Yeah, so maybe some people are listening to the wire, so this is intended to be a work session This is not intended to be a presentation by the kind of IATN board, just like the SPI board, you know This was meant to be a work session so we can talk about what we have for IATN I proposed four sessions during this week All are scheduled in the PENTA, but I'll ask our schedule master And there will happen and the schedule has changed, so you should shake your PENTA, the next one is going to be in two days I would like to avoid too much conflicts with other talks We couldn't avoid because a very important talk will happen during the second I think session Originally I fixed some topics for the sessions, but that's open, this is not my session The topic for the first session was talking about infrastructure, what we have for IATN currently And also to discuss together what you guys would want to see in the session number two, three and four So still I had, I don't have any screen here, sorry for that I did set some kind of schedule for this session And the point was talking about first to explain to everybody around here To explain the status of the Churro server, Churro being the Spanish word, which I pronounce very badly This is the name of the server we have in Extremadura It is given and hosted by the Extremadura region And the name Churro comes from the breakfast we had over there for the first sessions So just have all of us explain what's going on on this server, what is currently running, what are we are doing with it I was supposed to make first point What we are on Churro is actually on your CD URL IATN.debian.net, which is actually a wiki, a very simple one And at least thanks to the services we have on Churro I will succeed one day The first service we have is PUTORS I am supposed to give a short summary about what we are doing with PUTORS on Churro currently Because currently I would define as the PUTORS admin myself But well, it's still not very productive So first of all, this is not exactly production stuff, this is working progress basically For those who don't know what PUTOR is, PUTOR is a web interface basically for translation And it could be one of the future ways to access translation material for translators But it needs a lot of background work Currently in PUTOR we have, and this was intended to be explained also to my fellow co-ordinates Felipe and Nicolas and Grisu also What currently is running on PUTORS, but this changes every day PUTORS supports a number of languages which we defined These are basically the languages supported by Divina Solar And projects, so for each project there are files spread over the file system And it gives access to the files So if I take, the first project is DI, basically the older levels of DI And this one is considered as nearly in production Because behind this the PUTOR is hooked to the SVN of DI And to the SVN of the older project Console data, a lot of stuff, deep package And PUTOR can commit directly in these projects I had to negotiate the entire project I mean it's nearly in production because there are still some problems Conflict problems, someone changes a translation outside PUTOR And someone changes in PUTOR So these are problems we have to solve But still we have here the status of DI seen from PUTOR And some of the teams are beginning to work with PUTORS To translate the Kurdish team and the Basque team And well, this leads to some problems So this is not yet complete working progress What we have also, PUTORS itself is not a translation work But it's needed to have a translated interface By the way, I apologize because my interface is in French of course But if we hadn't this PUTORS project We wouldn't have this translated to French There is a test place for translators so this is basically a sandbox And this is all what we have except PODEPConf This is not in production I think most people know about PODEPConf translation It's my hobby, getting 100% for everything And currently this is work in progress I have some work to import all the PODEPConf stuff into PUTORS And to find a way to exchange and maybe in the future To allow translators to work from here And package maintainers to get the material from Not from PUTORS but maybe from a back end, from an SVN or whatever This is work in progress This is long because the server is not very fast So frankly about this PODEPConf stuff in two words There are some magic behind in magic script That try to import stuff and commit to SVN Debian-L10N as the project on Alliot There is an SVN server which hosts all the magic stuff Done by Philippe, Nicolas or even myself sometimes And also the data Do we have something? No it's still running Maybe it's broken, I have no idea This is really work in progress So the point would be at some moment To allow people and translators to work through PUTORS directly on translation Or if they want directly in a SVN And package maintainers to have some tools To get the translation instead of sending dozens and dozens of bug reports For each and every PODEPConf translation That's basically the point Okay we have it And well the numbers are the number of words This is quite a big project For PUTORS this is already a big project So we can see well The same things that we have on the Debian Central Translation Statistics on the website Etc, etc Okay so the point is here English because there are a few There is probably one or two EN.PO files somewhere in some PODEPConf packages So English peers also But they are not very good translators you know those Those gringos are not very good translators Okay so that's basically what I wanted to I didn't cheat it No we are not 100% If you look on the website statistics we are 101% To follow my stuff and not to get the monopole on the word So basically this is what we are PUTORS We have translation statistics So this is Nicolas' game So up to you, you'll recall it Yes certainly We have a mic Can we get a mic for Nicolas? Does it work? You want me to go back to the wiki? I should have the