology.
It's kind of like all sort of together.
It was very kind of you to avoid saying drugs.
Yes. Yeah. Shut up. We don't say that. Yeah. This is like a, this is a family show.
Like ethanol in beer.
Shush. Shush. Quiet.
What about the Scottish embassy and their wine thing?
OK. So the story with all of those guys is that, so as the years have gone on and Milleways has actually moved between events.
So we did, obviously we've been doing the camps, we've been doing the Dutch events, we've been doing the US events.
But then we've also done things like EMF in the UK.
Electromagnetic field. Yeah. Electromagnetic field.
And we're very good friends with all of the organizers of these events.
And so of course now when there's a European, you know, when there's an event in Germany or an event in the Netherlands and the like,
it's like it's a natural place to come because, you know, multilingual first language is English very often.
And it always attracts a good mixture of people from a lot.
So nobody actually feels, excuse me, even if we're all like from, you know, we have a Latvian contingent, you know, which is like, it's tiny.
You know, it's like, oh, you're so small. You want to pet them.
But it's probably deeply patronizing.
But what that means is that all of these folks can come and really sort of like just come and hang out.
And it's very, very easy.
On top of that, over the years, Milliways has also attracted a number of people who are in the tech and security community, really quite famous.
You know, like we always used to have Dank Minsky come stay with us.
We always used to have, you know, he's sadly departed now.
But, you know, there are all these other sort of like, you know, folks who are relatively speaking fairly famous and the like.
And, you know, you could always just come and camp with us.
And it was always just an open door. It still is an open door.
Show up. You know.
So to give you a breather, maybe one of you two want to pick up on that.
How do I get into Milliways?
I mean, can it be an organization like EMF Camp or the Scottish Embassy to join Milliways?
Do I have to sign up forms?
If I'm attending, for example, EMF Camp in the UK as a European, sorry.
Can I just show up and say, Hi, Milliways, I'm here?
How does this work?
Can I as an individual join Milliways at an event?
I mean, that's more or less how I ended up here.
So the entire story about how I ended up here involves a big back story.
But in a way, Milliways actually ended up in me moving to Germany where I've been living for now more than 10 years.
I showed up to the first camp and I had no idea what to expect.
I had no idea what I was doing or why even I was here.
And then one of the first things you do when you get to camp is where am I going to pitch my tent?
Like, who am I going to hang out with?
I don't know anyone here.
And somebody whispered in my ear, Hey, go over to the Milliways Village.
They are friendly people.
Sometimes they cook food.
They always cook food and they're always friendly.
And for sure you will have a good time.
And whoever whispered in my ear, thank you from the future. You are absolutely 100% correct.
And it's nice, especially during this event, I've heard that some people have been walking around camp showing people around.
That's more or less the description of Milliways that I overhear.
Ah, yeah, there's the Milliways. They're generally nice people, very friendly.
You can hang out there and they cook food.
So the topic of food came up quite often now.
Apparently, are the British still in charge of the kitchen?
No, no, I abdicated those responsibilities ages ago.
So, no, this year I have organized the kitchen and I came to Milliways similarly to you.
I wanted to go to Maycontain Hackers last year and I didn't want to do some tiny sub-village with friends.
I didn't know whom of my friends were going.
Plenty, but a friend of mine said, let's go join Milliways.
And that's how it started.
First time at Milliways and this year due to some interesting things going on in our own organization,
at GPN a few friends of mine came up to me, hey, we could need someone to run the Milliways kitchen.
So I said, yeah, let's see.
And it was very little time to plan the kitchen.
It's worth pointing out at this point that Milliways has been going for pretty much nearly 20 odd years.
So this organization has been through several iterations.
People coming, people going.
Yeah, people coming, people going, people having kids, getting on with their real lives.
Because the camps and events are annual or biannual, you kind of see the same people,
but they're like little snapshots into their lives.
And of course, we're all very good over the years.
Those of us who have been around forever, we're all very good friends now.
And I think it's actually really helped to build the -- the whole computer hacker scene or movement is actually very,
very different compared -- depending on where you are around the world.
The U.S. tends to be very tech-centric.
It tends to be very Silicon Valley-centric.
Germany, on the other hand, and you know, it tends to be far more politically oriented because of the --
because of the history of the CCC and where it comes from.
And the Dutch and the British are kind of somewhere in the middle and, you know, everybody else.
It's a big old mess.
