The Cube at EMC World 2014 is brought to you by EMC, redefine VCE, innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing, brocade. Say goodbye to the status quo and hello to brocade. Welcome back, Jeff Rick here on The Cube. We're at EMC World 2014, the fifth year of The Cube being at EMC World and something special this year. We actually have two concurrent cubes going on side by side. So we invite you to stop by, hopefully say hello. We're right next to this beautiful video wall in the alumni lounge and the social lounge and the big stage next door. So come on by The Cube and see not one, but two, double the pleasure, double the insight. So for our next segment, we're going to keep diving into VMEX, right? We're going to go to VPEX, I'll kick it over to my associate here, Stu Miniman. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. Of course, EMC for many years, everything started with a V and ended in X, but they've kind of moved beyond that. But we've been talking about VPEX, talking about convergence, talking about moving up to the applications, orchestration, the whole kit and caboodle. And join us for this segment, chat done. Chat's senior director of VPEX business operations and chat, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me, I really appreciate it. Yeah, so you've been involved in VPEX for a while and there's a lot of updates that are going on. And of course, VPEX is a collection, polls from the Federation and especially from the EMC product lines. And Jeremy Burton, of course, made sure that there was lots and lots of news to dig into. So can you give us, what are the announcements that EMC will mean to the VPEX line? Sure, well the big announcements that we've had this week as we've updated 11 of the reference architectures to now include the VNX-E3200, right? So that's the next generation of our VNX-E low end, mid-range products. And so all of the Microsoft private cloud solutions, the VMware solutions, the application solutions, all updated to use the VNX-E3200 now. Also, we've brought the data domain 2200, which was just announced today. That's also in the reference architectures as well. So we've refreshed our data protection portfolio at the same time. So can you give us an update? What's the mix look like in VPEX? I think you can do VNX and VMAX, you can do Cisco and Brocade, you can do Microsoft and VMware. What's a typical-ish configuration? What's the breakdown? Well, what a typical configuration looks like to me if I look across all the different solutions that we sell and what tends to be moving at the highest volume. Its configurations, they're in sort of that VNX-5400 sort of size from a storage footprint perspective. And it's usually on the order of four to six servers, whether they're blades or rack mount, redundant network switches of course, and VMware virtualization seems to be the dominant player from that perspective. And about 25% of the time, there's also backup included in those solutions as well. A lot of times as people deploy these in green fields or are updating from older infrastructure, they want to do backup at the same time, so they have all of that in one pane of glass in the new infrastructure. So that's typically what these solutions look like on average. But then we have outliers, we do have other very high-end configurations that we see that aren't as common. So we see things up on the 5800 line that could run into the millions of dollars from an ASP perspective. So it's really all over the place. Okay, and from your partner standpoint, let's talk about the network for a second. How much fiber channel, how much ethernet? Predominantly ethernet today, right? Because really playing in the mid-market space and up until now, up until the VNX-E3200, that was an ethernet-only product, right? So now it has fiber channel front end as well, which has been a surprisingly strong request from our partner and our customer base, particularly in APJ, where fiber channel is alive and well and I really sought after a feature. So, predominantly ethernet in the low end today, but we expect to see a lot more fiber channel with the 3200. Okay, well, Broke's got a big presence at EMC, we'll always, I'm sure they're happy to hear that. Happy to hear that. That growth's going on, of course, they play across both the fiber channel ethernet. Ethernet, does Cisco dominate that space like they do in the market overall or do you see a good mix out there? There's certainly the dominant player that we see from an ethernet attached perspective. It may not be as dominant as the market share suggests, but it's either typically Cisco or Broke8 in our IP configurations that we see.  No way, I scuzzy, it's going to be good or we should go block, we should go file. One of the things I found with converged solutions is protocol wars should be dead. The solution should just simplify the solution my reseller and my solution, you know, my environment dictates what it should be. And then, you know, it's just some of the guts inside that I might have checked when I set it up and I might have to tweak it if it breaks. But, you know, is it true? Is our protocols, you know, just part of the plumbing now? Well, they're moving in that direction and now the real differentiator is going to be how those hardware devices are going to interact with software defined networking things like NSX, like Cisco's NCME product. So the pipes are becoming, you know, less and less important and I think those protocol wars are by and large behind us. Okay, so is SDN part of the story with V-Specs now? Stay tuned. You know, obviously we have a pretty strong SDN play with VMware and their NSX product. And so we certainly want to be able to leverage that where it's needed, right? We don't really see it as much in the mid-market yet. That's still a fairly high-end solution for very particular use cases. But we expect that to come down pretty rapidly. Yeah, and I mean, there obviously is the virtual layer where I need to worry about the switching there. But for the most part, as a converged solution, I'm an end node and most of the network happens outside of my box regardless of what I choose. Yeah, that's the typical case, the typical case. Most of what we sell in V-Specs from a volume perspective, we see going into green fields in, you know, two, three racks worth of equipment in these deals. Okay, the other announcement recently that I think we want to dig into is a little bit of support. Can you tell me, you know, the progression of what a V-Spec support looks like? Yeah, we, originally when we launched V-Specs, we didn't do anything special for customer support for these configurations. So we would certainly honor the cooperative support agreements we have with the other vendors that are part of the ecosystem. But that was really it. And time and again, every partner meeting that I ever went to, you know, single-point of support had to be there. We need single-point of support. And so, you know, exhausting all other options, we did the right thing and we actually implemented it. All right, so now, if you have a problem with your V-Spec solution, whether it's compute, network, virtualization, storage, you can call EMC first. If we can determine that the responsibility or the issue is with another vendor software, we will work with you and open that call ticket on your behalf with that vendor, assuming you have the supported title wants to do so. And EMC will stay with you through the whole process until it's resolved. So regardless of what you think the problem is, you call EMC first and we'll take care of it. Okay, so that had to have added a little bit of overhead to, you know, your team is, what was their headcount added to support this? There was. There's a whole new team inside Global Services whose responsibility is solution support for V-Specs. And that team, I believe, is 16 people strong right now and continuing to grow. But yeah, it certainly adds cost. It adds overhead to what we do. But we're in a solutions world now. We're selling solutions. Our partners go to market that way. We need to support these things like solutions, not as discrete products. So if one of the add-on pieces, like through the V-Specs lab certified, like we had Vistara on, you guys are over a single support for that or is it limited to the compute? No, they can absolutely call us with a Vistara issue. We have collaborative support agreements in place with Vistara so we can open calls on the customer's behalf. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you're going to be in the solution of the business, you've got to be in the solution of the business, right? Exactly. It can't be a solution up until the point where you actually sell it and then... And then it breaks and they want help, yeah. That's not my part. Yeah, so Chad, you know, it was pretty striking in the keynote this morning that EMC with both the VCE and the V-Specs solution have really strong market share out there. One of the observations that we've made on the marketplace is while almost every vendor out there has converged solutions, EMC really leads with those solutions and has worked with the channel to help train them, educate them and push them. Do you, when you're out competing in the marketplace, do you find that still that you're the ones leading the conversation on convergence then they kind of step up to it or are you still competing against built solutions or what's the competitive landscape look like? I really feel like we're leading with that solution selling message because it's one thing to build a conversion infrastructure thing that looks and feels like a product but if your partners don't have the ability to go out and sell and transact and support like a solution, you're not going to get anywhere. And the reason that I think we've been so successful with V-Specs is, you know, one, we believe they're superior products. I wouldn't work at EMC if I didn't believe that but what we also do is we add value to our partners in the reference architectures, in the go-to-market program, the single point of support, all those things that make them more successful and leaves them room to make margin and to differentiate and add value to those solutions. So you talked before to Gary Garcia about V-Specs Labs, partners will take these solutions they'll differentiate by bringing in different software, different hardware offerings and that's meaningful business for them. That means they can differentiate. So we get fantastic volume and fantastic traction from our partners because it's more profitable and differentiated for them. Yeah, the actual value and value added, right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so, Chad, what have you seen change in the last year and what opportunity, what do you think we should be looking forward to through the rest of 2014 and now to 2015 as the maturation of this solution set? Well, unless you've been under a rock for the last year, you know that all of a sudden it's all about third platform, right? Software defined everything, third platform, scale out. Really everything that EMC does right now is to make sure we're well positioned for that transition. You hear it from Joe right on down to a guy like me that needs to talk about third platform. So you see us do more things that are software defined like Viper 2.0, which we talked about today, like the scale IO products for software defined block storage and lots of other things that are coming. So you're going to see us invest there from both a product and a solutions perspective. So, Chad, can you say the V-Specs team, what are you guys showing off at the show? I believe it was that mobile solution, I believe, part of what other interesting things does the V-Specs team have going on? So V-Specs is all over the show. We've got presence in, I think, 17 different spots around here in the partner lounge out on the show floor. Where there's some really interesting stuff is in the Avnet booth. The Avnet has their mobile data center solution. You may have seen this. This is a fully hardened, powered mobile data center. It goes into disaster zones. It's fireproof. It's weatherproof. So if you need to stand up a data center in a disaster area, you can basically roll this thing in and turn it up and that's a V-Specs reference architecture. They're also showing live demos of the VNX-E3200 and the Data Domain 2200. So those are live and functioning in the booth. You've got to go check those out. And there may be some solutions in there that might not yet be announced, but may be in the booth. There might be in the booth. But it might be in the booth. It's the benefits of coming to the show, right? One of the benefits of being at the show, but you won't have to wait long. So there are a few other things that are going to be coming tomorrow. That are going to be pretty interesting. All right, Chad.  What's getting you excited about the industry at the show in general from a technology standpoint? It's anything to do with third platform right now. It's, we're working more and more as V-Specs working with our colleagues at Pivotal. And now I'm being less exposed to our traditional mid-market applications, which, yes, we know them, we love them, we might be a little bit used to them. But now we're looking at things like GemFire and Cloud Foundry and some of these new technologies that as a technology guy all my career, I'm really anxious to get engaged with and play with. That's very interesting to me right now. All right, hey, thanks so much, Chad. Always appreciate catching up with you. Glad you could join us here on theCUBE or keep an eye out on what's happening on V-Specs. And we will be right back with our next guest here from EMC World 2014.


