19 has affected everything in our lives, including the kind of spiritual life and spiritual care we are able to live at the end of life. I'm Larry Grimm, Dr. Larry Grimm, and I wear several hats here. First of all, I'm a Presbyterian minister. I like to say I'm one of the liberal, open-minded progressive Presbyterian ministers, and I am also a coach, a personal coach for life and faith which I am focusing on, elderhood, and folks who are in their elderhood who would like to benefit from care and from coaching. I want people to engage, not just age, but to engage in their lives. The third hat that I wear is for Bristol Hospice. I'm a spiritual counselor, also known as Chaplain, with Bristol Hospice Hawaii here, one of the several hospice services here on Oahu. And today I'm interviewing myself about spiritual care and how COVID-19 affects all of us in our spiritual life. First of all, I'd like to address what is spiritual care. There are many people who have various associations with the term chaplain, and I don't like to use the term chaplain really in the hospice setting because it carries with it so much baggage. So spiritual counselor is another term that we use, which I think is an effective one. But what is spiritual care, then, that I give? Spiritual care, for first of all, is not telling a person what to believe about the end of life. It is not proselytizing and securing somebody's conversion on their deathbed. It is not proposing and propounding a particular way of belief from my own presbyterian background. What spiritual care is begins with listening. I'm listening to my patients and family members makes sense of what they're going through in this end of life time. Most of us have never been at the end of life, as most of my patients are, when they come into hospice care. Some have been at the end of life before and recovered and have backed away from that precipice, so to speak. What I'm doing is listening for the resources, the spiritual resources, the spiritual emotional resources that every patient and family member brings to this end of life occasion. What helps them make sense of what they're experiencing. So one of the things that I listen for is how the people, how the persons are moving and the patient in particular is moving through the five stages of dying, which Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross first identified.  And so part of my hope and my plan and my goal for my patients that I work for, if they do, as they usually say, they have a goal of dying in peace. And family members want their loved one to die peacefully and not in pain. So, but one of the things that I use to listen for is how are they moving towards acceptance through these stages of dying to acceptance. Because acceptance is a wonderful experience. Acceptance is one of the, it's not just a matter of intellectual affirmation, I'm going to die, scheduling my death for the next certain time, and we'll get into that in a minute. But acceptance is an opening up to it and a relief actually about relief from fighting against it. One of the persons that I have been helped most in understanding and experiencing this actually has been Alan Watts. Alan Watts is a philosopher, died in the 1990s, I believe, maybe early 2000s, and he was so instrumental in bringing together thoughts from Eastern philosophies, Eastern traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism of its many sorts, and the Eastern philosophy and bringing it together was Western thought and integrating the two.  It's a 10 minute video, but it's a beautiful video about accepting death. Back in 1958, I was in Zurich and there met a most extraordinary man by the name of Carl Fried von Dierkheim. He was a former German diplomat. Who had studied Zen in Japan. And when he came back after the war, he opened a meditation school and retreat in the Black Forest. He said, well, I tell you what, a lot of my work has to do with people who went through spiritual crises during the war. And he said, you know, we all know that when a person's in an absolutely extreme situation and they accept it, there is a possibility of a natural satori. And that's what I mean when I was explaining that when one gets to an extreme, that is to say, to the point where you realize that there is nothing you can do about life, nothing you could not do about life. Then you're the mosquito biting the iron bull. Well, so in the same way he said, look, you heard a bomb coming at you. You could hear it whistle and you knew it was right above you and headed straight at you and that you were finished. And you accepted it. And suddenly there was this strange feeling that everything is absolutely clear. You suddenly see that there isn't a grain of dust in the whole universe that's in the wrong place. Did you understand completely, absolutely, totally what it's all about? Because you can't say what it is. But he said in so many cases the bomb was a dud and they lived to tell the tale. Or he said you were in a concentration camp. You've been there so long that you gave up all hope whatsoever, ever getting out. You were just going through this miserable, boring, degrading grind week after week after week. Nobody paid the slightest attention to you as an individual. You knew you would never get out and you accepted it and suddenly something changed. Extraordinary feeling, freedom. Or he said you were a displaced refugee. You had lost your family. You didn't know whether they even existed. You were miles from your home. You didn't know whether it existed. You had lost your job, your very identity. You were absolutely nowhere and you accepted it. And suddenly you were as light as a feather and free as the air. Now he said so many people have had those experiences and they talk about them to their families and friends and they say oh well you were under terrific pressure and you probably had some hallucination, you know. Well he said I am showing those people that so far from having a hallucination those were the few, few occasions in which they woke up. So you see this is always the opportunity presented by death. That if one can go into death with eyes open and have somebody help you if necessary to give up before you die. This extraordinary thing can happen to you. So that from your standpoint in that position at that time you would say I wouldn't have missed that opportunity for the world. Now I understand why we die. The reason we die is to give us the opportunity to understand what life's all about by letting go because then we come to a situation that the ego can't deal with. When we are no longer hypnotized by that then our natural consciousness can see clearly what all this universe is for. So therefore we have missed this golden opportunity by institutionalizing death out of the way instead of having a socially understood acceptance of death and rejoicing in death. Now I could imagine that one person would want to rejoice in death in an entirely different way from another like say a wedding is a rite of passage. There are certainly some forms of celebrating a wedding which I would find a total bore and quite offensive. Other ways would be very good. I would enjoy it. So everybody in other words I'm not saying that you've got to get mixed up with a lot of people coming laughing around you and giving you presents and cards and everything because you're going to die. But I'm only indicating a general thing that the doctor the ministers the psychiatrists and above all us really owe it to our friends to work out an entirely new approach to death. Because what has happened you see from earliest childhood the child learned that great uncle was dying and saw the family put on long faces and say oh that's too bad.  I want to understand that for the living to lose someone you love or even for a dying person to worry about what an earth my wife my children my whatever going to do without me. One can understand a certain worry in that but nobody is indispensable and there comes a point when you have to say I'm sorry but I am completely going to abandon responsibility for anything because there is no further way I can do it this is another way of that surrender. And then the curious thing that occurs is the moment all that has dropped suddenly it dawns on you that to be important existence does not have to go on any longer than a moment. Quantitative continuity is of no value. How long can you hold your breath? Who cares? So it follows from that you see that if any one of us without being shocked into it by being bombed or put in a concentration camp could at this moment be as one about to die genuinely and honestly we would understand the mystery of life because death is the in a certain sense the source of life just as we see in nature when the leaves fall from the trees they mold and rot and this supplies humus from which more plants can grow it's a cycle like that. But in every way symbolic and otherwise human beings try to stop that cycle. Unamuno said human beings are the only species that hoard their dead and therefore with the ghastly art of the mortician we try to make the body unpalatable to the worms and so to stop life as if to be eaten in due course were an indignity to the human being whereas we eat everything else and we give nothing back so that is a kind of a social symptom of our profound disorientation with respect to death. We think death is unnatural and furthermore in our culture we think birth is a disease and send a mama to the hospital for the most unnatural weird kind of parturition. In other words more and more one regards the healthy and inevitable and natural transformations of the body as pathological. I can imagine you know people having sexual intercourse on an operating table to be sure that the whole thing is hygienic. You know everything about us like that has become over interfered with by specialists and less and less the province of our own preferences.  