wiki somewhere Maybe you can go to the other stable one So I'm gathering the statistics of the PUTEPConf translation For all languages You only see the most translated languages But if you go down You've got some more Let's keep French for once Swedish for example That one You can see the number of translated strings And how it evolved during the time So we started gathering the statistics Since one month before the release of H What you can see If you want to make some other graphs The data is also available as some RLD files There is a raw access to it If you go to the URL You can remove this Yes So you've got statistics for unstable testing Unstable BTS is For some languages I can also find Which files are already translated and sent to the BTS So it's for the languages which are using the coordination page And the URL Just see the URL It's probably about the same So you've got statistics for the PUTEPConf PO But also for the program PO file and PO for A PO file So it's PO file which I use for the documentation PO for anything, yes You have stats for the website also, yes Are these working? Yes, it should be working Maybe you can go to mounts So the RLD file are generated And I'm gathering the file But I still need to have a chrono script To generate the images So that's the reason why the date is still August 4 The point is that for the website The translation doesn't change a lot So you won't see a lot of changes And all this is currently done Chromed on Churro And under the Debian I18 and robots group That's it So this is basically in production We can say that This is the point That needs to be seen What we have currently in production What can be used and is useful stuff Is half the way I think the statistics are production stuff Yes We just probably need to Put some fancy stuff around them Yes, the URL won't change And if you need to get some statistics For any reason you can Yeah As an example I used I have a talk in a few days And I used some of this graph To give some picture about stuff Maybe you can go to the DI It might be interesting because it shows I won't be the one to go to the DI for once Okay Months CDS So statistics are taken from the ICDS So you can The first one with underscore underscore It's the Number of strings So it's the number of strings in the pod file It doesn't change that much And you can go to Level 1.png Level 1 at the end That's it That could help each team to see the progress And to set goals or whatever You can see some Updates It might be important for DI Because sometimes they will have to Decide whether the language Must be included in the DI or not I think the number of Translation is important But maybe also the effort Which was done recently To take the decision It might be interesting to get those graphs Maybe we should stop with the statistics Yeah So basically The weekly but Cold edition pages Yes This is your stuff also You can go to For example the French one Just for example You know This is the French cabal running the ICDS It doesn't look the same in Conqueror But by status So some language team And if you are new language team I don't think so You might be interested in using that We are sending Each time we are translating a file We are sending a mail To a mailing list with a special format And Those mail are recorded and Passed To find what is going on And who is working on what translation So for instance We should have the Translation of BEEP Whose maintainer just entered the room Is Rhonda sent Recently a call for translation for BEEP And we can track that Simon Payard did a request for review So currently This translation has not been sent To the maintainer Actually you can click on that link It shows the mail What the mail looks like So it's The title of the mail It's first a tag Which is RFR Which is a request for review After you get the type of Of file It's a pure-depth translation Then the package and the name of the file This is something we use Because we can put anything after It just says that The file has One fuzzy and one untranslated So it basically says You can pick it up if you have Very few times Some people prefer some big files And others want some very small files And then Probably Simon sent The translation Actually sent a diff So these ones I think are useful For the Coordinators of each team So if you are used to those Pages There have been a change recently Maybe you can go up And sort by package Because I've added support for history Now you can Well, we can have a look at that one So it's a user Christian Noticed that sometimes That the file needed some updates The MAG Which means Needs for updates in French Yeah, we need to standardize Still on this Because we sometimes use French acronyms Then I sent a request for review Last call for comments And later on A bug to the BTS If in the next day The bug is fixed And after three days The line will disappear So It really helps a lot The teams to To manage the translation See what What is going on If you start by date We can see that there are Still some requests for review From More than one year ago Probably means that the translator Disappears Or something won't happen Yeah, that's been a big improvement For coordinators And I think one of the project Is to slowly integrate Features that were In robots used by Other teams The Catalan team as a robot Dutch team as a robot And all of them have such features And the point is to Make it Make them in this one robot Yeah, that's good stuff And I think we can Consider now this As a production stuff It's changing But it's fixing bugs Fixing some wishing bugs Also Coordination Okay, so that one Is a tool for Christian mainly I actually only use that one So the point I think many around About the NMU campaigns Basically it means Trying to spot Debug reports for translation That haven't been fixed By maintainers And for which an NMU Can be done Now NMU are more or less Expected for translation stuff There is a process Which is documented here Very formalized In my head still Meant to respect the