I did the first self self lob of all time clones. I mean you need a clone, but I got those What is good yo, I'm in the best shape of my life Maybe not jumping my very highest but jumping my best feeling amazing these barefoot shoes are the truth And I want to give you a quick reason why because for me I was never good at jumping off one step with that power I needed a freaking full speed approach So this is not only training me to work on that one step slower approach, but strengthening my feet I can feel my toes working. I feel more connected to the ground. I feel more shifty with the handles I'm gonna be start playing pick-up soon. So stay tuned for that super super pumped So this vlog is a special one for me, and you will also see a little essence of mercury retrograde I don't know if you guys are as spiritual as I am, but I want to bring some of that into my vlog So listen It's about when old patterns revisit themselves in your life I'm not gonna get too deep into with the way the planets spin But just know that that can happen during this time and for me if you watch this video I didn't even know it was happening, but I had a new goal the barefoot dunk the drop-step dunk I wanted it so bad and you guys know when I say one more attempt that never means one more that literally means I'm just gonna say this one more time every single time and lie to myself over and over again I didn't want to do that today. I wanted to stay disciplined. It's locked over I wanted to stay locked in do what's best for my body and set an example So that's my point is things like that it came out. I haven't had a goal like that I've been super disciplined with my jumping But I haven't had a goal like that where I was so close to landing it and I know I can land it And I just need more jumps, but it wasn't what's best for my journey. You'll hear me talk about that So I just wanted to point that out. That's a little mercury retrograde getting Sprinkled into today's episode quick quote from the book force verse power verse force by David Hawking's a formula Followed by all geniuses. You're a genius right now. Whoever's listening to this Prominent or not do what you like to do best and do it to the very best of your ability and another thing he talks about Geniuses is that it's not something you have. It's not something you are It's all something we can tap into and it's just a moment So if you can get there if you have a question in your mind whether it's inventing a light bulb flying a plane If you could ask the question, can I fly that means there's already an answer The fact that you can ask the question is proof that there is an answer is what he talks about which I love So I just wanted to share that is that as well some nuggets as well more in nuggets Did I do the first self self lob of all time honestly though? I got to give a huge shout out to my boy Andrew a darky He did it years ago You'll find his clip if you want to you must some of you might know about that But I had to show that that was an inspiration because I saw him do something similar and I think other people have tried it too But this is my first real clone dunk. It was a lot of fun So definitely want to do more edits like that and keep expanding my genius last but not least I'm creating the best program of my life getting you guys from average to elite I don't want you to just dunk dunking is easy, but dunking easy is hard That's what I've learned and that's what I want to share with you the principles the habits the disciplines of an elite Pro athlete that is my outline of my program I'm so excited to develop it and it's gonna be something that inspires me to make and I can't wait for you guys to get started with it So stay tuned for that This is where patience comes in because now I'm jumping harder in these shoes and that's a lot more force So I have to give it time so I don't overdo it. It's so easy to just jump hard I have so much energy and adrenaline But I got to get my tendons in my body to adapt time to adapt so if I don't get it today, that's okay That's what it means by detaching from the outcome. You don't have expectations I would love to get it today, but I know it's part of the process and I don't want to just chase that so hard today that I overdo it so Pretty sure I hit the bottom of my palm before the rim slid up and then I grabbed it I was way high enough Yeah So this is really big for me because not only was I not able to do it on a slow approach But now I'm also in barefoot shoes. So it's a big change for me transforming my body and it's a big milestone for me So anytime you're achieving a goal do the smallest steps you can and do things that help you strengthen your belief in yourself So whether it's getting better at jumping in barefoot shoes or getting better at jumping off one step Whatever you want your long-term goal to be break it down to small steps work relentlessly at every single tiny detail This is the essence of living in the moment how mindfulness Translates into sports because right now you could say living in the moment I want to do the most I can for this moment and achieve everything in this moment But that's not what it's about it's about being in the moment Tuning into exactly what you need right now what the best thing for you is right now. So it's not the most It's doing the best thing for you right now and right now. It's I'm training but in life It could be something you enjoy so follow that joy follow that positivity. It's not about just pushing yourself to the limits discipline Focus that's what I need right now, and that's what I'm gonna stay on and that's what I'm gonna stick to So this is sincerely the last attempt despite all my past videos of me saying one more or last one of me Never adhering to it today starts a new day a new chapter a new Steve I got so I was all the way here mini scorpion and still hanging on the rim So shoes as I laced up with these new shoes Pretty insane how I feel right now. How high I'm jumping off with two steps How light I feel how strong I feel discipline baby focus clarity where you're going so you can stay focused because if you don't have clarity It's hard to stay focused because you don't know what to focus on baby steps. I have huge goals for myself Let's go Yeah, go ahead Stevie. I love you go do you all right. I raise you to do you do you you do you the best Let's do it. How was your workout?


Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch and today we're going to be talking about a country which has undergone a lot of tumult in the past one year, that's Tunisia. So in July last year, President Kaisai essentially dissolved parliament and began to rule by fear. In September, he took over more powers. He's appointed an interim government. He's declared plans to hold a constitutional referendum this year and a fresh parliamentary elections. Recently, he dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council, which is a very key part of the state structure in Tunisia as well. So to talk about all this, what are the implications, why this has happened in the first place? We have with us Father Lileza, a journalist, a researcher, and also founder and founder and editor-in-chief of Mechakal, an independent media platform. Father, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So could you first take us through, I think one question the NFA viewers might have, which is that last July onwards, there's been this arc of actions by the president every few months. He seems to have taken some more power, seems to have taken some more, you know, some more abilities from the constitution, so to speak. So could you maybe first take us through the broad arc of what his moves have been in the one year and what seems to be the plan? Sure. Yeah. In July, 25th, when he dismissed parliament or froze parliament, he said he had suspended it. He dismissed the previous government. He had initially indicated that this would be a temporary move, that this would be within the constitutional article that would basically allow him to do this for one month. There were quite a few people who detracted at the time and said this was not constitutional, but at the time he had what seemed to be broad support because there was quite a lot of anger at the previous parliament for various reasons, particularly what had been seen as a total failure with the COVID crisis, but also many other deteriorating issues from health to transportation, etc., etc. But since then, he's actually extended it. In September, he, as you mentioned, he took more powers, basically suspended almost all of the constitution and decided to start ruling by decree. In the meantime, we've seen that his political opponents have been targeted one way or another. Some people would say that this was sort of expected, that the previous parliament had been corrupt. That's one of the very widely perceived issues that people had seen it as corrupt and that there were people in the parliament that did need to face justice. The fact that they lost their immunity, they lost their parliamentary immunity, did leave them open to prosecution, including cases that had to do with criminal charges prior to them becoming parliamentarians. However, we did see that the priority seemed to be that the high side and his government were going after people who were particularly critical of him and his government's moves. That's certainly been a concern of human rights advocates, of lawyers, and then just recently we've seen him basically dissolve the Higher Judicial Council, which had been in charge of appointments of the judiciary. The Higher Judicial Council took many years to set up. It was sort of one of those efforts after the revolution in 2011 to try and bring some independence from the executive branch to the judiciary. It was very tentative step in creating that independence and now even that very small tentative step seems to have been reversed. Absolutely. Of course, in this context, they have been, for instance, a lot of critics from the beginning called it a presidential coup. Over time, we've seen a lot of civil society organizations, even trade unions for that matter, hard in their stance, even some of whom were initially a bit willing to give some kind of leeway, but we have now seen that many more have taken to have more oppositional stance. But the key question here I also wanted to ask was that, what has been Kaiasai's support base so to speak, because I believe even when he was elected in the first place, it was a bit of an amorphous, he didn't particularly have a political party per se look like and it was a bit more of an amorphous support base. In these moves, what has largely been the kind of people who have backed that section? Sure. Yeah. His political campaign in 2019 was very strange, unique. I mean, he didn't have a political party. He didn't have anything that looked like a political organization behind him. It seemed to be sort of very ad hoc people who had known him personally, who were organizing his election campaign. He had very little media coverage. It seemed to be former students. President Kaiasai had been a lecturer for decades in constitutional law. He had quite a following among his students, admirers, including also some colleagues who admired him. So that seemed to be the sort of the core of his support base. And actually, since he's taking more powers, we've seen that a lot of his appointments have been from academia, people he's worked with seems to know personally. But in terms of his support base, since July 25th, I mean, we saw most of the parties were really sort of against this, particularly the largest party in parliament, the Anata party, seen as an Islamist party. But we did see some support from sort of an Arab nationalist movement. We saw sort of some leftist parties taking sort of, were on the fence at the beginning. They didn't really take a very strong position against them. But since then, we've seen more and more parties basically criticizing the president say that they supported the July 25th moves, but they don't support the extended sort of concentration of power under the executive. And particularly what they see as increasing repression, particularly we've seen of journalists. We've seen less space for freedom of association, particularly in the capital. And we've seen that even parties that hadn't been working together, I've started to work together saying that they are there against the president. But even if the entire political class has been against the president, it's taken a little bit longer for civil society to sort of try and act as an opposition to the president. We have seen some unions taking some positions we've seen, particularly the journalist union has on occasion really condemned the presidency and called on the presidency to really be responsible for some of the assaults on freedom of speech that we've seen. And we haven't seen a strong position from the UGDT, which is the main national trade union. But they may take a strong position now as the government negotiates to deal with the IMF. That seems to be maybe a red line for them, but we'll have to wait and see. In terms of support, the president without a party has been relying almost exclusively on the military and on the police. And so even when he said he was going to dissolve the higher judicial council, he did it at an announcement in the Interior Ministry. So he had not really brought in his justice minister to make the announcement. The justice ministry is part of the executive branch, and you would expect that this would be maybe the mechanism that is used to sort of reshape the judicial branch. But no, he went to the Interior Ministry, which seems to be his sort of strongest and last bastion of support. Certainly, you know, when he gave the orders to the military to freeze parliament, it was the military that was standing at the gates of parliament to block people from coming in. And it seems that perhaps he may have some support within the security forces, but it's unclear if that support will also last as, you know, they have their own grievances as well. And they may see themselves as above even the president. And oftentimes, security forces say, we are Republican forces, or we try to be Republican forces. We are above political parties and partisan interests, and oftentimes see themselves as quite immune. I mean, they're also immune from judicial procedures. We see that there's quite a lot of impunity among security officials, very few, if any, have been prosecuted for crimes since the revolution and before the revolution. And particularly, when we saw that there's quite a lot of violence during the revolution. Absolutely. Another key moment, of course, has been his declaration that there's going to be a constitutional referendum, which will be followed by parliamentary elections, of course. So is there any indication of how he plans to, you know, what he plans to do with the constitution, how he plans to redraft it since the constitution post the revolution was considered a very landmark moment in Tunisia's history. Yeah. I mean, the constitution seems to be the president's main focus. You know, we haven't seen, you know, since he was elected in 2019, we saw very little input from the president on laws. He proposed a few, if any, I think he may not have proposed any laws during that period from 2019 until he took greater powers this last July. And then we've seen that his main focus since July 25th has been on rewriting the constitution, changing the system. You know, as a sort of specialist on constitutional law, this had been something he had been quite focused on even before. I mean, during the just after the revolution, he was a commentator on national TV talking about the constitution. He was a big critic of the new constitution writing process after 2011. And he really has sort of disliked the parliamentary system, seen it as sort of a reversal or betrayal of the revolution. He says that he's correcting the revolution. He seems to have very strong ideas on the electoral system. He would like to see an electoral system that maybe even changes the system towards a more decentralized system, maybe a system of local councils that will eventually have representation at the national level. But so far, these have all been fairly vague. He is now basically launched an online consultation which has had very low participation rates, extremely low. I think it's in the, I haven't checked the latest numbers, but I believe it was even in the single digits after a couple months of being online, that people were not participating. You know, when you look at the questions, the sort of multiple choice questions about extremely complex and wide-ranging issues about sort of the legal system and the constitutional system, that doesn't seem to lend itself to a multiple choice question. And at the same time, it seems that the low participation rate means that people have either said whatever input we have will not matter. I think there's a suspicion that the president will sort of do what he wants, regardless. See that's certainly how he's been ruling since July 25th with very little input from other groups within civil society or other political parties. And so when they're doing this online consultation, whatever the results of it may be, he has said that there will be a referendum this summer on that to sort of change the political system, probably to change the constitution and the electoral system. But where it goes from there is unclear. He has said that there will be elections, legislative elections in December. We see that some people are suspicious that it will happen at all. People are sort of doubting that given the fact that so many of the president's decisions have not followed through, particularly with his commitments to temporary measures that have actually not been