Now this is simply nonsense it's this perfect panic to survive at all costs. Hi I'm Larry Grimm and I'm partnering with Think Tech Hawaii in Elderhood and Aging Gracefully I recall it and there's so many wonderful resources on the island of Oahu for the kupuna for all of us who are elders and it's part of my mission to bring that to light and as a spiritual counselor for Bristol Hospice of Hawaii I am also involved in spiritual care and profoundly aware that COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact upon our spiritual lives and upon the spiritual care that we give. This particular video acceptance of death highlights the joy and the wonder of acceptance and the importance of acceptance. It's not as I mentioned before the video began it's not just a matter of saying oh I accept that I'm going to die now but there is a satori a tremendous enlightenment I like to think it's surprised by joy like C.S. Lewis used to say an awareness that all is well all will be well and all manner of things will be well and so moving into that acceptance is a tremendous benefit to growing and growth through the end of life cycle. That has been of course tremendously impacted by COVID-19. Usually when I am giving spiritual care what I'm listening for is the individual resources a person brings to make sense of their dying individual beliefs that maybe they have accepted through the religion that they have nurtured through their lives belief about life after life belief about God belief about and faith and trust in something greater themselves belief in the flow of life and the cycle of life of which death is a part sometimes it's those beliefs that enable a person to flow through that end of life cycle into a stage develop into those stages into acceptance also there is a community dimension to those resources because there are people who are come about who are supportive of those individual experiences and knowledge family and members of the really religious community there there's also a sense of the near death experience a person may bring that they've had in the past and so they come to this final dying and they say you know I'm not afraid because I've already been there and I've shared that with my community my family and my friends and they're all aware that I'm not afraid of this and so the community is able to support them in the community of faith we engage in ritual we ritualize our anticipatory grief the coming loss of my of the person I love when and we ritualize the grief at the time of death sacramental rights from certain denominations while the catholic church in particular may become important or the ministry of prayer by a community of prayer givers prayer warriors or a ministry of of presence which is often just a matter of sitting and thinking and meditating and being together all of that is part of the process of moving towards acceptance and those are the resources people draw upon music has played a vital role in my ministry of spiritual caregiving I sing songs sing hymns I bring my laptop and play songs in Tonga or Ilocano or Japanese or Chinese in order to again real touch that those places in the heart and soul where music has been meaningful in the past there are also efforts to provide music at the time of death itself which are not so much oriented towards words and phrases and images as towards enabling the person to let go threshold choirs have been established and music fanatology has become an entire discipline in itself of bringing heart music into the dying process again this is a matter of enabling the person to accept the final let go that they do one of the other things that we have as a resource here and in colorado is our care our choice legislation that permits us to choose to die as we wish and I'd like to share a brief video of how that was generated here in color and did I say colorado in Hawaii how that was generated here in Hawaii and over the year became effective in January of 2019 let's listen to some of the preparations for that by show of hands how many of you here today are going to die a series of meetings is being held on Hawaii Island about death with dignity as the our care our choice act goes into effect in just a few months it's it's why it's so important to talk to your doctor and make sure your doctor and your your whole care staff that they know what what you want the conference room was full at the Hilo aging and disability resource center on October 24th for a presentation by compassion and choices Hawaii we call it the access campaign compassion and choices we work to help states pass these laws and then we stick around to make sure people have access to it they are the local affiliate for the nonprofit organization committed to improving care and expanding choice at the end of life we want to make sure that everyone who's qualified has the option the free presentation also delivered in Kona and Waimea talk to a pharmacist who's prescribed before intended to help everyone understand and prepare for implementation of the our care our choice act prescription the new law that authorizes medical aid in dying to self administer to bring about a peaceful death by law medical aid in dying is not considered suicide assisted suicide homicide or euthanasia access campaign director Samantha trad explained the details medical aid in dying eligibility criteria so as I said you have to be an adult at least 18 years or older you need to be terminally ill and you need to have a prognosis of six months or less to live and you need to be mentally capable of making informed medical decisions a patient must make two verbal requests separated by 20 days and one written request which can be submitted at any time so there is a waiting period the fastest a person could receive a prescription for medical aid in dying is 20 days and that is if you have all your ducks lined up in a row trad also played an emotional video documenting an end of life experience for one terminally ill patient a beautiful video after the presentation audience members had questions being on the outer islands I think we do suffer the issue of isolation many express concerns about implementation on the big island I know there's a shortage of physicians as well in hawaii too I've read in the newspaper and that's why being educated is so important east hawaii palliative care providers were also on hand kakumau is here lori miller and we have been talking to them and they're very aware of the law do you want to say anything to the executive director of kawaii hospice but I also serve as the president of kakumau which is the state hospice and palliative care organization and we have been very involved in understanding how this law has how this legislation has become law and working with our members to understand what position we would take as a member organization because our member organizations are quite diverse and representative of places like catholic hospitals and health insurance carriers and hawaii care choices which is the east hawaii hospice and palliative care organization would always support whatever our patients they have options multiple options lauren kim with the hawaii department of health was also in attendance the bill we have is something it wasn't there before and the form it was passed was enough to get passed that's what we have to recognize and i have the constitutional authority to implement the law as it's written the presentation was coordinated by the hawaii county office of aging state senators lorraine and noe and russell ruderman and state representatives cindy evans and joey sanjuana ventura in 2000 when senator noe was in it died in the senate by two votes this time around it died in the house the year before because and we killed the senate bill because we didn't believe they had enough safeguards so like senator noe said i know it is going to be more difficult for the patient itself but we ask for your patience we want to make sure it works the our care our choice act goes into effect on january first 2019 most people of course want a peaceful death so you can see that there are many commitments on the islands and in hawaii to enabling aging gracefully to continue right into the end of lifetime and our care our choice provides that opportunity i've had three patients in my care that have opted for that we don't at bristol hospice don't provide medications we don't encourage it we don't try to promote it we just are there part of the team as with any death our care our choice though gives us a chance to look forward to planning and all of this is to say that i'm trying to say that spiritual care is so effective when it's over a long period of time long period two months three months six months because it gives a chance for us to accommodate men and come alongside our patients and families as they seek to make sense of what's going on in their lives COVID-19 comes in and sudden death appears in so many ways you can get COVID-19 today have manifestations of symptoms and die within 24 hours it robs us of the opportunity to plan plan it robs us of a chance to grow through that end of life experience so what can you do i want to really encourage you to to fill out your advanced directives talk with family members talk with your community talk with everybody about the importance of death and dying and explore what it means for you to come into a time of acceptance and to live as Ellen once said honestly and committed as though you may die tomorrow a wonderful peaceful death


Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. In this lecture, we are going to discuss astronomy and astrology. So what are the differences and what are the similarities between these two? And we'll look at how that has changed over time. What we see is a very distinct difference today. Any astronomer would not want to be called an astrologer. We could find that to be very offensive, that astrology is something that is not even considered a science. However, not that long ago, as in hundreds to a thousand years ago, there was little difference between an astronomer and an astrologer. So what we're going to look at in this lecture is take a little bit of a look and compare how these work and how they have changed over the ages. So starting off, let's look at some of the basics. What do we mean by astronomy and astrology? Well, astrology itself here is, what do we mean by it? It is the studies of the different objects that wandered through the sky. So there were seven known objects that wandered through the sky separate from the stars. The stars always retained their same positions relative to each other. So the constellations that we saw were always exactly the same. However, there were seven objects that wandered through these and these gave us our days of the week. And these objects were the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. So the sun and the moon and the five planets that were known. And they wandered through the sky so they had special importance and had special significance to ancient peoples. Now the beginnings of this, again, were quite different than what we look at today. And it was thought that these could have an impact on peoples' lives so that they could affect how peoples' lives worked and could make predictions of what would happen in someone's life based on the positioning of the stars. So some of the things that we know on astrology you may be familiar with and that would be the constellations of the zodiac. So you're probably familiar with these. The constellations of the zodiac are actually astronomical in nature. So we have our term zodiac there. But they are actually astronomical in nature. You will recognize these if you've ever followed a horoscope at all. Things like Aquarius, Pisces, Ares, Taurus, and so on. What was so special about these constellations? It's very interesting because they are not the brightest constellations in the sky. In fact, some of them have very few bright stars. Pisces, for example, Ares do not have any really bright stars. Neither does Cancer and Libra. A lot of these have very few or no bright stars in them. Others might have a couple bright stars, but they were important not because of what