maintainers Etc. Etc. Etc. And the point of the Is to Find targets When Christian wake up Everyday He can pick up the Yeah I open my radar And my radar says These ones The packages are identified The system Crawls The BTS The BTS Everyday And tries to find The Elton and tagged bugs For each package And sometimes There is a very good algorithm To rank stuff If a package has a lot of Elton and bugs Then it's interesting to NMU it But also we have to take into account The age of the bugs If all the bugs were Reported yesterday It's not necessary Believe me The bugs are very, very, very And the translation can change What do you call that To the middle of your example Yeah, it's still worth fixing Even if the translation Is a little bit outdated But we no longer have Much outdated translation Because of the NMU campaigns These first bugs Are actually bugs That will never be fixed Because of various stuff There are mostly special stuff These packages are not using So for pine It will become Really critical for the NMU So we will remove pine From Debian And everybody Nobody will care I don't know, I think Kernel package is no longer used To build kernel packages anyway So it's not very important Apache I don't remember why The first target actually And this one is Already I just uploaded NMU today And so on and so on As long as you go down You find recent stuff Just a question I don't care about Non-free software so much It is true that you Take them in the same way As everything else More or less, yes I think that all our statistics Are included in non-free stuff I have no problem with it But I was just knowing DDTP which ignores Everything else Ignoring non-free DDTP ignores I don't know I would say badly currently I think that we Generally badly deal with copyrights anyway Even in main We don't Usually there are no copyrights The review file The license is not Explicitly mentioned Usually There is a list of Translator And the previous translator But it's not really Not maintained by every translator And We recommend people To align Like this translation Is the same license You use the same license I don't see Sorry for the green Black stuff We were trying inside the French team To enforce this This is the result of discussion We had last year At last step We said That we would enforce that But we have not been very active So basically this is the header We are using Copywriter Is it good or not Copyright me But if another translator comes up Currently we replace the copyright Which is probably not good I think the more important for me Is probably the license This file is distributed under the same license As the iodine package I think this is the safest way To deal with things For May For May We don't even know If the author allowed To translate The strings So it really depends on the package And it's the same problem with the DDP We don't know If we are allowed To translate So well Frankly Nicolas's answer is good How do we deal with copyright and license badly But on the other hand The text, the description And the DEPCOM stuff Was actually written by Debian maintainer The pure DEPCOM Sometimes the English mailing list Rewrites The text So the copyright should go to us also So well Well I never cared personally A lot about these things So that might explain Why we don't care a lot About these things I'm afraid So that was about the Elton And I think with This is basically a tool In production very useful Because it helped a lot To close a lot of bugs Translation material Is also good production stuff Nicola again Did you click on it? I can click on it of course So here you can find All the pure files From the archive Well it's not only pure files Because you get also the menu And the templates And some stuff I should remove If you are really interested In the pure DEPCOM Pure files and you can also Text the archives For example in the website There are some links to the pure file And it links to The directory I think we can just Put something Again French Let's go to German For once They are missing three strings More than three Because the stats This thing is a bug In the package actually But you see the link At the bottom Just links back To the material So the website Is good That's an important point For quite a long time now Since many years So this is real production stuff And this material is also used I showed the pure DEPCOM In putter I used this stuff To re-import in putter To re-import in DSBN Currently this is a little bit Duplicated All the material gathering Is also run on churro So it's testing and unstable Mostly because we are tracking unstable But at some Specific time We are also trying to Follow what is happening in testing Right now We will try also to provide a page The website Which is basically the same But for testing This is something because everybody Knows that I'm always running for 100% But some maintainers sometimes Tell me that there is no point In getting 100% for unstable It would be better to Try getting 100% for testing So we discussed with Nicola To try having Did you Do it somewhere In some corner or somewhere Don't do it that Don't forget Most of the native packages Are freezing their strings Those who are freezing More freezing More freezing are those I Indirectly control Through the Deep package Attitude If the attitude maintainer Changes the string I jump on him This is More seriously speaking This is an agreement between us And most of the maintainers Of now One thing to track the status Of native packages Specifically One more item We have One tool Which can provide A text fuel table That way Which is basically the same as On the website So it indicates What needs to be updated And I think there is one option To provide the list of pure files Which are not pure And to only Select the package which are Native packages And this tool I use it To track down And to focus the French team On the native packages Because there is My opinion no point in translating Upstream software Unless the maintainer Yeah that was about material