But one of the things -- one of the really interesting things is that when you bring all these people together
with all of their alternate viewpoints, you actually have a really interesting
and productive discussion about, okay, well, you know, who's -- right is the wrong word.
But it's like, for example, the European -- in the case of the European Union, the European Union is very big on regulation.
The U.S., on the other hand, is very not big on regulation.
And you have people from two radically different points of view and who work, generally speaking,
for very large -- for companies that come from radically different places, actually sort of like stick them in a field together, right?
Shove a bunch of beer in them, like, and then give them soup, right?
And that pretty much forces them to talk, right?
And after you've spent, like, an hour, like, chopping stuff with somebody else,
by the end of that, you're either really bored or you've made a new friend, you know?
And that new friend might well come from somewhere completely different.
So when you say --
But there's also something I need to emphasize.
So last camp, I went with a couple of friends, and it was great, yes,
but this time I'm just meeting so many people.
There are so many new faces.
And maybe we didn't fully talk about how do you get to Millyways.
We are very open about this.
You don't need a friend who tells you, "Hey, let's join Millyways together."
On our Matrix chat, random people showed up in the last few weeks.
"Hey, I would like to join Millyways. Can I be in?"
We were like, "Hey, welcome to Millyways. You're one of us now."
The only constriction now is our camping grounds.
There's nowhere space.
If you plan on joining Millyways for one of the next camps,
there is, I think, a Wiki or Matrix channel.
Basically, say, "Yeah, I would like to come by."
It's not a regulation thing. It's just how much space do we need?
How much space do we need?
You don't have to start packing the tents three-dimensionally.
Basically, the minimum skill level is,
can you peel a potato without killing yourself?
That's it. It's very low.
And even then, you can still do the dishes or whatever.
Yes, if you can't, we'll find something else.
So it's not just, I want to come back to the topic of food and food preparation.
So it's not like you have a kitchen team that does all the cooking.
It's a communal thing. How does it work?
It's communal. It's logic communal.
Today, actually, our Spanish friends took over the kitchen.
We had planned this together.
I think everyone was really happy about the food.
The line went all the way to Jugendhackt.
I think when we're talking about the food,
it's really important to give a sense of scale.
So you say, "Okay, we have a kitchen. We cook food."
What does that mean?
Well, we plan two meals a day for the duration of camp,
some stuff during build-up, some stuff during tear down,
for this year, approximately 500 people.
And that is an immense logistical effort,
which I get to take absolutely no credit for this year,
which I'm very happy that I don't have to take credit for that logistical effort.
And to get everything in order from the suppliers months in advance,
making sure that not only are there things for people to eat,
but that there's things that people can eat,
figuring out what recipes scale,
how to cook those recipes with people who are not professional chefs,
aren't necessarily working as professional sous chefs or something like that,
in a way that is in conformity with the health and safety regulations
that nobody gets hurt or poisoned or worse or anything like that,
is a giant lift, which Zornam has quietly avoided taking credit for,
but let's loudly give her the credit for pulling this off.
So far, no one is poisoned.
So far.
Over the years, when it started out, I was catering for, what, 100 people?
Yeah, so I took it from a small ad hoc to approximately,
very nearly the size it is now,
and then I got busy with real life.
And I said, "OK, I'll hand it on to somebody else."
But things have been going for 20 odd years, right?
So that's plenty of time to go, "OK, done now. Hand it off to somebody else."
And then old people like me,
we just hover around and help out and try not to be a nuisance.
So if someone wants to try and mill it away, you mentioned the Matrix channel.
Is there a website?
Yeah, there's a wiki and stuff.
The wiki.info is the URL.
There is wiki and all sorts of other information about the organization.
But I think, and I heard it a couple of times,
just show up and have the right open attitude.
I mean, the concept behind the camp is all creatures are welcome,
and that certainly applies to us.
Show up, volunteer, be present, and have a good time.
Yeah, I just talk.
I mean, like, you know, if you hide in your tent,
nothing happens, right? Exactly.
So come and volunteer.
Chop some onions.
Chop some onions, chop some potatoes.
But I mean, or simply actually the easiest thing to do, right,
is, okay, so you're a new person that you've decided to take the plunge,
and you're going to come to one of these events,
like whether it's camp, whether it's Congress, whatever, right?
You don't know anybody, and it's like, right,
I need to go make some friends.
The easiest thing you can do is, here, is certainly,
is show up with a plate and a knife and a fork, right?
Roughly about meal time, serving meal time, right?
The way the system works is that we don't--
just like "Milly Way" is in the book and the TV show--
BBC TV series. Yeah, et cetera.