the stars were made up of, but because of where they were located. And these are the constellations that the sun, the moon, and the planets will move through over the course of the year. So why did they become important to astrology? Is that they were the constellations where you would find these wandering objects. Where you would find the sun, where you would find the moon, and where you would find the planets were all within the twelve constellations of the zodiac that we see here. Now what is really happening there, if we want to look at reality, is that the sun and the moon and the planets are not moving through those constellations. What is actually moving is the earth. So the earth's motion is changing the position of the sun. So we would see, because here's the sun and here's the earth, so in January we see the sun towards the constellation of Sagittarius, and we would see other constellations high in the night sky. So this would tell us what constellation the sun is in. But it's the earth that's doing the moving, so that a few months later we would be over here and now instead of seeing the constellation of Sagittarius as the location of the sun, we would see Aquarius and then a couple months later we would see it as Aries and so on around and repeating this cycle every year. So that causes the changing position of the sun in the sky. So the sun appears to move through the constellations and what would your sun sign would be the location of the sun on the day you were born. Now, we also know that the solar system is flat, that if you draw it on a piece of paper that's a pretty good approximation of reality, and that means that the planets will also follow this same path. So not only does the sun go through these 12 constellations, but so will the moon and the planets. So let's look a little bit more about what this means for astrology. And we look at natal astrology, which was one of the early astrologies here, and that was where were these objects at the moment of your birth? So exactly when you were born, not just where was the sun as in your solar astrology, but where was the moon and where were the five planets at that time? And that was said to determine what your personality would be and what your life would be like. Now, you note that's quite different from the astrology that you tend to look at today. Today you look at astrology, you know, you get a couple sentences based on the month in which you were born and what constellation that is associated with. The original astrology was much more complicated looking at not just the position of the sun here, but also the moon and the planets.  Now, this was developed by the Greek astronomers that we've talked about in previous lessons. And Claudius told me one of those astronomers that we talked about actually wrote a treatise on astrology as well. We talked about his Almagest, which was his great work that explained the motions of the planets and how to be able to predict those. But this is really the basis of astrology today is still based on this work of Ptolemy. And at Ptolemy's time there was really little difference between astronomy and astrology. And I mentioned that before. They were essentially one and the same and that an astronomer and an astrologer were quite the same. And that is very different than what we have today. So let's take a look at some of these horoscopes and what we can do. The sky for a horoscope, the sky is divided into 12 sections. So when we look at a horoscope, we have 12 sections and these are the constellations of the zodiac. On average, the sun spends about one month in each constellation. Now, that's on average. In reality, if you look at the horoscopes, they are all divided into one month sections. In reality, if you look up where the sun is, the sun can spend as little as a week in some of the constellations and it can spend more than a month in other constellations. So in reality, they're not actually uniform. Now we also have talked about precession. What is this due to the horoscopes? Remember that precession is slowly changing the position of the Earth's celestial poles. So it's changing the coordinate systems and changing the positioning that we see. That has, since the time of Ptolemy moved us about one zodiac sign off from what the Church would say. So for example, if you look up May 6, that would normally you consider someone a Taurus who was born on May 6, but the sun on that day would be in the constellation of Aries still. So we're about one constellation off because of precession slowly changing the coordinates and slowly changing the positioning of the constellations over time. So what we used a thousand years ago is quite different than what we would have to use today, but we're still base our astrology is still based on the original horoscope. So if you're born on May 6, you're considered a Taurus. However, the sun was truly in Aries when you were born. So what this means is that the newspaper or internet horoscopes that we may look at are based on just the sun sign. Where was the sun when you were born and where was it according to the ancient horoscopes? This would mean that essentially 8% of the population has exactly the same horoscope prediction every day. So almost 1 in 10 people will have the same prediction as you and it'd be odd that 10% of the people, hundreds of millions of people would have exactly the same day. That would not be something that would be scientifically possible. Now in truth, that is very simplified. That is not what a complete horoscope would be. If you do a complete horoscope, again, you use not only the sun, which is the sun sign. That's when you look up that small brief blurb that says what your day is going to be like. But you also look up the moon and each of the five known planets that would then give you, tell you a lot more information about how your life would go. So it also has to be interpreted and it does depend on judgment as well. So this is kind of what removes it from being a science. Is that there is a lot more judgment involved and that the interpretation can vary from astrologer to astrologer. So one person may interpret the position of Jupiter when you're born as one thing and another one may interpret it slightly differently or somewhat differently. And that gives a sort of flexibility in the horoscope, but they don't necessarily match up exactly. There is not an exact position that says if Jupiter is exactly here at this location, then this is what will happen. There is some judgment there and that kind of removes it from being a science like astronomy which would predict specifically where the planet is going to be and your model would have to then show that. Now let's look at how these are have adjusted over time. Again, from the ancient Greeks the time of Tome until the Renaissance these were really very similar things and by that I mean that astrology and astronomy were not all that different. People like Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo actually cast horoscopes as well and were astrologers in addition to being astronomers. How well they actually believed in the astrology is a good question and may be questionable, but they did cast horoscopes based on what Tome had done before. Shortly after that by the 1700s they began to diverge and became separate. Astronomy was simply the study of the sky. Astrology was the study of the sky's perceived impact on our lives here on Earth. So how did those positionings affect us here on Earth? Astronomy would study and predict where the planets would be. Astrology became how those would impact us here on Earth. So by the 1700s these were beginning to diverge significantly and there was a big difference at that point between an astronomer and an astrologer. Now we look at astrology as being a pseudoscience and what do we mean by that? Well, a pseudoscience here is a subject that seems to be scientific or purports to be scientific and it may use scientific terminology. A lot of the terminology of astrology and astronomy is very similar. That terminology is the same. However, astrology is not based on rigorous testing. So a pseudoscience would not have the same rigorous testing that an actual science would. When we try to make predictions of the positions of the planets we make those predictions and then we test them out and find out are they correct? Is our model correct or do we need to make modifications to it? Statistical studies done on astrology have shown that there is really a relationship between someone's horoscope and their lives. In reality, most horoscopes if you read them are vague enough that you can find some truth in it. You will find something that happens to you perhaps that day that fits and that you could then interpret to fit with the horoscope. But in reality if you cast the actual horoscopes, the full horoscopes, the predictions are no better than random chance. And that would be that what are these astronomy is really astrology is the study of the perceived impact of the positions of these seven objects here on our lives. Astronomy on the other hand is just the study of the celestial objects and their positions. Note the difference is this impact that this impact on our lives is not something astronomers even consider. So whether they are is not considered to have any impact on our lives. What we looked at was that astrology and astronomy were really very similar in the distant past. And there was times, even again just a few hundred years ago where astronomers and astrologers were one and the same person. Statistical studies have been done to look at astrology and have found that there is really no scientific basis for it that the predictions that are made show no better than random chance of coming true. So therefore give no predictive value to your future and your life. So that concludes our discussion of astronomy and astrology. And looking at the example of astrology as a pseudoscience. We'll be back again next time to discuss some of the other astronomy. So until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.