temporary. Absolutely. And Valil, coming back to the issue you pointed out earlier, which is that of the IMF loan itself. So could you also tell us about the context in which this loan is being talked about and discussed, especially considering what has been the broader economic policy framework of Tunisia since the revolution? Does the IMF known, for instance, mark any intensification of those policies? Is there any kind of break that we're looking at? So how does that fit in here? Sure. Well, it's important the context here because from 2013 onwards, this is really when the IMF basically got involved much more in Tunisia with a few loans from 2016 to 2020. They had quite a large loan by Tunisia standards. And there were some debates at the time whether Tunisia actually needed that loan. The debt to GDP ratio hadn't been too bad. Just after the revolution, it was about 40%. But now, since then, with the IMF loan, it's gone up to about 100%. And actually, the repayments have sort of gotten out of hand. Debt repayments have gotten out of hand. And at the same time, since the last loan by the IMF ended in 2020, we haven't seen that Tunisia's credit rating has been downgraded. So there's a real pressure from international creditors and lenders and donors that Tunisia signed a new deal. Tunisia hasn't been able to get financing on international markets without this loan. And that's starting to have effects. We're starting to see that, for example, in December, there were several shifts with cargoes of wheat. There was quite a long delay before that they released their cargo. And as a result, we're seeing that that is probably one of the reasons why we're seeing food shortages. We're seeing bakeries that are increasing the prices of subsidized bread, saying that they can't access subsidized flour. We're seeing bakeries that have limited amounts that will only open for a couple hours in the day with long lines of people outside of them. This seems to be worse outside of the capital. We've seen some of our reporters going outside of the capital to different places and seeing that the problem is actually much worse at bakeries outside. And of course, bread is sort of the staple in Tunisia, rather than rice or some other product. And so there seems to be quite a lot of pressure. Now, there's been negotiations before the previous government was negotiating before with the IMF and that was sort of paused after high side came to power. But now we're seeing that there's quite a lot of pressure. We've seen a big letter by quite a lot of people in the US, Middle East experts and former ambassadors saying that they would like to see the IMF loan not be given or that they would until they see political reforms back towards democracy from the side presidency. So that certainly puts the pressure up on him, particularly as people are really starting to feel the pinch, both with food, but other subsidized products. And of course, the IMF is demanding a freeze on public sector hiring at a time when there's quite a need for doctors, for example. There's very few doctors. We saw that during the COVID crisis. They're also calling for a freeze in public wages, which again might be a red line for the unions. But definitely, there looks like more austerity that's likely to come regardless, whether the deal is signed or not. It does seem to be a continuation of increasing austerity measures that we've seen basically from 2013 onwards and maybe even a bit before that. And this is even as I believe there have been massive protests in Tunisia, especially in certain regions, because the high rate of youth unemployment this way. Sure. I mean, there's been, you know, not necessarily linked to the post-July 25th scenario, but for many years we've seen social movements, particularly in regions outside of the capital that see themselves as marginalized, that see themselves as not benefiting from natural resources, whether that's agricultural resources or even oil and gas resources, that they don't see that reinvested back into their communities, whether that's in terms of transportation, hospitals, schools, but also in terms of jobs. Yes, I mean, youth unemployment in some areas is close to 50%. And as a result of that, we've seen people, you know, migrating. We've seen large numbers of Tunisians going for informal migration to Europe on very dangerous journeys. And that problem has only increased in recent years. Absolutely. And finally, a question on the point you just mentioned in the previous answer, which is about democracy itself, because across the world, for that matter, Tunisia was known as one of the few countries which is able to tide over the initial banks post-revolution, build a system which of course had a number of problems. There was chaos, a lot of parliamentary elections were held, uncertainty, but nonetheless managed to keep that system intact and running until 2021. So how do the developments of July and since actually what kind of implication does it have for the legacy and the structures that were built during this period from 2011 onwards? Yeah, unfortunately, I think post-July 25th has really revealed how sort of the democracy narrative and the celebration of democracy was a bit, not just premature, but I think was ignoring some of the fundamental problems and really the lack of democracy. I mean, you can have a parliamentary democracy which we saw, but without the parliamentary democracy actually being responsive to people's needs, those structures were seen as quite useless and actually responding to people's demands. And more than that, I mean, the laws that have been or the measures that have been taken since July 25th, particularly the repressive measures, a lot of them are using laws that were on the books that the parliamentary democracy never reformed. So whether that's an extremely repressive penal code that basically criminalizes insults to officials or insults to the president, even the previous president had gone after and actually previous two presidents had gone after people who had targeted the presidency for cartoons and for other sort of public speech issues. In terms of police reform, we saw that in fact, you know, the transitional justice process after 2011, looking at state abuses going back 50 years, was not only stalled, but was attacked by other institutions of the states, was sort of justified in sort of these partisan bickering, but the net result was that you didn't see almost anyone, you know, seeing jail time or restitution or paying back for some of the crimes pre-2011 and even after 2011, you know, police seeing themselves as above the law, I mean, at one point they had even gone to a court house that had been holding police on accusations and they basically freed their colleague under pressure. So you can see that there was a growing tension between the police and the judiciary, that there was no real will to sort of have justice for sort of the violent oppression that the state had visited upon people, particularly on ordinary people, on poorer regions, on poorer neighborhoods, something that we saw even as recent as, you know, 2019-2020, we saw, you know, mass arrests, we saw particularly going into neighborhoods where young people would be targeted, people would, you know, just go into poor people's homes and sort of do sweeping arrests without sort of a collective punishment for any sort of conflict between people and security officials. So I think really July 25th and sort of the steps we've seen taken since then have really revealed something that was rotten at the core and maybe exacerbated it as well. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the ladies for talking to us and giving us such a concise and clear explanation of what's happening in Tunisia right now. We'll get back to you more to talk about this. Thank you. That's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.


Don't we love this passion that we have coming at us. This is amazing We're gonna take a little mental break, and I'm gonna welcome to the stage a dear friend of mine guest artist this year Chuck Cannon who Kevin and I heard singing kind of randomly and Actually heard him singing the song he is about to sing for us now and when I heard it it was like This guy has got to be at SoCAP that was six years ago And we finally got the schedule to work for Chuck to come in be with us So please welcome to the stage Chuck Cannon Trying to make money takes most of our lives It's been on to make husbands Strangers to wives until this kids don't recognize him when he comes through the door It's enough to make you wish money don't matter no more She's got a minimum wage job 30 hours a week Now on her man just left her with three hungry miles She's got a feed and so she's stealing some milk from the grocery store It'll make you wish money don't matter no more We're all underpaid and we're all overwhelmed Oh how I wish love was the coin of the run Where everyone's rich or when nobody's poor Yes, sometimes I wish money just don't matter no more. How about you? You can make it the measure of how much your worth and you can store all your treasures Down here on earth. You can buy a big boat that won't sell heaven sweet She That's safe harbor where the money don't matter no more We're all underpaid and we're all overwhelmed Oh how I wish love was the coin of the round Where everyone's rich or when nobody's poor In the place where the money don't matter no more All the Christians and all the Buddhists and the Muslims and Jews and the atheists the agnostic the Rastafarian the Zoroastrian the Presbyterian Episcopalians Pentecostals and even Sikhs and Hindus The doctor the lawyer the preacher the whore We all gonna end up where the money don't matter no more We're all underpaid and we're all overwhelmed Oh how I wish love was the coin of the round We're everyone's rich or when nobody's poor When we all get to where the money don't matter no