You never have to pay at "Milly Way"
because if you've ever had one penny in an account at any point,
for the magic of compound interest, by the end of the universe,
you have an infinite amount of money, so therefore, it's fine.
So we don't charge.
We ask for a donation, obviously, because we still have to cover our costs.
But just show up and eat, and just sit at a table and just talk to people.
That's it. It's the easiest thing in the world.
No obligations.
No obligations. It's literally the easiest thing in the world,
and it's one of these things where it's like you sit down,
rub elbows to people, drink the soup, eat the bread, talk.
And that's it.
So I think it makes sense to come back to this topic of handover.
So there's a problem that a lot of hobbies and interests
and those kind of organizations have,
which is you have a group of people, and there's a certain culture,
and you need to understand the culture to get into it,
and then eventually those people gray out,
and because they're this sort of closed-off thing
that's a little bit scary, a little bit, "Mm, we don't like outsiders,"
eventually it dies off and then it goes away.
The fact that Milly Ways has lived more than a very short time,
more than 20 years, as you said,
is a testament to the fact that that is the polar opposite of how things work.
People show up one year, they eat food.
They make some friends, they come to the next event,
they volunteer in the kitchen, they have a great time.
They do that a couple times in a row,
and then maybe they take over the kitchen for one night,
and they do that again, and they start to really look forward to it,
and maybe they take some other responsibility.
This year, instead of taking over a night in the kitchen,
I ended up responsible for the entire stage.
(laughter)
And the other thing as well, of course,
is that all of that interaction also feeds back then
into what else you learn along the way,
because clearly it's like, "Let's chop potatoes
and talk about BGP."
For example, I mean, that's deeply nerdy,
but it could be anything.
Literally, it's like, "Are you interested in the intersection
between politics and, say, I don't know, surveillance society?
How we structure human relations in the age
where everything is technologically mediated?"
Whatever. You pick it.
You can talk about it, and you will find someone else
who is interested in what you are interested in.
But just to circle back, to make this really clear for the audience,
that has not been to any of these events like EMF camp,
CCC camp, there is no obligation to pitch in.
No.
Show up.
Show up. And that's basically why I take it, then show up.
You're not going to get the sort of guilty looks where people are like,
"Hmm, we've been keeping track, and you haven't been doing anything,"
and there's not the sort of, "Oh, there's that person who's come to 10 events
and never helped."
There's really no obligation.
But also, I don't even think that's how people in Millyways work,
because when we go out there and we're like,
"Oh, we really need some people to this or that right now,"
someone is always there.
Always volunteers.
I'm just trying to make sure that everyone understands
the barrier of entry is very low.
Basically, buy a ticket, get a tent, and show up.
Show up.
And manage not to kill yourself peeling a potato.
Yeah.
It's like, can you wash a dish?
Can you peel a potato without killing yourself?
It's a very low bar.
So basically, you can train until the next camp to match that.
Yeah, exactly.
Can you boil an egg?
Well, in all honesty, depending...
Oh, that's a ho.
In all honesty, depending on the day you're doing this,
you may learn how to peel potatoes in one day.
After 25 kilos of potatoes, you know how to peel them.
You better be good at this.
I mean, quite seriously.
So it's one of these things.
The whole tech and hackathon in general actually kind of really
has a bit of a cultural problem in that its perception is,
you know, it's really shaped by the media,
and we really don't help ourselves.
We all dress in black.
We all have, like, mostly weird hair.
I have weird hair.
Thanks.
You know, you probably are old enough to have lost most of your weird hair,
but you'd have weird hair if you could.
You know, we mostly dress in black, and the rest of it,
apart from Zoram, who's very helpfully trying to break that stereotype,
it's overwhelmingly male-dominated,
and it talks in a weird, arcane language
that is very difficult for outsiders to really penetrate.
But in fact, actually, it is probably more important than ever
that people who are interested,
even if they don't have a technical background,
actually show up to these things,
because technology really permeates and undergirds the entire frame
in which we now experience modern life.
And if you don't understand that environment that sits underneath you,
it's like a fish's understanding of water,
or a bird's understanding of air.
Unless you actually understand what those things are,
then you can't actually understand the way in which the ways that you think
and the ways that you act and the people around you act, clearly.
And as Goethe once put it, none are more completely enslaved
than those that falsely believe they are free.
And really, this is kind of what a lot of this is actually about.
It's like, let us understand the air and the water,
the contemporary air and water composed of electrons through which we swim,
with which we breathe.