Will Smith is one of those timeless celebrities with so many successes under his belt that it's hard to count. From movies, TV, even music, the man has done it all. He was even named the most powerful actor in Hollywood at one point.  He has three children, two with his longtime wife and actress, Jada Pinkett Smith, who is 48 at the moment. Will definitely has a beautiful family, and along with all of that, a beautiful place that they call home to. Will and his wife Jada are both successful in their own right, and currently Will has almost 40 million followers on Instagram, while Jada has almost 10 million. The two have both used the platform to share glimpses into their beautiful mansion in the past as well, so if you follow either of them, you may have gotten a good idea of what their place looks like. Of course, when two Hollywood actors create a lasting marriage and strong partnership, they also combine their wealth. Will and Jada are certainly not hurting in that department either, with a combined net worth that's estimated at around 320 million US dollars. Of course, you can buy a mansion or five with that kind of cash. The couple has invested into more than one property over the years, including a vacation house in Hawaii, and Will even has his own epic and giant RV he lives in when he films movies. Will and Jada's current mansion is really something else though. It even has its own zip code and seems like more of a private resort than a house. But we'll get into Will's home in a lot more detail after. Hey guys it's Kara and today we're doing another house tour here on Famous Entertainment. We're gonna look at where Will Smith and his family calls home, including the mega mansion in Cali as well as the previous home in Hawaii and his RV that could double as another home. If you like these videos, make sure you're subscribed and ring that bell to be notified when we post so you can always be up to date. We've also done house tours on the likes of Selena Gomez and on Justin and Hailey Bieber and we'll have links to those at the end of this. I've also been reading all your comments and I'm gonna be responding to some at the end of this video. I need you to let me know who to do next in the comments down below and whose home you'd like to see. Now let's get into this video. Let's start with Will's Hawaii real estate. Although Will sold this place a couple of years ago, this property in Kauai is worth mentioning. It seems the family has had a think for Hawaii considering this was the second house they bought and sold there. The one before was sold in 2011 for a rumored 20 mil. This mansion was located on Secret Beach on the north shore of Kauai and Will paid 10 million for it when they got it. But they resold it for 12 million. The home was on 7 acres of beachfront and had two separate gated entrances. This place was actually made up of four different buildings instead of just one. There was a main house of course which had 3 beds and 3.5 baths, vaulted ceilings and two fireplaces. It was pretty open concept but all of the doors and windows were necessary to enjoy the perfect view of the water. There was also a guest house with two beds and two baths, a slightly smaller carriage house with one bed and one bath, and the fourth building was a studio. Other features of Will's multi-million dollar Hawaii house included a pool, spa, tennis court and of course private beach access. Even though the Smiths didn't keep the Hawaii home for long, I'm sure with a spot like that they enjoyed plenty of perfect vacations when Will wasn't working. I mean Hawaii is a dream destination. Before we get into Will's main mansion in LA, let's look at his luxurious movie trailer. I wasn't sure if we should count an RV as part of the house tour but this one gets a pass because it's pretty crazy. Will's RV even has its own name. That's right, it's been nicknamed The Heat. Will's one of a kind trailer is two stories and 1,200 square feet because obviously the man needs to be comfortable when he starts and hit movies. I bet after those long days on set he gets to go back to the nicest trailer around. The price tag on this mobile home is no joke though. Will paid a total of 2.5 million. If you're wondering what a few Mill will get you on 22 wheels, I'm here to tell you and I'll show you. Will's RV features 14 TV screens because why not, 13K worth of leather and over 100K worth of technology. There's of course a dressing room and a 30 person movie theater. The heat also includes a full kitchen and a lounge area separated with sliding doors while Will goes to get into character. One of the bathrooms is worth 25K and runs along the full width of the trailer. The second floor of Will's RV can get 42 inches higher as well by raising the roof so it's basically a transformer. If you want to get a feel for this size it's really like condensing 5 big trailers into one massive one. Now it's time to look at the main attraction, Will's mega mansion family home in Calabasas California. Calabasas as you probably know is a celebrity filled neighborhood so it's no doubt the movie star chose to reside here. There's plenty of privacy yet he's still close enough to Hollywood. Will's mansion is worth a crazy 42 mil but I wouldn't expect anything less from the star.  This multi-million dollar mansion is 25,000 square feet and sits on 150 acres of land. It has an impressive 9 bedrooms. I'm sure around the same amount of bathrooms and the garage holds about 8 cars. So I'm going to get my car in the garage. So a grand table talk is like taking over the house and I think Jada doesn't recognize this a house.  Firstly, Will's home is so expansive it has its own zip code and when you see the property from above you'll understand why. It looks more like a resort. For such a massive space the Smith family home is pretty intimate and homey mostly because that is the vibe Will wanted to create in the first place. So Jada did all of this for Christmas. Jada did all this stuff for Christmas because we usually go out of town. We don't usually decorate. So Jada decided to decorate this year. Oh babe, the shot just went past you and then I went up to bow. To make that happen Will and Jada had everything custom made by woodworkers, stone masons, you name it. And the architect Stephen Samuelson took on the project of designing this place. Construction began way back in 2003 and didn't finish until the end of 2010. Will said about his home, everything needed to be done by hand. We wanted to feel the love and labor that went into every piece of this place. The vibe of Will's home is adobe style so it has a rustic look. The interior is earthy and has inspiration from the African culture. There are also a bunch of handcrafted details like their front door, which was saved from a fort in Northern India. One of the living rooms in the mansion offers an amazing view of the hills and an open concept. It looks like there are accents from around the world as well to suit the vibe of the home. Looking at Will's dining room you can see the color theme is similar with lots of orange and more wood accents. Of course the furniture here like the table is handcrafted as well and moving to the kitchen it's perfectly matched to the rest of the house. All of the bedrooms in this Smith family home are gorgeous but of course the master suite is the most impressive. Will and Jada's room is really spacious and they have a gorgeous bathroom, balcony and a walk-in closet. Some more fancy rooms in Will's mansion include a Moroccan themed movie theater, a recording studio where his daughter Willow has recorded some songs, a meditation room and a pool room. Moving outside of course there's a pool and plenty of space to enjoy sports including a full basketball court, volleyball court and tennis court.  Okay I'm really confused by the direction. I'm the director do what I say. Okay. Wait who did his wardrobe? There's also a huge trampoline and I wonder if Will uses that too. One thing that drew the Smiths to this property they bought was the man-made lake with gorgeous fuses. Will kept it during the redesign so aside from the pool there's a small lake but the family does have 150 acres of land to spare. The gazebo that sits by the lake is actually Will's fave spot at home because he goes there to think and said, answers come to me out there. And if that's not enough space to unwind the meditation room also offers views of the sky so you can always lay out and look at the stars. Hopefully you can see them better in the hills than downtown. So we've seen the 42 million dollar custom mansion that Will and his family call home as well as the crazy RV he uses as a movie trailer which could double as a home and even a place they recently sold in Hawaii. Even though their Calabasas estate is more than enough property Will and Jada are said to own more. Apparently they own a five-bed and six-bath home in Hidden Hills where we know all the Kardashian-Jenner family basically lives. But apparently since 2017 their son Jaden is living in that house. Maybe that's why him and Kylie were so close because they were neighbors. On top of that Will supposedly owns another house in LA's Woodland Hills area a mansion in Pennsylvania with over three acres of land and a place in Park City, Utah. But you get the idea him and Jada have quite a bit. I want to know what you guys think. Do you like Will's family mansion or is it too over the top? I think it really suits the family and the Smiths were definitely able to make a mansion that's so massive still feel like a home. Okay guys so now I'll be reading a few of your comments from previous videos. On our Kourtney Kardashian house tour Nick Lee said, Love Kourt's house and your vids. Thanks Nick I like your house too and thanks for the positive feedback. On our Justin and Hailey Bieber house tour Enya Shallow said, That house shows no sign of a woman living there. One of the many red flags in this relationship. I didn't notice that till you pointed it out but it's kinda true. I wonder what that implies. But I wouldn't be cool with a manly house if I was Hailey that's a bit weird. Finally on our recent Selena Gomez house tour video Jesse Paul said, I'm a big fan of Selena love her so much. So am I she seems so sweet I feel like she has a lot of loyal fans. And if you guys want more Selena content let me know what videos you'd like to see. Alright guys that's all I could find on Will Smith's home. What was your favorite spot in the house? I think I like the outside best with the man-made lake and their meditation room too. Let me know in the comments and let me know some other celebrity houses you'd like to see. Follow me on Instagram if you want to chat more and I'll see you next time with some new videos. Bye.


Sometimes people get really confused about reading a green. What does that mean? Well, it's understanding where the high parts and the low parts are of a green, knowing that a ball is going to travel from high toward low. So how do I manage that? Well, there's a couple of easy tips. One is, don't get lazy. Keep working. Before you walk out of the green, keep an overall perspective of the land. If you look in the background around me, this side is much higher overall and everything slopes this way. So that's my first clue. Then I'll look midway on the green and take a look and I can see back there that my white head cover is higher than that red ball. So I know that that is consistent with what I noticed about the overall area. Last place I'll look is right around the hole. Why? The ball needs to be traveling slowly when it's at the hole. If the ball is traveling slowly, it's going to tend to break or turn more toward the low side. So three ways to take a look at the green. If you have some visual impairment, guess what? You can read with your feet because I can feel standing here, I'm tilted. My weight's more on my low side. I can feel that with my feet. So I can read the greens with my eyes, I can feel over my feet. Those are two additional ways to think about reading the greens.