We figured out what I do like in books. Now it's time to figure out what I don't like. Hey friends, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're all good. So recently I did a video called a five-star audit where I went through books I've given five stars and I picked out similar features, tropes, aspects of books that I'm consistently giving five stars and a lot of you asked me to do a one-star audit. So that's what we're gonna be doing today.  Now if I were to do a one-star audit we'd literally have like five books to pull from. I very rarely give one stars. It's literally if it's like offensive or like I really really really hate it. But I feel like as time goes on I'm especially getting good at not picking up books so that I'm gonna hate that much. So this is gonna be like a one and two star audit. I'm gonna be using one and two star books that I have read but yeah let's just head over to Goodreads, have a look at what I've got and see what am I rating low. So when I did this for the five-star audit I had to have three books I had that trope or feature in. This because I have so many less one or two stars we're gonna have to change up the barometers a bit. I'm looking for at least two books. Ideally three, ideally three books that have had that feature but if it's only two and like maybe I've subconsciously realized I don't like that and I've stopped doing that kind of thing I still think it's something we can talk about. The rules don't apply. And I looked for ten features in the five-star audit video. Again I've read so many less two and one stars then I have five stars. So I'm gonna look for between five to eight. If we can make it to ten I'll be so happy but if we only get like six that's fine because like proportionally I've read so many less one and two stars. So maybe something that we can start with is like spiritual self-help. I've read at least two that I've given low ratings. So we've got Only Love Is Real, oh god that was a Kylie Jenner book. That was one of Kylie Jenner's favorite books. Yeah Power of Your Subconscious Mind. Oh yeah The Untethered Soul. I didn't like any of those. The Untethered Soul was when I read to the voluntarily because here's the thing I love yoga. I'm so happy. I swear I swear I've been doing yoga. Right and I love meditation and I love bettering yourself and like when I watch Yoga with Adrienne right like Queen literally I'm like emotionally bondage done. You know when I watch her I want to kind of think the way that she does and I want to look after myself in that way but then when I try and read some spiritual self-help sometimes it doesn't work. It just doesn't seem for me in like written format. Now if Yoga with Adrienne were to write a spiritual-esque self-help book I think I'd give it five stars because I just love her but all these guys I keep reading. So yeah first was spiritual self-help books and in principle I don't. I'm open to that. Like I said I love yoga and meditation like I'm open to us talking about that. I listen to a podcast. What is a podcast called? It's a podcast by a Buddhist monk that I listen to. I really enjoy it and I enjoy the way they speak. The way out is in. Zen and the art of living. I like that. I love that podcast but book form something about it just don't like. In terms of what I have on my TBI I don't really have a lot because as you can tell it's something I figured out I don't like but I do have the tree of yoga and I do I do want to love this because it's maybe about yoga maybe I'll be more into it. Like I you know I really really enjoy yoga and that you know my Queen Yoga with Adrienne recommended it but she also recommended some other books I didn't like so. I don't know we shall see but hopefully I will enjoy this but yeah like for all of these we're gonna try and find you know books on my TBR that have that feature because that's what we did for the five star audit but like I don't know if it's gonna be as easy because I try not to buy stuff I don't think I'm gonna like. Next we can probably say when I read a book and it's like young YA I keep having an issue with that. Midnight in Everwood this Midnight in Everwood is not good that was the first book I read this year and I hated it. You've also got The Gilded Ones by Namina Fauna, Belladonna by Adeline Grace, Cinderella is dead there's just like quite a few that I I felt like read young. Right next was Young YA which I have no way of telling what on my TBR is gonna be Young YA I really don't. The Young YA book sneaking on to my TBR because that's my biggest problem I think with these books is that it almost needs to be like a separate age category like these are books that I think should be marketed towards like 12 and 13 year olds 11, 12 and 13 right. I was reading YA by the time I was 11. I don't think 11 year olds are really reading middle grade they're reading YA and I think it's so important that this YA exists and these books exist for this age group but what you want to be reading at like 11 and 12 versus 16 is like very different things and yes I think also the part of the problem is we get used to YA that's really written for adult audiences because that's an issue as well so I think this should exist right but I just don't want to be reading it and I know I don't but people aren't talking about when a YA book is released oh this is Young YA people aren't talking about that and again this is an issue I have with like expectations versus reality right middle grade when I read it I really enjoy it because I know what I'm getting myself in for but when I pick up a YA book I expect it to be similar to other YA books that I read and then it ends up not being to other YA books that I read. I've heard some people say maybe gallant which makes me nervous because a lot of people have told me that I'm gonna love this as well it's following a 16 year old but I heard some people going oh is this middle grade so I don't know maybe gallant maybe I'll not like gallant but yeah I think actually it's like an expectations situation. I have quite a few murder mysteries I think that I've given two stars we have got if I disappear Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder Malabar Hill what is Malabar Hill uh like the Christian murder on the links we've got one star somewhere for Agatha the big four oh girl not the big four like I'm not gonna say murder mysteries as a feature that I give low ratings but I think I am so picky now with murder mysteries because I read a lot of them and I love them and I expect so much from them that like I think perhaps like there's some examples on here like Widows of Malabar Hill that I feel like if I were to read a fantasy book and feel how I felt about the fantasy book how I felt about that like in terms of quality and story I would give the fantasy a three star but I am just so disappointed because I'm so excited in time I'm getting to read a murder mystery that I am like how dare you two star two star how dare you so I'd say like murder mysteries that disappoint me but there's no way of like knowing that before going into them but it is a common theme that if I feel let down by a murder mystery whereas perhaps I would have given that book a three star in a different genre I'm like no no no no two star so yeah we have another expectations versus reality here this is again one that I can't really draw out because I hope all the mystery in the murder mysteries I have my tbi I'm gonna love but when they disappoint me they disappoint me like because all they're gonna do is disappoint me we really don't get along like if they disappoint me it's like being let down by like a close friend you know if you're let down by someone you thought would let you down who cares right if you're let down by someone you you thought would never betray you then it it hits hard so again like I don't have any that I could show you that I think it's gonna disappoint me because I really hope they're not going to but inevitably there's some imposters here that I that are gonna betray my trust but we don't know until we get there which I guess is part of the beauty but before we get into the rest of the video I want to say a big thank you to the sponsor of this video which is atlasvpn I have got a steel black Friday deal for you because now you can get atlasvpn for only $1.70 $1.70 with a six months extra with a 30-day money back guarantee this is the best vpn deal on the market right now atlasvpn is great for unlocking all your favorite content from around the world can't access friends or like any other legendary show that you want to watch on your netflix while being abroad that's not a problem because atlasvpn has got you covered you can also use atlasvpn to keep your google searches private so you can search the web with real and organic results without it tracking your activity something that's so great is atlasvpn is more than a vpn it blocks all malicious links ads and trackers and tells you when someone is trying to steal your data which is such an added benefit for a vpn you can also save money using it because you can get the best deals when shopping online be that for subscription services or flights or hotels and something that is so great is that using atlasvpn you can protect unlimited devices so your subscription has unlimited devices there is no limit you don't need to get a new subscription for different devices so again make sure to check out the amazing black friday deal where you can get atlasvpn for only $1.70 per month plus six months extra with a 30-day back money guarantee so be quick and check out the link in the description this is the best offer of the year it's a limited time offer so make sure you check it out down below okay back into looking for the tropes i really i don't know how we're gonna do for now oh another one that we have to obviously say is split timeline stories because i don't like these now this can either be like one timeline is the present day one timeline is set in the past or it can be we're following maybe two perspectives and they're following completely different storylines i don't mind it when there's mode i love it in fact there's multiple perspectives but i want us to all be contributing contributing to the same storyline okay so for this we have got there's loads shiva has that and ember in the ashes has that i could say i think the ones we're meant to find you could argue has that hairpin bridge kind of has that oh next year and hirvana definitely has that that's one where it's set in the present day versus the past yeah i don't like split timeline slash storyline books i like it multiple perspectives but i want us to all be following the same story i want a cohesive story okay split timelines is an interesting one again because you don't always hear people talk about them sometimes i pick a book up and it's got a split timeline i'm like we didn't discuss this i'm so sorry i know but like honestly i just feel so deceived are there any on my tbr that i know have got split timelines no here's the thing right i don't mind it in books when there's like an obviously subordinate timeline it's when they're equal that i find it difficult so like i recently read in my dreams i hold a knife and i loved that but i felt like the present day timeline was obviously the most like serious timeline you know it was the main story and it was like feeding informations the other timeline but i don't mind that it's when it's two story lines or two timelines there are like separate stories that i object to so like i'm pretty sure the it girl by ruth wear has flashback scenes maybe it has like before and after that could make me not like it but i feel like it's okay if like the present day is the main timeline and the before is informing what we find out in the present i don't mind that so this one is a risk i'm a bit nervous because i love ruth wear but this could be the first ruth wear i hate because it has split timelines i would say now this is people are gonna get mad at me for this but i would say we have more romances in here than is proportionate for how many romances i read you know we know i have good luck with some romances i would say you know aliexpress would i always give five stars talia hibbet i gave four and five stars but we've got his beauty by jack carban um i mean there's lots in here that have romance subplots like bella donna by adlyn grace is basically a romance red white and royal blue by kasey mccristen next year and her vanna oh let's not even talk about midnight sun i just normal people by sally rooney good class is having a romantic element so yeah romances aren't for me i don't know now i don't want to say romances for me because i've loved some romances that i've read you know i love aliexpress word she can do no wrong but there's obviously some romances in there that a lot of other people have loved and i just could not get on board with so yeah romances listen i don't think i'm a romance girlie i mean i enjoy i enjoy them from time to time but one that i am nervous about