And on that bombshell we will end this show now.
No. Thanks.
And there's also feedback the other way around, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
If someone from outside the field shows up and talks to you,
you have to rethink how you phrase things, how you explain things,
how do you explain to someone how BGP or whatever works.
You used the word "if."
I think it's very important to underline,
it's not if someone from outside of the field shows up.
When?
They're here.
Yes, thankfully.
Yes, absolutely.
Next to us, we are sandwiched this year between the Jugendhack,
so young and upcoming people who are security researchers,
and the family village.
And they are perfectly wonderful, lovely people,
and the Jugendhack people are, let's say, the hackers of tomorrow,
the security researchers, the people in Infosec,
and a lot of people in the family village, some one of the family is,
and the other people are absolutely not.
Just regular people.
We're regular people too.
But they're more regular.
For several bodies of regular, yeah.
They're more regular.
And so it's not that they're coming here just to humor their family members,
they're coming here because they also are learning something,
participating, interacting with the event, getting benefit from the event,
providing benefit to the event, and this event and all of the events with Miloways,
the whole idea is you're having this mixing of people from all over the different places,
the different security areas, the different parts of the world,
and this exchange of idea and information is a net positive for everyone.
The sum is greater than the whole.
I'd also strongly suggest, I'd strongly advocate for more people,
more people with disabilities showing up,
more people from more places around the world, not just the privileged white world.
Sorry, you're privileged white guys.
And I'm proxy privileged white guy.
And more ethnic minorities.
And for a very good reason.
It's because in general people solve for the experiences,
for the problems that they experience.
And the problem with technology is that technology is so often made up by
white able-bodied men.
So you end up solving for problems that are experienced by white able-bodied rich men.
Like can't get a taxi in San Francisco, well I made Uber,
can't get a cheap hotel room wherever, so I made Airbnb and so on and so forth.
Now all of that is fucking meaningless if you are from Sierra Leone,
or if you're disabled.
And what we actually need to do is bring more of these people in to learn the skills and thought processes
to then enable them to solve for the problems that they experience.
And then feed that back also into how we build literally the world around us.
And that's the feedback loop we have at CCC Camp and all the other events as well.
What did we do right, what did we do wrong, how can we improve?
And the broader the audience, the broader the spectrum of people we get into these events,
the better it becomes.
And the more we understand, okay what did we not experience, what did we forget, what did we not see?
Who did we not include?
Who's missing?
So again, Milly Ways is a perfectly good environment.
We really try and actually, we really very much go out of our way to invite people from right across the spectrum
to just show up, you know.
And you know, it's more important, given the pivotal role that technology really has adopted in our lives,
it's more important than ever than the people who are actually creating, implementing,
and inventing literally the future around us actually get experience and live the world through the eyes of others.
And that's actually very, very hard because you know, like it's an extremely neurodiverse community.
And what that actually means is that very often people actually get kind of like a bit of autistic tunnel vision.
And we don't necessarily see the world through other people's eyes.
And events like this is actually a very low stress way of actually being able to see the world through somebody else's eyes.
Here's a really stupid, trivial example.
I was talking to a friend here who is disabled and she can't reach the buttons in the shower because she's too short.
I found out about that today when I was taking a shower because there was a woman with her daughter right next to me.
And she was like, oh, I need to go to a different one because I can't reach it.
I'm really tall.
And I was like, that's what those wooden blocks and those ropes are for.
I didn't know what they were for.
Right?
But it's like it's but it's this very important thing where it's like now unless unless that person had ever shown up,
we would actually not really ever realize that that barrier was there.
Yeah.
But unfortunately, this is also an example of how slow we sometimes learn because we had the same issue four years ago at the last.
Yeah, well, that's we didn't improve on that yet.
Yeah, that's that's that's on you.
Yeah.
But that's not really that's not really so let's let's part of setting up the stage this year for organizational reasons.
A lot of the the organization of the infrastructure was pushed out from the core CCC into the villages.
And so in putting together the stage, the first thing is, OK, how can we have a fantastic stage where the presenter can give an amazing talk and look good and make all of us look good and share their information?
And the second thing is, how can we accommodate as many people as possible?
And the CCC has an organization which takes a special care that people with disabilities are able to enjoy that not just things like there's a place for people with wheelchairs,
but also for people that have issues seeing that there's reserved spaces that the design and the layout of the stage facilitates people with mobility issues getting in and out, especially in case of an emergency or something like that.