Okay, let's start it. Thank you so much and welcome to our talks, especially the last session of the last day of the conference. We really appreciate it. Okay, I am Catherine Dip. I'm a solution architect and performing engineer at IBM. My name is Tat Chen and I am a software engineer and performance engineer also at IBM. Yes, hi, and I am Paul Van Ack, software and performance engineer as well, also at IBM. Okay, to start with, let's go through the agenda that we'll go through today. So we'll first give an introduction and some detail about per kid performance benchmark itself. We will then go on and introduce a tool that we have implemented named per kid elastic shirt publisher. This is the tool that will be used to send the results and analyze results, et cetera. Then we'll have a demo of how you would use the publisher and Kibana to analyze the data. A quick summary and then wrap up today's session. When we talk about performance analysis in OpenStack, what kind of tools come into your mind? Anyone? Exactly. So when we talk about performance, we would pretty much think about rally and rally is such a good tool, a well-known tool, suit the purpose of what we do. But like anything else in performance testing, I personally believe that there's no one tool, one size fits all tools. And I believe we would use different tools for different purpose. To illustrate the idea, let's look at a number of sample tools. It doesn't mean to be a complete list, but let's look at a number of tools. Look at rally. As we all know, this is an OpenStack project. The strength of rally is in data control plan performance analysis. What you do there, and especially at scale, you would use there to measure your provisioning time, whatever configuration, how many networks. But the net result is you want to know how fast can you put up a VM. You also want to know, you use rally to know if I put the VM sequentially one at a time versus the performance if I do concurrent user, what would be the difference? Or if I just continually provision the number of VM and pack my compute node, what would be the characteristic of this provisioning time? Does it increase as the number of density of VM in the compute node increase? Is there a saturation point? So rally is a tool is really good to looking at controller plan performance. Neutron performance, Neutron server performance, et cetera. Looking at the next tool I want to talk about is Perkich Benchmarkers. So this is an open source performance measurement tools that originated by Google. Like in Perkich, the strength of it is it includes a number of popular benchmark for data plan performance measurements. So what is data plan performance measurements? So in controller plan performance, let's take one example. You will be interesting to know if I put a VM, how long does it take to put that VM, et cetera. For data plan performance in this context, you would like to know now that the VM already put up, now that I install my application or my middleware, for example, like a database on there, what would be the performance of that database? That is what we are talking about. We're talking about whatever things, whatever application workload that you put on top of that. The data plan analysis will typically use a benchmark, and we have a number of popular benchmarks out there, and a number of them are included in Perkich Benchmarkers. Then if you want to simultaneously look at the performance of the data plan and the control plan together, you would use something like a spec cloud IIS 2016. This is a spec standard that comes out from the spec corporation. As you know, if you would like to publish your benchmarking data, this is a place with credibility that you will have your data put there. One of the tools that included in the spec cloud IIS 2016 is CB2. CB2 is an open source that originated by IBM. It comes with just like Perkich, 25 plus workloads in there. The thing about spec cloud 2016 is there's two parameters, one is the metric that was defined by the spec, especially specifically for cloud. One is elasticity. So if you are in a cloud, your capacity should be unlimited, or somehow limited, but it's more than your traditional data center. Elasticity is if at any time my workload increased, and I need more capacity, these things should be automatically spin up and put your workload in there and run. The second parameter is scalability. So for this kind of tool, you would use it if you would like to publish your data as an official benchmark metric, and at the same time want to look at both data and controller plans. And Browbeet, there are sessions talking about Browbeet at this summit. This is another OpenStack project. The strength of this one is you have an Ansible Playbook that you can install, including the tools, and also maybe some of your infrastructure like your elastic search environment, your cabana, et cetera. So if you would like a tool that do all of this to you with some standard dashboard that they included in there, this is the tool that you would be using. But in short, what we're saying is there's number of tools in there. It's the user that you will choose the correct tools for your purpose. In today's talk, we talk about Perkitt Benchmarker. It is one of the tools that we would like to introduce to you. So, Paul. Thank you, Catherine. So of course, as Catherine mentioned, Perkitt Benchmarker is an open source cloud performance measuring framework originated by Google. Roughly around early last year, Perkitt is hosted and managed on github.com. So anyone can submit a pull request if they want to make a change. The link is provided right here. So the strength of Perkitt is that it provides wrappers and workload definitions around several existing popular benchmarks. So for determining what benchmarks... Yeah, so for determining what benchmarks are included, typically the community is engaged to determine representative benchmarks that might represent cloud performance. Areas that are considered are things like reproducibility, ease of use, and relevance to customers.  Run straight out of the box. So the benchmarks are run in their default states and configurations that is not tuned at all to provide... Not tuned at all to in favor of any specific provider. Now, there are currently 11 cloud providers enabled. We'll get into what those are in a bit, but the goal is to have benchmark diversity with good coverage and minimal overfitting. So when you run Perkitt Benchmarker, when it initiates a test, VMs are provisioned in the cloud. Perkitt Benchmarker installs a selected benchmark in VMs, runs the benchmark, then reports and collects the results. Now, you don't have to have Perkitt provisioned to VMs. You can also specify existing VMs or external points in the config file and optionally pass that in. The idea is the same. You pass in your benchmark tool in your config file slash cloud provider and let Perkitt do its work. So next slide. So here are the variety of benchmarks that Perkitt currently has support for. In the top table, you have what are system-level benchmarks. In the lower table, you have what are application-level workloads. So in the microbenchmarks table, you might see the three key area of interest are storage, CPU and network. So you might have one core mark, which is for CPU performance. Or you might run iPerf or netPerf, for instance, if you're interested in network performance, like if you wanted to measure throughput. In workloads, you have big data slash IoT, high-performance computing slash scientific computing. Simulation and web benchmarks. You have all the YCSB under big data, which is Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark. Good for data store workload testing. Also, for instance, you might want to run Tomcat as a web benchmark. Now, this is a list of the supported providers that Perkitt currently has. Of course, Google Cloud is up there. It's a Google run project. And, of course, OpenStack. Now, installation of Perkitt Benchmarker is very trivial. Get clone the repository. Then it's a Python project, so you pip install the requirements file inside the repository. And then each provider has its own requirements file that you have to also install. So we care about OpenStack, so we just install the OpenStack requirements file. And once you have that, running Perkitt is actually very simple as well. So for OpenStack, here's an example run. We're measuring the core mark score for an OpenStack VMs. So first, of course, source the RC file. Get your OpenStack credentials in your environment. Then run the pkb.py script inside the root folder. Then specify your Cloud provider. Here we specify OpenStack, then the benchmark. Benchmark or benchmarks. Here we're just running core mark. Of course, here's the cloud-specific options. And then you can optionally put metadata in the arbitrary key value pair to help you identify a test run and what was being tested at a later time. Here's a list of some OpenStack provider-related flags. Of course, you might see many of these flags should be familiar to many of you as users of OpenStack. For example, OpenStack image username. That's just the SSH username for the cloud image you're booting into. Now, here are some sample results. So Perkitt, by default, returns results in JSON. Of course, you can optionally return them as CSV or whatever, but here we have... You might see that the metric field in the JSON result is highlighted as the core mark score. Then you have the test that was run. Here we ran core mark, the value in unit. Since it's a score, there's no unit. And, of course, we see the metadata that we had passed in in the metadata dictionary. So typically, you might just import these into... You might import these into a spreadsheet or whatever. We prefer a systematic way of being able to analyze and visualize our data. So that's where we... That's where we came up with what Ted's going to talk about. Here, I'll pass it off to Ted. Okay, so for some people who would like to have a systematic way to analyze a test result, Google and Perkitt have provided a tool for you to look at your own data. So the current approach for the Perkitt is to use the Perkitt Explorer. To use the Perkitt Explorer, you will need to run the same command. You pick your own benchmarks, and then you choose your own cloud provider. But additionally, in your Perkitt command, you're going to specify the BigQuery table of yours. So at the end of the Perkitt test, all of your data result will be automatically uploaded to your own Google BigQuery table. And then you can deploy your Perkitt Explorer to the Google App Engine. And then over there, you can analyze your test results. Now, of course, for some people who owns their own data center or would like to save their test result elsewhere, we have implemented the Perkitt Elastic Search Publisher. So the publisher allows users to leverage popular open-source tools such as Elastic Search and Kibana. Elastic Search, as you may know, is a search engine that stores and indexes JSON documents. And Kibana is an interface plugin that provides visualization capabilities on top of the data indexed by the Elastic Search. So we have implemented the code directly inside the Perkitt benchmarker. And we have also created and submitted a pull request to the Perkitt community. And currently, we're working with the community to have it merged. So how do we use the Elastic Search Publisher and Kibana? So first, similarly, we're going to pick our own benchmarks. Second, we will pick our cloud provider. And then additionally, what we're going to provide is our own Elastic Search URI. So at the end of the result, all of your data in result would be automatically sent to your own Elastic Search server. And then can be visualized and analyzed using the Kibana dashboard. Now, Kibana dashboard, you can analyze your data by creating charts, bar charts, or line charts. So here is the full command to run your Perkitt with the Elastic Search Publisher. So all you need to do is, in the bottom, specify your own Elastic Search Publisher, Elastic Search Server URI. Okay, in the demo next, I'm going to show you how to build a chart to compare a call mark score using Kibana. Now, before that, let's look at one more time the JSON result returned by the Perkitt. One of the important metrics of the Perk... of the call mark benchmark is the call mark