is one of my most anticipated releases of the year that i still haven't got to is yeah bebruna by nina lakor this is technically classed as a romance and i love nina lakor but like i don't know how i feel about this one we'll have to see i need i need to read this soon it's like very short it's less than 300 pages and the font is possibly the biggest font i've ever seen in the book of the month book it's absolutely huge i also have spoiler alert by alivia date this one is one that i put off more but again like i love tally a hibbit like i do love a good romance but it's just sometimes they let me down so i don't know we'll see we'll see when i read these when i end up thinking about them but this is the reason i don't pick up many romances because proportionally for how many i read there's far too many that i've given like two stars i also think this isn't necessarily like a feature but there's quite a lot of ends of series on here that i am disappointed by i think if i like have again it's similar to murder mysteries where if i put all that effort into reading a whole series and i'm disappointed by the ending whereas i would probably give that a three star in other circumstances if it was like the first book in a series or whatever like a standalone and i had that amount of enjoyment and thought the same thoughts because it's the last book in a series and i've wasted my time i tend to rate them lower so we've got the king of crows by libra bray we've got um binti the night masquerade we've got super no virus omega we've got there's definitely more uh oh yeah ruin and rising but what do you go so i think that that is something for me where like if i've invested that amount of time i haven't finished many series apparently this is why maybe this is proof i shouldn't finish series maybe i've been right all along and i've been trying to correct in an instinct that is correct right obviously i should just never finish a series again so um i'm letting go of my series goal yep yep yep yep yep or finishing a certain amount of series yeah uh again this is very similar to expectations like i think that's often what makes me give a book to starts is feeling let down you know and if i've invested that time i've chosen you as a series i actually finished you know how rare that is and you let me down oh is there any ends of series that i fear could let me down i'm i am putting off girls of fate in theory i don't know where that is but i'm putting off reading girls of fate in theory i'm very nervous about that one especially because i haven't read the last two for a long time and i haven't heard anyone really speak about girls of fate in theory i'm a little bit concerned and girls of someone's shadow was like a three star a little bit concerned but again there's no way of really knowing this until you read them and they let you down and you feel betrayed okay we've got six let's try and get if we get two more and get to eight i'll be so proud of myself let's try and really look at those one stars but i very rarely give out any one star so we have Girl Missing by Sophie McKenzie which doesn't really count that was a reread from my chartered as was Jonas the beautiful dead i was obsessed with that book when i was younger but not anymore the gender game uh rebel city of injera i mean those two i i am not a big fan of i mean this is only two and one of them is Kenseth and Kylie Jenner so like the fates weren't in its favor but i am not a fan of YA dystopia and i think i know that now i think i've not really read any YA dystopia since then so i think we can count this as one oh god the gender game was so bad like this is the worst this is the worst this is the worst yeah like sci-fi YA dystopia oh i don't like it i often find it very heavy-handed with what it's trying to say i don't think i would mind like adult dystopia quite as much but YA it's just on the nose and i was never a dystopia girly you remember when everyone was like the maze runner the hunger games i never read any of them i didn't like them i was to the my paranormal romance era at 12 years old at that point so it's just never been for me and i think it's just something that like and not as much of it comes out anymore but i think if something were to come out i don't think i would read it yeah YA dystopia is not for me it's never been for me i was never a maze runner was the other one divergent hunger games never was that girly i don't think i have any YA uh sci-fi on my tbr both of those books that i read were for videos neither the more ones i picked up because i was interested in that book and i think the gender game was like for booktubers give me reading prompts video and it was like pick pick up a one star prediction or something and it was a one star so i don't pick this up in my own time i know pretty much to stay away from this it's not for me again i don't mind like adult dystopia you know i think i'm gonna really love station 11 by mvc john mandel like you know these kind of books i think i do enjoy but i think YA often have a message that they want to give that can be a little bit like heavy-handed and that's just not what i'm looking for okay let's let's let's just end it with unreliable narrator right we've got the silent patient no up here we've got rock paper scissors by lasfini and we've got survived the night by ryanie seger i don't like unreliable narrators also add to the fact that it's often not always not in all those cases but often women who have mental health issues and it's like that makes them unreliable you know what i mean i just don't like it i don't like unreliable narrators i don't think well actually no that's a lie here's the thing i do sometimes like unreliable narrators so i'm lying to you i did tell a bit of a lie there but i did tell a bit of a lie there but it's when it's done in a way that is like i think to do with mental health or a disability like in rock paper scissors her husband the husband in the relationship has face blindness and i just don't like it when disability or i don't know if you would call face blindness a disability sorry if i'm incorrect there but you know what i mean you know in silent patient we've got a woman who killed her husband and doesn't speak and there's something mentally wrong with her everyone says in survive the night she has some kind of like trauma imagines movies imagines movies in her brain i don't know but when someone's like mental health or health in general is used as an excuse for them to be an unreliable narrator i don't like that i just think it's a cheap way out and i think it can be offensive to many people i do like it when an unreliable narrator is just shady if you're just shady and just not telling us everything then i like that you know if you're like a little bit creepy a little bit suspicious and we can't trust you then i do like that but when it's played up on health aspects i don't like that i find it cheap and finally yeah we had unreliable narrator but like it's unreliable because of mental health issues or disabilities or you know being divergent from divergent being divergent from what the average person is like i don't think i know the correct way to phrase all of that but i don't like it when authors do it it feels like a cheap shot makes me angry especially when it's woman mentally ill right oh my god she's a woman and she's like depressed so like of course she's a liar i hate it i hate it it really really annoys me i was angry i was angry but like i said i actually love an unreliable narrator if they're shady right i read murder mysteries if it you know it turns out a narrator is unreliable we know we can't really trust a narrator like if we know that it's just because we can't really trust them i like that but just don't be like a woman woman with i don't know insert mental illness here we can't trust her do you know what i mean i hate i hate that it just it offends me it offends me so that's a surefire way for me to rate your book liar so there we have it that is my one to two star one to two star audit i feel like we've learned something here and that i should never read romance never finish series and never read murder mystery again because it's the in case they betray me i'll give it a two star if they do anyways i hope you guys enjoyed this video i love doing these audits it's so interesting i don't know what other audits we can do but it's it's interesting like evaluating my reading i'm a bit of a stats girlie you know so i really like evaluating stuff and thinking what's the truth behind the ratings i don't know um again make sure you check out atlasvpn down below thank you so much again to them for sponsoring this video and if you got onto the end what should we comment comment the thumbs down emoji everyone's going to get onto video be like why does everyone hate me again comment the thumbs down emoji if we got to the end for all of the one and two stars that exists in the world and i'll see you very soon in another video bye


Welcome welcome Monet cafe art family this is artist Susan Jenkins and I'm bringing you a product reveal video I'm so excited today we're gonna talk about these beautiful pan pastels if you've never tried them this is a video you're gonna love because I'm gonna give a lot of education explaining all of these different products and I was blessed to have the co-inventor of pan pastels send me some of their beautiful pastels and all these products now I had some pastels pan pastels before I only had a limited supply though and they come in individual little pallets almost like a little makeup thing and you screw them on top of each other and they also have these little containers you put on the bottom to keep your applicator sponges and pads in now I had never had one of the products I'm going to show you here which is going to make it much easier for me to use these and again I'm excited I'm not gonna do a painting in this video this is more about product education but I'm very excited because I really had such a limited supply I didn't get a chance to really play around them with them and have fun but I've already figured out how to make that work better for me that was the pan pastel tray like a palette tray that's amazing here it is again and I have all these new colors look at this it's beautiful even some of those I think they're called pearl colors instead of iridescent they were at the top there and this is a neat little thing it's called a colorless blender we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute so this is going to be very fun and new for a lot of you anyway but let's go ahead and talk about these products now you've obviously noticed that these they are soft pastels but they're not in stick format so we need to have a way to apply them and that's what these knives and covers are used for it's like a palette knife but you have these neat little sponge covers you put on around a flat and oval and a point that are for your different painting needs and you know you can just play around and see which ones are the best for you or combination now they can be reordered if you run out so that's a nice handy thing and they do they last a little while and and there's a way to clean them that we'll talk about too now they also have a different type of applicator here and it too comes with little nibs or tips you can apply if one of them you know wears out or whatever so they're really neat and kind of fun now there's handheld applicators too and they come in