And just all of these things that as an able bodied white man in the Western world aren't the first thing that you think about.
And the as much as you can sort of imagine, right, you say, OK, I don't have this problem, but I could imagine that this might be a problem.
That's nothing compared to the accumulated experience of the people that have those issues and need those accommodations.
And we weren't able to do everything that we wanted to do to accommodate everyone, which is our bad, not the Congress's.
And we will do better next time.
And we will continue to do better until there's nothing to do better at the end of the universe when money is infinite and we don't have we have other problems.
We can afford the dinner at the end of the universe.
Which is also infinitely expensive.
Because, you know, I think that that's I think that's I think that's absolutely right.
And I think as time goes on, the more the more people with the more view with more viewpoints and that you can bring in and with more experiences that you can bring in so much the better.
And then that actually has a cross fertilization effect then out into wider society.
More people then understand the way that the way that the tech folks work and the tech folks actually understand more of the way that the real world works.
And then hopefully then they'll actually go out and solve problems that are actually really socially meaningful.
Right.
We're a little bit pressed for time.
I have two topics I want to touch on.
No, it's totally fine.
Thank you very much.
It's awesome.
You mentioned already when we talked about the food that you asked for donations.
Where does this Millie Way coin come in?
Does this is this is this your way of asking for donations?
Is this a completely different thing?
It's it's actually history because challenge coins in the US are really, really, really, really common.
And I have to drop you here.
You have to explain the concept of a challenge coin.
Okay.
What are Europeans?
I don't.
I totally didn't bring any because because I failed behind the couch.
So, okay.
So challenge coins come from actually they come from the US services.
And the idea is it's basically you you're like you're a former Marine or whatever.
And the rest of it.
And it's like you pull out your challenge coin and everybody else who is in your organization or in your unit and the rest of it has to put their challenge coin.
If they don't have it, whoever didn't have it has to buy the round drinks.
Right.
So that goes all the way back to the Vietnam War.
But that in the States has kind of like bled over into everything else.
So now at hack a cons right there were all these challenge coins going around because all of the units and the rest of it, you know, have their own challenge coins.
So that bled out into wide society.
And so that idea ended up coming here.
So but that does kind of that culture doesn't exist here.
So what they ended up becoming was a collectible.
So because they've now been so many events, right, you can literally have a whole collection of these coins, which we have designed by a different designer for each event.
And, you know, it's kind of like become, you know, got a Pokemon, got to collect them all.
So they're effectively a memento, but they're also represent a way to basically support support what we're doing right in a way that, again, doesn't obligate anybody to do anything, doesn't obligate.
But you get a very cool little like like souvenir effectively of the event that you went to as well as unforgettable memories.
Let's, you know, I just and they go in the dark.
Yes, fine. Close in the dark. It does glow in the dark. Yeah.
Something that's important. And I need to be a little bit careful in my word choice.
And so, you know, Millerways is an organization does not have a bank account. And so the things that we do, the infrastructure that we build, the experiences that people share are born shared across Millerways.
As nice as it is to have the opportunity to go into the individual people's bank accounts to be able to provide these things.
It's also nice to be able to say at the end, hey, we were able to cover our costs and everything's going to be all right.
And because there's this there are no expectations. As far as I know, there's never been a huge loss where people were out of pocket for huge sums of money.
The only real thing that we have that we can say, hey, thank you for supporting us is the challenge coin.
So it's not that, hey, you come to the event and you buy the coin and you're buying your way into the village.
That's not at all the point. But rather, hey, you come, you had a good time. You want to support what we're doing. Great.
Here's a souvenir. And that helps us defray the costs of doing all of this.
Even if you do not stay with Millerways, come back, get the coin, support the correct. It's a cool design.
You got a cool design. And then after a while, got to collect them all.
So basically walk by, walk by really ways, find someone who looks bored like you did this afternoon.
No, no, no, do not come and find me. I do not find people that look bored.
We have a really interesting and fun info desk.
We didn't think it would be finished before Friday, but it's there now.
So most likely during the day you will find someone who will sell you coins there and if not, ask for it or go to the sticker box.
So, yes, do not wake anyone up for them, right? Yeah, that would be nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't.
One last thing I experienced over the last events before the unspeakable time was there was an evening of coming together at Millerways where some beverages were consumed.
Oh, you mean Whiskey League? Yes.
Whiskey League started out as kind of like a fundraiser for the legal defenses of various people and now it's just become like that original purpose went in the trash years ago because, you know, it turned out that some people were assholes.