score. So here you will also see the value of the call mark score. And the test is call mark. And here, inside the metadata, you will see machine type, which is your flavor, and one dot large. So I have been running a number of Perkitt tests to collect the call mark result using different flavors of VM. So what I'm going to do next is that I will compare the call mark score for the VMs of different flavors. So next, I'm going to show you a video recording that I made earlier because I'm not quite sure the network speed. So we prerecorded this recording earlier. Okay, so this is my own Kibana dashboard. Oh, thank you. So this is my own Kibana dashboard. So on the top, you'll see three tabs that you'll be used very often. Discover, Visualize, and Dashboard. So under the Discover tab is where you're going to see your test result. Or you can search for a particular test. Under the Visualize tab is where you're going to build your charts. Here are all the charts you can build. Under the dashboard is where you can put all of your charts and search result into one place. So first, let's start with the Discover. It is the first step to build a dashboard and chart. So let's search call mark. You will see only the test result containing call mark will return and they are highlighted. So for some people who like to build more precise search, they can also use the Lucene search syntax. So in this case, there are only three results returned. Let's click on one of the results. So as you can see, this is the exact JSON file that I showed you earlier in the slide. It has the value and it has the test that says call mark and it has the metrics says call mark score. And under the metadata, it also has the VM flavor. So this gives you a very detailed view of one of your result samples. Now on the left, you will see a list of fields. These fields are only related to the document on the right. So now we can customize the look of your result to make it much easier to read. Now let's add some fields and columns into your table. So you can rearrange the table by clicking the left and right or you can delete a column. This will make your result much, much easier to read. So right now you're looking at call mark. We have three call mark test, value and metric and so on. Only three test result. So now let's change the time filter from 15 minutes to one hour. So right now we are seeing 12 results. So time filter, in this case, the time filter shows me the test result within the past one hour. So after you are happy with your search, what you're going to do next is to save it. So let's click on the save search so we can save the search and then we'll type in some names and then we'll save it. So this would be our first step of building a chart. You always start with the search and then once you're happy with the search, you're going to save it. So the second step is visualize. Now we're going to click on the visualize tab. Under the visualize tab, you will see a list of charts you can build. So in this case, we're going to build a vertical bar chart from a search that we just saved earlier, which is the call mark score. So what you see right now is a bar chart that only has a single bucket. This bucket contains all the 12 test results that was collected within the last one hour. So what we're going to do next is that we're going to split the single bucket into smaller buckets by the VM flavors. So what I'm going to do is that I will click on the x-axle and then I will split the bucket and then using the turn aggregation. Now the turn aggregation will give you the unique turns inside a field. So what field are we going to use? We're going to use the machine type which contains the VM flavor. So after we do that, we can click on the play button. The play button will apply the change. Okay, so now what you're looking at is four buckets. Each bucket is a flavor, large, medium, small, and tiny, and they all have three test results in there. But the test result count isn't what we are interested in. So for the y-axle, let's get the average of the core mark score for each bucket. After you select that, you can apply change by clicking the play button. So what you are looking at right now is large flavor will have a higher average core mark score. Smaller flavor will have a lower core mark score. If you want to change the y-axle, you can do so in the custom label and hit the play button again. Okay, so once you are happy with your charts, again, you can also save it and by clicking at the save button, type in a name to save it, I'm going to type core mark flavor compare.  So the dashboard is a place that you can put all of your charts, your searches together. Now let's click on the add button here. So let's select the chart that we just built earlier. And then we will also put the search, you can resize it. And then next, we're going to also add the search that we created earlier. Now this is the search result that's associated with the chart on the left. So I've also built another line chart of iPerf earlier. So I'm going to put my line chart here. And also as well as the search result next to it, side by side. So in my line chart, I only have two dots there, two data points there. So I'm going to load more data, so I'm going to resize the chart. And then I'm going to change the time filter again from one hour to 24 hours. So now you see more data displayed inside my iPerf chart. And also on the right hand side, you'll see the test result also updated itself. You can also apply the filter or change the filter by dragging on the charts. And the same on the right hand side, the search result will also update itself. You can click on it to display more details. Now the dashboard, once you're happy with it, you can also click on the save button here and save it. So here would be the end of my demo. With this, I will return to Catherine. So as you just see here, the focus of today's talk is mostly on the tool. Notice that we haven't gone into any of the performance data itself. And that would be another talk. But the idea here is how can you use a tool? How can you simplify your work by using existing tool in terms of test Measurement, also saving data, and also visualizations? And I truly believe that you would use different tools for different purpose. And Perkitt is one of the tools that we introduced to you today. If it fits your purpose, of course, the next step will be looking at the specific benchmarking for whatever problem, whatever performance analysis that you would like to do and draw into there. And that is where the expertise of performance engineering come in. With that, I would like to see whether we have any questions. The pool request, yes, but it has not. You mean the pool request? No, Perkitt itself. Yeah, Perkitt itself is, yes. It's on GitHub. Perkitt is in the GitHub. The electric search publisher is submitted but has not merged. It should be merged soon, hopefully. They left some comments. They were very receptive about it, so we addressed those comments and they're just waiting to hear back from the Google. Shouldn't you? Yeah. It's like an open-set review. We go through a few cycles and they're generally very positive, but the style and whatever have to match whatever Perkitt is. Yes, please? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that is the theme that we're trying to introduce today is use whatever tool that you think is you probably most familiar with and you have the expertise in house. That is the tool. But more important, you don't build some things. But you see how Cabana, you can use Cabana as an interface to looking at elastic search engine or even with your log data you can look at it. That's the idea. The idea is open source and the community to contribute to that open source together. We can make our job much easier. That's the theme that we try to convey today. So to answer your question, one of your questions, you said we should use the log stash. So by default, it does output the result to a file, to a specified location. So if you configure your own log stash server to get the data from the file, it's up to you if you want to do that, too. Right. Anything else? Yes, please? Are you using this right now as far as, like, on any files you're testing? We are exploring right now. We were able to test how many, how many benchmarks so far. We tested about, we test all the standards set. Yes. So that's about 19. One note, one note on here is, as any tool, if it's out of the box, is what gets you into the door. That configurates, you choose any of the benchmarker here. The standard, the default configuration tool is for everyone to use a minus to your purpose. That is where the performance expertise is coming in. You know what area you want to looking at, and that's where you tune your configuration file to whatever that purpose. And we hope with that kind of work, it will be a lot of white paper coming out. But for a tool out of the box, the idea is get the user, it's a very short time to get into the door. That is the idea. Yes. The workload as Paul showed here is a standard workload. Let's say you build your own workload. Then you have to bring that workload into Perkit. Then you have to go through the, kind of like, a plug-in to bring your own workload inside. Yeah. Then you have to follow. The idea is if you use one of the 28, whatever, then you don't have to do anything more than your configuration. You still have to do configuration. Out of the box is not going to be suit whatever your purpose. The idea here is without Perkit, you will have to build a server, you have to install like the YCSB, the Yahoo Cloud Service Benchmarker, and then you configure it. But with Perkit, it is installed for you, and you just run with standard configuration. Yes. Isn't that additional for storage benchmarks, representing the streaming, logging? Yes. Exactly. I don't know what the other one is, but there are some sort of representations. Right. Typical. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That is where the engineers come in and the performance engineers come in. Yes. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate it. It's just late, and we all need to want to get out of here. Thank you.


Again, women in their numbers converged on a corroded capital of Ondo State to demonstrate their support for the candidacy of Governor Yaya Bello of Kogi State in the 2023 presidential election. The women defied the heavy rain this morning taken to the streets. They were chanting solidarity songs and carrying various placards with inscriptions such as Yaya Bello, the best man for the job. We are not interested in zoning. This is one Nigeria, among others. They make women woman leader. There's only one position for women in our political parties and that is the position of woman leader. When you consider that my mother was personally financing Nadeco, was personally financing the June 12 movement when my father was put in jail, was gone down because of our efforts. You have to ask yourself. And not just her. Other women activists like Dr. Joe O'Keefe, who was in jail multiple times, even Stiliat Adedeji in Ibadon, who was killed, so many women paid the ultimate price for Nigeria's democracy. Why are the men excluding these women? And as they exclude the women, are they doing particularly well? Women have so much to contribute and this is a man who, on his heads of service since he has been in office for six years, have been women. The number of female national assemblies, senators and members we want, this is an era of negotiation with our men to give us our rights. This is the era that women want to take their destiny by their hands and fight for their rights. The men, the so-called men have failed us. Because Yaya Bello is giving women a platform, like in the history of Nigeria, we've never heard that a woman is a digi of a campaign of a presidential team. That's a big one and when you look at what it's doing in Kogisti, all I wanted, somebody who will give women a platform to exhibit all our vision, because we have a lot to do to push this country forward than where it is now. Presently, it's because women fought to have their third percent at the National Assembly. It was already scrapped. If not for the fact that the women actually got up and said, no, you want to strip us of our rights, they wouldn't have reversed it, so we need women in politics.


