Hey Academy! Most AI agent platforms put your data at risk—so I built my own secure bot and I'm giving it to you for free. In this video, I'll walk you through the Pope Bot: a self-hosted AI agent that runs 24/7 using GitHub Actions and Docker containers. You'll see how to set it up from scratch, connect it to Telegram, and trigger jobs via API. I'll show a real example—building a financial advisor that does daily market research automatically. You'll also learn how the security architecture keeps your API keys and credentials safe using GitHub Secrets, how the bot logs everything to Git for full transparency, and how it can even analyze its own performance to improve over time. Step-by-step install included. ▸▸ The Pope Bot → https://github.com/stephengpope/thepopebot

In the world of online marketing, one of the most commonly taught strategies is to be contrarian—to take an opposing view. This approach is powerful. It creates a compelling marketing message and can grab attention. But in the pursuit of being contrarian, there’s a dangerous trap that many fall into: trading one ignorance for another. The Trap of Contrarianism When you take a contrarian stance, you're often positioning yourself against an existing belief, claiming that the other side is wrong or ignorant. But if your opposing view is just as uninformed, you're no better off—and you may even come across as foolish. You risk becoming nothing more than the flip side of someone else’s flawed perspective. The key is not just to be contrarian for the sake of being different, but to identify real ignorance and counter it with actual truth. A well-formed contrarian stance isn't just about disagreeing—it’s about finding a deeper understanding that others may have missed. A Real-World Example: AI and Writing Since I work in the AI space, I see this all the time. Many writers and marketers attack AI-generated content, claiming that without a human touch, all AI-written content is worthless. There is some truth to that—right now, AI still requires human oversight to ensure quality. But this argument also exposes the ignorance of those making it. Yes, AI still needs human refinement today. But it won’t always. The trajectory of AI development is clear: it is improving rapidly, and soon it will be better than humans at many writing tasks. Those who build their entire marketing message around the idea that "AI content is garbage without a human" are setting themselves up for a reality check. Their argument isn’t rooted in long-term truth—it’s a short-term justification for their own value in the marketplace. If you want to make a strong argument, it has to hold up not just today, but in the future as well. Otherwise, you’re just swapping one form of ignorance for another.