different shapes I believe one is a wedge a point around and I don't know what the other one is called there but anyway these are handheld ones and they make another one that's larger that is around yeah this one's the round I think it's called yes and and you hold these to apply larger areas obviously these are bigger so it's gonna be so much fun playing around with these but this is my little blender that I use you may have seen in some of my other videos my son and daughter-in-law started a product that is actually a makeup brush and I started using these brushes to blend with and I'm gonna try using these with the pan pastels actually already did I cheated tried it it worked great so what I want to do they have this wonderful book I read through this book and I was amazed at the education you get from this one book so that's what I'm gonna do with you guys I'm gonna read through the book now I was very excited to see this because I instantly recognized this painting as one from my very dear friend and artist Deborah Seacour amazing pastel artist this painting was done 100% with pan pastels and it also happens she's a member of our Monet cafe Facebook group and she I believe put this painting in our current monthly theme of sunsets and sunrises so this was another very useful material here that's a brochure and or a pamphlet of sorts and it has so much education in here and actually little exercises and worksheets for you to use to become a better artist and to learn a little bit more about pan pastels so get ready we're gonna have fun and dive into this and learn a lot more about pan pastels and I can't wait to get to a painting but first let's start learning okay so here's the catalog and it also has art techniques in it so it's it's very informative and educational plus I like the way the page turn sounds are hear that anyway so this is page one and I really like that they give a little bit of their story you know especially you know in Monet cafe we're all about knowing each other especially in Monet cafe art group on Facebook and we're just a family you know so it's really neat to hear the back story of how companies start and their ideas so I'm gonna read a little bit of the brochure action probably gonna read a lot of it but I think it's more fun to learn this together I mean you can order the brochure yourself and I'll try to put the links in the about section where you can go to the website and look at it just like I am and and go ahead and get started in ordering if you want to so so let me just give you a little bit of their story and a little more information so the idea behind the development of pan pastel was to create a dry color medium you know like soft pastels that would work like a fluid paint you know with sticks were typically just restricted to using the sticks so this is going to work more like painting we saw that the pastel medium hadn't changed from the stick format for hundreds of years and before that going back thousands of years humans had to use raw pigments to draw paint you know thousands of years ago you just had to find some pigment you know to draw or paint with it so we decided now that's going to be the inventors in this picture here lad for his line I hope I'm saying his name right and Bernadette Ward she's the one that I dealt with and she's wonderful very helpful and I appreciate all the information that she gave me so they decided to develop a material that retained the characteristics that make the pastel medium special and we know on this channel that pastels are just amazing we recruit so many new pastel addicts in our group all the time and it's like anything you got to learn and experiment but there's so many beautiful things about pastel soft pastels that aren't in other mediums and that's what's neat about these pan pastels to it's still soft pastels but the neat thing is its directness and purity of color and these do go on very pure and beautiful but to make it functional like a paint after much experimentation in our art studio and laboratory we developed the pan format okay so the little individual things you said I look like I said look like makeup they're called pans I was calling them little pallets but it's a pan okay so the pan format changes everything making the colors function like a dry velvety paint this brings many benefits for example the artist can now mix pastel colors together for the first time you know how I'm always talking on our channel about how it's we we mix colors in a way but not like regular painting so with pan pastels you can mix them definitely better than you can with stick format so that's going to be really fun we knew the owners again or the inventors that pastelist would be immediately attracted to pan pastel as the colors offer many advantages for pastel painting we also wanted to offer painters who normally use wet colors a dry medium that would deliver many of the same paintable qualities that they're familiar with so this is going to be a great way for artists who are used to other mediums acrylic oil watercolor they're going to feel a little more comfortable perhaps with pan pastel and still experience the wonderful benefits of the regular soft pastel medium so the owners again or inventors again are saying our job was develop the materials and make them available to artists knowing they would instinctively know how to use them in their work we were right artists are taking pan pastel in so many exciting creative directions now I know in our Monet cafe art group on Facebook we do have artists who are using pan pastels because I have had I've seen your post and your questions and again like that little card said that they provided I was so excited to see that my my friend that I've never met in person but the amazing pastel artist Deborah Secor was the one who did that painting on their little card that they gave and there's also hopefully they'll get to it in this brochure there's also a little link where you can get a free little demo where Deborah Secor did a pan pastel hundred percent pan pastel with that beautiful painting that she had on that card so I know for a fact that that pastel artist love this product so I'm excited to do a painting but let's go through this brochure a little bit more so so they do that this is just loaded with information here but this is going to tell a little bit over here just the describing the pan format okay so it's in these little plastic trays okay and these if you don't have the palette that I just got for the first time the little little plastic holders that they're in they screw together in little stacks now I found that that was a little bit challenging not it's not hard to unscrew them but it's time-consuming and so the palette is going to be really great for me I'm excited about that but the benefit is that it has instant color if you're an artist from other mediums there's no prep or drying we know that already is pastel artist how the benefit of pastels I love how they don't dry up on you they're always there waiting for you when you come back you don't have to mix them so that is a wonderful benefit and we're going to find out about how they can be mixed together with this format and mix media friendly yes for sure you know I do mix media stuff all the time using pastels with all kinds of different mediums and the same thing with these again they're soft pastels okay they're just in a different format and functional packaging like I said this is probably going to be nice for people who have a little bit of an issue with the pastel dust these definitely I know from experience don't have as much of a dust issue flying around all over the place and they're highly pigmented boy they go on brilliant they're so great okay this is a beautiful pan pastel painting from this artist and okay let's go to page 2 on this page you're going to see all of the different color choices and the pastel colors that they provide and it's really not very different from ordering pastels colors from any other type of soft pastel so and also too I know sometimes with some soft pastels you've got so many different colors to choose from it gets like overwhelming and these have a really really good supply of colors for you and which should be good for any painting needs landscaping portraits you know whatever so this is the I was mentioning in the little intro part of this video they have the metallics and the pearlescence and I got some little samples of each of those so I can't wait to paint and now also to oh yeah I got a little bit of this too we'll talk about this in a minute as well now this is the little palette I think it might show it on one of these other pages that I'm excited about that I'm gonna have a palette this is gonna make it much more user-friendly for me to just get the palette of pan pastels and go to work instead of unscrewing all the little individual things so I'm excited they have one for 10 colors and they have one for 20 colors you get them empty okay and then you put yours in it all right so let's go to the next page now these are the tools that I talked about a little bit in the intro there and they have the knives like a palette knife if you're familiar with painting with wet mediums there's a palette knife and they have a little covers okay these are the little sponges that are going to pick up the pastel and apply it to your surface so we've got the round the flat the oval and the point now Bernadette was very helpful in explaining to me I said I couldn't get a good point sometimes with these pastels and she described to her explained to me that there are still certain things that sticks are better for and that pan pastels are not always meant to use a hundred percent pan pastels but use them with your other soft pastels so if you need that fine edge or you need sky holes is something I think that sticks are probably going to be better for our grasses you know use your sticks on top of these but I'm excited because I think these are going to be great for underpainting so and many other uses so these are your tools okay and there's other tools to which are oh this is neat it shows you a little looks like you have a little video here again I'm going to provide a link to to this so you can find this yourself and it shows you exactly how to do everything this is very informative explains is a little bit about the sponge and these are the handheld ones the round the flat the wedge the point and these are the larger ones I'm thinking I would do this for just large areas of color I'm going to get down from underpainting or something the big oval this the angle slice flat angle slice round and the round okay so these are these are your tools for applying them all right let's go to the next page now this is cool because it gives you the basic techniques of how to use these you can go through this and learn basically how to use these little palette knives and also how you can clean them all you really need is a paper towel to wipe your little sponge off okay and I've done this so I know that it absolutely works the only thing that I've found is sometimes if I use a very coarse pastel surface you know I love sanded surfaces it's going to that's why they allow you to order more of these little sponges because you know it gets a little abrasive on it but but for one painting you definitely one of these is going to work just fine and and you can always replace them which is great so you're going to apply it just like paint to paper