and for our first story of the day, Mike Wang seems to be up to something.  What you gonna do now, stretch? What you gonna do, stretch? You ain't got the moves. This is not basketball. And then I can tap the D-pad down. I get a super berth.  He said, come back, please, blooper. He just said, ISO doesn't work. This community has got to go. Oh, come here, he thought you were done. Put over those days.  And the dude shot 6 for 11 with us jumping at him. We jumped at him. I don't know, I'm quite frankly, I don't believe the pass dropped. And if it did drop, then it's a disgrace. It all started with one tweet. It's been escalating for months now and pretty much all the drama that Agent Beamster has been covering on 2K Drama Alert has been a result of the ISO overstretch big dilemma. Three days ago on January 24th, 2019, Suwante released a tweet saying, come back, please, at Blooba. He's been gone for months.    You guys don't wanna guard this.  This not basketball?  You clown nigga, look, look at all this space. Look at this, look at this. This is literally a move, guys. Mike Wang responded, what's up Suwante? Suwante responded, this end pushing needs to go. Zigzag needs to go. Also put that in 2K15, Zigzag.  Basically he was asking to nerf stretch bigs, ability to shoot over top of their defenders. In what can only be described as a miracle, Mike Wang responded saying, shotgun test buff coming tomorrow morning, let me know. At first everybody had to check to make sure it was a real account, because why would he respond to Suwante out of all people? But I guess Suwante has a way with words, because what followed the next day, nobody expected. Am I wrong or does every jibba guy run with a stretch? Stop hating us and embrace us. Incorrect. You are the reason the 2K community can't come together in harmony, badge. Riding really blocked me, just cause I want a more balanced game? Who blocked you, bro? I don't follow, cause I want my timeline to be filled with negativity. I hope this patch kills stretchers so people can stop bitching, and I can focus on y'all and my YouTube. Unfollowing all the fakes tomorrow, YouTubers are not safe. Spamming dribble moves and getting an ankle breaker that a defender can't even control isn't skill, it's just abuse. By the way, ISO doesn't even work, nobody good ISOs. You use two bigs on 2K and exploit it. Your opinion isn't valid, ISO would still drop you off though. The council of locks approves this message.  He's right. What are defenders supposed to do to prevent multiple ankle breakers in one possession? Don't say play defense either. Okay, wait, hold on. I ran out of some epic music, but there's still some more tweets and we gotta get to the drama. Take ankle breaker animations out of 2K and I'll still beat my defender every time. That's what I did in 16.  People with the best records in the game, ISO. And I don't have to zigzag and shoot over someone's head for it. I'm convinced power is autistic.    Just say when I'll add you myself. If you base your offense on getting open shots and taking open shots, you'll never struggle to score when shot contest gets above. Now tell me you know more than the OG. Okay, let's slow things down. The drama didn't start a few days ago. It started months before that and I've been covering it on 2K Drama Alert and it's good for me because it gives me good content. I guess it's kind of good for the community because it's really entertaining. But aside from all of that, I think everybody kind of just wants it to stop. But it continued to escalate until those tweets when it reached an all-time high. If you've been on Twitter, you literally caught it all and it was people going at each other's throats. So I figured I'd hit up some of those people, some of the key guys in this ISO vs. Stretch Big Debates, ask them some questions, see what their minds at with all the drama. It's literally, and I say this quite literally, it's done nothing. Yeah, y'all making ISO as some like divine art. Like y'all making it way harder than it is. It is art.  Like it's a special talent that you born with. Bro, it takes months to understand it, bro. Listen, I know it doesn't, bro. Okay, I want you to roll a footage of the video that you were in in New York when Duke was playing on my guard, bro. He had no clue, he was just zig-zagging. In the game, yo, look at the game, let's go, let's go. Yo, dude, go crazy, Duke. Go crazy, Duke. Go crazy, Duke. Bro, hold on, hold on. Jesus, you're sick to that. You're not making that happen. You can't shoot directly in people's face no more. Like, I mean, you can't, like, it happens, but not as nearly as often as it used to. Is that a good thing? Yeah, it's a good thing. Have you seen those clips? Like, I think Poor Boy Sin put one up of somebody being not even closer to a defender and 2K somehow registered it as lightly contested. Yes, I have. That's exactly what Davis wanted, though. No, it's not, bro. He wanted to.  I just don't want that to happen. Clearly, it's a problem. Dude, you've been there to have your own sins in.  But I still do, though, like. Exactly, who has an issue, am I wrong? But I should, when I say that, I don't mean, I don't mean shoot heavily contested. And they go in. So you just shoot over the person and it counts as lightly and you're satisfied with that. Oh, boy. Bro, actually, that's dead because we're talking about guard shooting over sinners. There are plenty of sinners that just shoot over other sinners, bro.  Listen, look, all right, look. This is gonna end it, all right? How the shooting is now, it is exactly how it is in real life. KD can shoot over Curry, but not a hundred percent. If Curry's coming to fend KD's shots, sometimes KD will hit. Duke brings up a pretty good point. A lot of people tend to quote realism when they're talking about changes they wanna make to the game, but realism wouldn't work because a pure sharp, what? Steph and Curry, he shoots over defenders all the time. And you don't see pure sharps arguing that they deserve to shoot contested shots. It's green, Griffin launches Curry with a three. They give him any airspace. Blake Griffin, not accustomed, unbelievable. That doesn't work. There's no way to have a skills gap with a realistic game. And as long as we're playing a video game, there's no way to make it exactly like real life. That's why it's okay to stray away from a realistic style of basketball if it makes the game more fun and adds a skills gap. It's a snowstorm right now. You have to excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. We're doing this for the documentary. I wanted to talk to Steezo because he's at the center of all this drama. A lot of people recognize him as the best dribbler in the NBA 2K community. And so I hit him up. He said he was down. We had an interesting chat. Whoa! Where are you going? Yo, it's literally the coldest day of the year and it is the snowiest day of the year.  I've never shot contested shots ever, bro. When I shoot, I shoot open. All of the motherfuckers that say I just man, my right stick could never do what I do on that court. They do is they spam their left stick and they go left to right.  It's like a fighting game. You ever played a fighting game? Everybody knows you can do combos and it all connects to each other. That's essentially what I'm doing.        I'm using you as an example. Go ahead. You being fat.  Like, oh, being skinny take no skill. All they do is spam die.   Like, they have to do that.   You know, people are always gonna flock to what's easiest to win and that's fine. That's a video game, you know? That's up more to Beluba to patch those things. And that's why it's cool that he finally came back. But yeah, I mean, that's a video game. Everybody's gonna flock to what's the easiest to win, but just be honest about it, bro. You're using that exploit. Don't diminish and disrespect what I do that actually takes skill just to make yourself like look better. That's just lame, bro. It's ice so moving. I don't know if people did that.   You know what I'm saying?  This man Power just said that ISO doesn't work. He just said ISO doesn't work. This community has got to go. This is what I wanna do to all stretch bigs right here. All stretch bigs. I don't care who you are. This is what I'm gonna do to you. I'm gonna pull up, I'm gonna do this. You ain't done.  Whoa, come here. He thought you were done. You'll find no better illustration of what the 2K community is like than this one screenshot here. How are the adjustments for 2K19? Big differences? One says they're bad, bro. The other says shot contests actually register now. It's like everything is split down the middle and we can't agree on anything. The sad part is this was never an ISO for a stretch big debate. The whole reason all of this conversation even started was because people were mad. You were running on the threes with three big men or the twos with two big men. That should never be happening. That means guards are no longer a part of the meta. And if that's the case, that means there's a major issue and some changes need to be made. It kinda slowly morphed into one with all the talk about how your archetype takes no skill and mine does. And any time those kinds of accusations are being thrown, people feel the need to defend themselves. And of course that put grinding in the center of all of this drama as one of the most popular stretch bigs on the game, he was taken a lot of heat. Unmuted to say, yeah. I didn't not see that. Oh my God, you're trying to demonize me. Damn, it's lit. It's literally. You say all stretch bigs are the same, Davis. Don't even backtrack now. That's not the biggest issue. The issue is twos centers on twos. Okay. It's toxic. The thing is that this patch kind of like separates the good stretch bigs from the bad in my opinion because you can't like shoot overheads anymore.  