And now it's just turned into show up with whiskey and drink it.
It's another excellent chance to socialize.
So you want to bring your own bottle?
No, so the way it works is that if you have something interesting that you'd like to share, please bring it.
It's not your bottle. Just throw it into the pile and it'll get drunk.
Or alternatively, if you want to just come up and just have a taste, show up with a cup, you know, like have a, you know, like drink something interesting outside of your normal.
This year I found a bottle of whiskey from India, which is a mixture of like Indian, distilled in India, but made with a mixture of Indian like grain grown up on the hill of Malaya's and smoked scotch malt.
So it's going to taste really weird.
But weird is interesting and good. Right?
And so whiskey leaks is one of the things that Millie Weiss organizes.
There are people who camp with Millie Weiss who don't drink alcohol.
There are people who camp with Millie Weiss who don't smoke, who are vegan, who there are people who eat only meat, smoke cigarettes constantly.
And I haven't seen them sober in a decade.
It's not that there's this particular type of person that belongs or and you know what?
If whiskey leaks isn't your thing, there's something else going on.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we have a stall that started today that is serving alcohol free chunk.
We have a whole espresso escalation.
There can never be too much espresso. No, no, no.
There is too much.
We challenge you to empty it.
It's also kind of like an international alarms race here.
You have the Europeans.
We have the best coffee.
And the folks from Seattle are like, no, we have the best coffee.
And that's kind of escalated into kind of like a very strange competition.
There are also other competitions like Titanium Chef, which is kind of like a weird challenge thing that happened at tour camp several years ago.
There's all sorts of just like variously bonkers things, you know, which are highly entertaining.
We just encourage people just again to show up for.
I mean, we put the British next to the Scottish this year.
There's also an Irish contingent as well.
And it's kind of interesting because, again, you know, like what you have is also an environment where people actually just realize they will just get on.
They will just share real just common interests.
You know, national borders and the rest of it are kind of a bit of a joke.
You might have some fun with it, but yeah, exactly.
It's an implementation detail.
Yeah. Yeah.
And thanks for bringing up all the other events.
I just Whiskey Leaks is one example.
And of course, just show up and have fun and talk to people.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
I think tonight we will have some a lot of culinary surprises as well.
I mean, dinner time is finished already as far as I understand, but we have some more plans for today.
Yeah, that's true.
There's also midnight fries.
Yes. Literally midnight fries.
It's midnight.
You've been out partying all night and the rest of it wet because, you know, it's the classic thing of, you know,
like it's three a.m. in the morning.
The clubs have just done.
I'm just done with clubbing and the rest of it.
I need something greasy.
And of course, on a campsite, there is no kebab.
So now it's just like, right.
OK, like we implemented midnight fries.
So thanks for that information.
I think I will have to drop by.
The thing about midnight fries is it's not that there's somebody with with their watch and say, oh, it's midnight.
It's time to make the fries.
There's a kitchen.
There's the pot.
There's the oil.
There's the fries.
There's the first person who says, you know what, it it feels like it's time for midnight fries.
Gets midnight fries going.
And then from nowhere, a swarm of people come and help and then eat and then go back to wherever they went.
And hopefully, other people come and clean up.
Hopefully clean up.
I've had to clean that fry too many times.
So we are almost hitting our time marks.
Any any last remarks from each of you on on Millieways, why people should come by, why people should come to the next event where Millieways is?
Show up. We're nice.
That's it.
Just show up. We're nice.
What's the quote?
Mostly harmless.
Show up. We're nice.
You know, that really is it.
It's a group of people who are mostly nice and they cook occasionally.
Yeah.
I'd also say we add another level of chaos with that international angle.
We're a camp within the camp with sub camps that also have sub camps.
Yeah, I know. It's kind of it's getting weird.
In a good way.
I mean, the other thing is, is that it's changed out of all recognition over the last 20 years and it will keep changing.
And really, actually, if you know, like, be the be the be the change you'd like to see.
Right. So if you find if you as a person find, you know, the world around you really interesting, you're curious about other people, you're curious about other cultures, just show up.
And once you get stuck in, literally become the change that you wish to see in the world.
You're the future of Millieways.
Yeah.
Come find out what exactly that means together with all of us.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I think there's nothing to add.
We will cut it short here.
Thank you very much.
So this was Zornheim, Kralln and Amazon for Millieways.
This was another episode of Chaos Family.
Thank you very much for watching and hopefully we will see you soon.
Have a great day.
Cheers.
[crickets chirping]