or your working surface and reload your color as needed and again the neat thing about I can't wait to experiment with this more about mixing colors like paint to create your intermediate colors see they they took just these two colors and you can see they got a gradation of the in-between colors from there so that's pretty cool palette trays we talked about it gives you a tip to how to get them out easily okay so these fit down in that little palette tray and this is cool down here they're erasable so any eraser really I usually use a kneaded eraser like they show in this picture here but you see all these eraser possibilities down here even a little more fine point eraser which you could just lay down a big square of color or whatever and and get the eraser of your choosing and go ahead and start sketching so that's pretty cool and again this shows you just all the prep that you need your paper towels your pastels your tools and your eraser and it even gives you a little bit about finishing and framing and fixing I have a lot of videos I don't fix a painting at the end most of you know that but I use it as a tool for painting and framing is just the same as any regular pastel again these are soft pastels okay just in a different way that they're they're not a stick okay alright so let's go on now color mixing this is what I was saying is kind of exciting look at this you've got these colors here that you can actually get an in-between color as if you were mixing acrylics or something so that's that's really really awesome I like how they described this part right here this is kind of how they have created their colors you've got a permanent red okay and then they have what's called a tent and all a tent is is the pure color that red plus white now you know if you've been painting long you know if you add white to red you're gonna get pink which is that now their other thing they add to their permanent red same as above is black if you add some black you're gonna get a deeper richer red more of a I don't see be a rich color there and then if you add more black to it you're gonna get your dark dark you know I talk about want to have some dark darks so pan pastel does have some really good darks as well and that this gives you education on more about layering okay and this is for if you want something that's more transparent colors you see I can see through these would be for your more opaque colors and easy cleanup they really are easy to clean up you just wipe them off with a sponge or a piece of paper towel okay because I have noticed when I I get kind of crazy when I start painting and I'll I'll go from the red to the yellow to the whatever and and they get you know the surface of the pan can get kind of dirty so you just wipe it off you know and it comes off real easily and this is a little bit more about their pearl mediums and this is what I was excited about this colorless blender I have not used this before and it's really interesting because typically you know if you've got a red and you add white to it with pastels I mean red and white you know it makes pink but this colorless blender is not a white okay it looks white here but I'm assuming it's not a white it allows that the color can be extended or diluted and become more transparent but the color itself remains the same you see how this is still more red okay it's just a little bit more translucent but if you add white it's white so this is going to be a neat little tool here and I can't wait to try it all right now this is cool too you can do subtractive colors kind of like what I was describing for about erasing before and you just lay down see the sponge that's for the large areas you want to lay down a large amount of color and and it's kind of like not really a negative painting subtractive like it says you're going to subtract out your lines and that would be a fun little way to do some sketching or some drawing so that's just another neat thing you can do and they've got a neat little example of an artist and this is so I don't have my glasses on Charlina Wood and just an example of how she's used them it also gives you a tip of how you want to change your line weight how you use the tools to change the weight of the line from thick to thin this is really neat I don't often do image transfers because I like to you know just draw myself but if you have something that you're doing and it would just be handy to be able to reproduce this drawing onto a surface whatever you're drawing is this dub for example you just basically turn this paper over apply a big old swatch of the pan pastel with one of your sponges okay flip it over and use any tool whatever point sharp point edge you have to draw it onto your surface peel it up and you know say this is pastel paper or whatever you have down there that's it's going to transfer so that's really neat I didn't even know that you could do that and this is another example of an artist who's actually an oil painting artist and he loves to use the pan pastel to do his preliminary work with the pastel and I understand if you read through this I'm not going to read the whole thing I totally understood what he was saying about the advantages of using this as an almost like an underpainting for oil painting work so lots of uses this is going to give you some interesting and helpful tips on different techniques you know I use under paintings a lot I'm going to use that one for sure this is neat because every time I should click on this or point at it it lightens it up so I have to quit doing that but I talk a lot about in value typically your darkest values are in the foreground at the lower part of this part and your lighter values are going to be as the as things go back in the distance your skies and things far away so it's probably a neat idea and I've never done this just to do a underpainting that has a gradation like this it's kind of a neat little way to start so pan pastel looks like they're going to be great for doing that and oh here's Deborah's painting again great for sketching you're just going to use your little palette knives and and just sketch out your general piece you know that's pretty cool instead of using a stick another point about mixing and applying them practice with simple studies and this is the part I was telling you about it says Debra Seacore 100 percent pan pastel this painting is in our Monet cafe art group you know if you're on in that group in Facebook you know that we have a monthly theme and the monthly theme for July we're almost done with July is has been sunrises and sunsets and Debra Seacore is a very accomplished pastel artist we're so blessed to have her in our group she submitted this painting and I was like oh I knew that painting right away but but this is a painting that pan pastel allows you to get this free online workshop okay so you can get that by visiting this the links that I'm going to show you and you can really watch Deborah and how she creates this painting that's very cool again more I'm not going to read through everything it's great with mixed media they work well with all kinds of different mediums and again other mixed medium oh this was cool about digital hand coloring if you do any photography work black and white and you want to do a hand coloring these are great for coloring your black and white photos okay so that's pretty neat and you can read all about this let's see how many more pages we have we got 28 pages to this book but more about oh stenciling you can use them for stencils they work on different surfaces you know I typically work I actually work on watercolor paper a lot and do my you know that's a neat idea how about using pan pastels on watercolor paper and then applying the clear liquid gesso like we do for the sanded part that would be really neat and of course we use sanded surfaces a lot so they work on all surfaces and let's see oh these are the different sets that you can get so they do sell them in sets you got a starter set here and you've got 10 color sets you guys can read through all of this 20 color sets where you can actually get the palette here and some tools so you guys can check that out oh let me go back here a landscape set shades extra darks I mentioned to Bernadette I needed more darks and I got those and the metallics the pearlescence oh look at that oh that's just so beautiful I know you guys and Monet cafe art group and I'm Monet cafe YouTube channel you're just as special as Monet cafe art group on Facebook I just get to talk with you more when you're in our Facebook group okay because we all communicate together so if I sound like I'm talking to you when I'm doing these videos that's because I do get to communicate with you and and you know we always get excited when somebody shares their photos of their new pastels it's just we're like color freaks you know so this just excites me that's just so beautiful there's the pearlescence and the metallics so here's the different kits and then you've got okay we'll just flip through some of the stuff okay so we're done here with all the pages but I want to talk a little bit more about that other educational little pamphlet brochure that they had which was really cool so let's get to that I was really excited to see that pan pastel provided this information to make you a better painter and they use this artist Anders Zorn to give an instructional type of information on how to use a limited color palette to produce great paint works you know and if you notice up there in the top right where it says materials it's got the yellow ochre the permanent red black white and phthalo blue so you've got your primary colors your yellow your red your blue and and it goes in and describes how we're going to do a little worksheet to make you better and these are the different samples of worksheets which include the Zorn palette worksheet values worksheet temperature worksheet value studies add bonus blue those might not make sense until I show you what they are and here they are so basically you've got this little worksheet where you actually add the pan pastel colors to help you understand all of the different lessons on the one the two three the four I'm not going to go through all of these but I am actually going to do these myself but I wanted to go ahead and show you the different worksheets this is the Zorn worksheet number one number two is on values you know I am huge on value so if this is going to help you grow as an artist that's awesome worksheet number three is on color temperature it's a temperature worksheet so that's going to really be beneficial a lot of you ask these questions all the time on our channel so and this I didn't show you all of the worksheets but this is the back of the brochure and again the little resources techniques how to find pan pastels and learn more about them so this was just so fun so I hope I may have encouraged you to try this product and for the beginner use what you have for now but if you want to try some of these maybe try some in that limited palette and and get a feel for them and of course get all of the free resources that pan pastel provides so anyway guys this was a fun video I can't wait to come back and bring you a painting using these beautiful pastels so thanks for joining me in Monet cafe find our Facebook group Monet cafe art group and also please subscribe to this channel if you want to keep more videos like this coming your way thanks so much and happy happy painting