And Davis, despite what you think, it's hard to get yourself open with twos centers if you can't shoot overheads, bro. It's like, it's the same. Well, I shoot mostly open shots, but like the shots that were like lightly contested out make them, they're like heavily contested out. So that's AIDS. And it's like lockdowns and centers contested. It's not guards. If you patch shot can test, then it's going to affect everybody, not just stretches. Like stretches are the best shooting archetypes. So if you patch us, you're patching everybody. What would you think if Mike Wang was to say, all right, since there's a lot of people angry about what was done or they might not agree with it, we're going to change everything back to the way it was before. Would you agree with that? Just leave it alone. No, no, I'm not. Like you can't keep changing the game over and over again. Like you're never going to please everybody. This patch is good, bro. Like the only stretch bigs complaining about this are the trash stretch bigs. Like I'm not complaining about that. You can still get open where you've nerf stretch bigs four times now, bro. Four times. What more do y'all want to be honest? Like, gee, man, what would you do? Stretch bigs are, I don't even care about them at the point. Let me as a primary playmaker hold the ball more. Like not get ripped as much. I understand a lockdown, you can rip me, but a 60 overall spamming me one time and then boom, he's got the ball. It just makes no sense at all. One more thing I want to say, bro, stop attacking this stretch bigs, y'all. We didn't make the game. We're playing the game. It's not our fault. We picked an archetype before the game camera. If you switched to a stretch big, then yeah, come at them. But bro, some of us just got lucky.  Yeah, and I agree. That's why I run too power forwards. Oh my God.  There's an eerily similar situation coming out of the Tekken 7 community where Jack 7 is commonly recognized as the overpowered, easy to use, big damage combo character and a character like Devil Jin is a lot more nuanced, way more complicated, although if you can find a way to master it, brings you great results. Unlike 2K, where it's different YouTubers and players pointing the fingers saying your archetype takes no skill, that doesn't happen in Tekken. But you will see the chat frustrated each time you go into a top eight and everybody's using Jack, which makes it all the while greater when a player like Kudans comes in, uses one of the hardest characters in the game and manages to win a world tour final. He's here from JDCR. Oh, he's so close. Oh no, sweet heart drop it. That's not what you want to happen. Jump. This is an outrage. Oh. I think that's partly why channels like Steezo are blowing up because doing moves like this with a slashing shot crater or a pure sharpshooter should not be possible, yet they find a way to make it happen in real games. You might think to yourself, maybe it was just edited to make it look that way, but then you watch a stream and he's doing it all over again. There's something inherently interesting about watching something very challenging be done. It's why a lot of players in the gaming community respect games like CSGO and Rainbow Six because if you can find a way to master those games, you can master anything. And so the ISO guys make a very good point. If you want to make 2K more interesting, you also want to make the game more challenging because once you master the skills, the way that they have, it becomes a lot of fun. The unfortunate reality is that you have an archetype and you spent dozens of hours grinding that archetype to get the badges. You may have even spent some money to upgrade the attributes. And so you don't want to see that player go down the drain with a patch.  But in 2K, you invest so much time into every single player, it's a big blow. And so a lot of people in these arguments aren't really thinking what's best for the game, they're thinking what's best for me, how do I benefit from this situation? And as long as we're having those conversations, there's gonna be no end. It would be nice if there was an alternative. I know a lot of people argued that the archetype system is at fault for this, and if we just took it away, then just like 2K 16, 2K would be perfect. But I'm sure just like 2K 16, there's gonna be more issues to follow if that's the case. But it does lead you into an interesting argument, right? Because if you're arguing, there's only one archetype capable of defending these players that are so overpowered. Is everyone required to make that archetype just to play good defense? Or is playing good defense enough for them to get the stop? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of questions to be answered, ladies and gentlemen. And those questions are being tossed around. And what I would argue is just circular conversations. They're not really going nowhere.  And that's why I think a lot of people are beginning to get sick of it. How many friendships have you lost? Oh, that's a strong one. Zero, bro. But I do have people muted on Twitter, bro. Come on, I'll tell you. Who did you mute, man?  Bro, nah, bro, stop, bro. I'm not going, I'm not, yo, agent being started, bro. It's a pretty seemingly small issue, but it's resulted in so much drama, so much going back and forth on Twitter, so many videos that have released and some ruined friendships along the way. I feel like of all the responses and the arguments that I've heard, the one that makes the most sense is the one poor boy's been offered.  He's played the most park games of anyone in the 2K community and he was on Twitter saying this, it's the ball control vulnerability that's a problem. They're shooters, they're supposed to shoot. You may think I'm trash, you may not like me, but no, I know the most about mechanics on this game. When I say shock and test isn't the problem, it isn't. I play double center lineups every day and look at my record. Come on, man. Sin, you're lost if you don't see shock and test as the problem.  The problem is y'all think a shock and test buff is gonna stop stretches and it's not. Comp stretches won't be affected. And although I do agree with Sin that maybe the more egregious thing going on here is the fact that stretches or glass cleaners can run point guard and not get ripped all the time, because if you just took their ability to dribble away, then they would need a point guard regardless and they wouldn't be able to run those three big man or two big man lineups anyway. And so on that point, I do agree with Sin. But on one tweet, poor boy Sin is saying shock and test isn't a problem, but then on the next tweet, he's saying I didn't say it isn't a problem. The same way you wanna reward stretch bigs or any archetype for getting open and shooting open shots, you also wanna reward defenders regardless of whether they're a lockdown defender.  Especially if my character has like a 70 shock and test and a maximum wingspan, right? But even if that isn't the case, at what point do we agree the archetype system is broken and we can't use that to justify not rewarding someone for good defense? It is frustrating getting shot over, over and over and over again by a stretch big, but if you stop them from having the ability to handle the ball as fluently as they do now, then you've solved the issue. They're gonna have to run with a guard. That's not gonna solve all the issues there is with NBA 2K19, but it'll sure solve some of the biggest ones. I zigzag, I play, this is how I play. He sets a screen, I zigzag like this over and over again on the end bound. I just run around, I just run around, I run around like this. I'm so good at the game, oh my God, oh my God. This is real basketball. All you guys, I complain about this.  Ladies and gentlemen, we survived NBA 2K18. Doesn't that go to say something? The worst, gray, boring, depressing 2K of all time, and we made it through there. We uploaded videos, we tried to make it interesting and entertaining, but it was a dead game. We have 2K19 now, and it's quite the opposite, ladies and gentlemen, and I understand nobody wants to make a million changes to the game. Even Mike Wang said it himself, but let's not pretend the game is perfect and that no changes need to be made. We've established stretch big, shouldn't shoot over top people when perfect defense is being played. We need to reward good defense, we know that.  You mean to tell me if we implement those two things alone, just make a tiny bit of change that 2K19 won't be a glorious game, that it won't be a fun to play with a bigger skills gap? Ladies and gentlemen, we need a demand that Voluba comes back. I don't know where he's gone and I don't know where he's at right now, but we need to make at least some change, man, because the buff was a start, but it didn't solve all the issues. Let's take shoving out the game.  I don't know, fire that guy. Shouldn't be in the game. It's just simple stuff. Joining people's parties and neighborhoods should be easier. Microtransactions, let's reduce those.


Dear Chairman Chaun, members of the committee, as you heard before, my name is Jeremy Galula. I'm tech policy director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. First and foremost, we appreciate the author's willingness to listen to our concerns about the impact SB 1001 as it was before the amendments would have had on free speech.  So we appreciate the removal of the user reporting takedown and labeling regime and the narrowing of the scope to the precise harms as opposed to all bots. We do still have some concerns. For example, the intent language and the amendments remains a little bit confusing to us. We also think the definition of bot could be tightened up. However, the committee amendments and the removal of section 17942 do get EFF about 90% of the way to neutral. And so we remain opposed until all the details are worked out. But we do look forward to continue working with the author to actually make this a strong bill. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much.


It is my pleasure to welcome you all to our fall campus assembly. It is certainly a special day for many, many reasons, but not only are we recognizing and celebrating the achievements of our award recipients, it's just great to be back together. I want to thank each of you for joining us this afternoon on what I think is one of the most important things that we do at the University of Alabama, and that is to recognize our people who make a difference every day for our students, for our colleagues, and you all are that group. So today's assembly is an opportunity to commend you, our faculty, and staff for all that you have done, the dedications that you've provided, again, to the University and to our students over the past year. But as I said and listened to all of the accolades that report on you all, I was awestruck by the impact that you have because behind each one of those students, behind each one of those buildings, behind each one of our alumni, behind each one of the championships that we celebrate is the faculty and the staff who have certainly made all of that possible. It's a great time to be at the University of Alabama because of great people like you that are part of this institution. Thank you guys, have a great day and roll tide.