Compendium So It's a work from Eddie Petrisso It's also using the material And it's gathering All the string from all the pure file And it creates a big pure file Which can be used as a compendium Compendium is just A database with Some existing translation There are different ways To use that Compendium First it can be used If you want to initialize A new pure file If some strings Have already been translated Then You can win a lot of time And there is another way To use those pure files Which is to detect some Errors Because if a string is Different in different packages Maybe it's not an error But maybe it is And It's really easy to To find them Do you have a small one? No Only big ones One megabyte Maybe small Compared to some others What do you want me to do with it? Just to open it It will open my machine I rather not Okay so I'm pretty sure you will figure out How to find The strings Which are translated differently In different pure Yeah and Eddie Did some very very rough Documentation How to use it with Kelbaebol He uses it for Romanian Actually It's very useful because One can fill in Pure files With already translated stuff Where is the translation? Somewhere We will move it Yes We moved it But maybe I messed up somewhere Can you go to the coordination pages? Yeah well In the middle of Compendia and Docs Compendia and Docs I got the one moment Go back Doc But it will move But we will Put the link on the In the documentation Just screenshots Okay This is basically work in progress That can be used as production stuff But There is no fancy stuff around there The status for most things Where we are is We need to Organize this thing And put some nice painting around The Compendium only runs for pure I think At some time It needed for all the pure files Yeah I think It's just a matter of changing the script It feels a bit And basically the old script That Produced this information In the Debian dash Elton and SVN A plan is to package All this stuff Yeah so currently It's mostly the SVN version That we are running On the drawer It would be nice To be able to package everything For for two reasons It would stabilize The code base for true But also for some CDD It might be interesting to To translate For example the new description Introduced by package Of that CDD It could be interesting To gather also the materials Specific to that CDD Etc Could be interesting Something about it In principle we are doing Nothing else than Translating normal descriptions But we just try to focus The special audience to This specific description So in principle it's nothing specific But just to attract Some more people No no We have completely deviant packages There are no other packages That Yes But why The two I've written Points only For official deviant packages To translate the first thing Also we will receive The request from Michel Who is developing Some deviant package For a company And we want to Provide description Translation of description But he has to clarify Where to put the Translations somehow That there is no Means to do so Why can't That was only I took also main That's why I was asking We have official deviant packages And for these packages You should get a link To translate But this was a description Nothing else that's done yet But just focusing The specific audience Which knows about these packages Okay which brings us To the deviant package Description translation DDTP You can give the mic to I don't care about the It should be translated It should be translated Yeah if you want to give us Some Status of DDTP company Yes the status Okay we'll just decide Also yes The ODDPC so Maybe you can go to the Website So here DDTP.deviant.net again This is not sure Which we named Especially for Yes These are the Numbers of the statistic You see the languages In the state Go downstairs You see the numbers Of the translation Of the different languages In the system You see The Japanese Counting every day They use the mail interface Or the mail interface It's still running Maybe I will make some changes Because we have some problems with spam Or something like this But we have also a web interface Since one or two years I think And after the last Meeting in ExoModura We have this web interface On the same server I think I should go back I think Yes We have a link to the DDTSS Which is this web interface To DDTP Yes This is a web interface Everybody can Get Untranslated Description and can translate it The nice thing is These descriptions are In some minutes Maybe you can get one The French one or something They can show it The web interface The French one Actually we are not a good example We are not very good translators For package descriptions It's all different Greece who told me That some work is done But I have no idea who is doing it Which is one of the main Concerns We will have to deal with I think Big concerns about that The control Not because it needs to Control people But control the quality of the translation Okay If you get one of the Spending translation I can click on any of these Yes Okay It's on the example To show it And still all this is running on Truro I think that was one of the Main achievements of last Years Is to bring all this stuff Some was running on Greece's server Some were running on Martin's So all these things are on So There you can see the Untranslated stuff And the translation Sometimes there are Some parts translated Because of memory Of the translation stuff In the server And you can Change these things And go to the End of the page and submit this That one is a tricky one to translate Maybe Meet the concerns of Andreas Translating technical stuff Deviant science stuff In that case Okay You have a request from Andreas And some other people in the past That say Like to Change some translations If they find an error or something like this Last week I Make Change and fix To the web interface It's not really online At this point That you get the same Interface And can change Things on the translated Translating description And this change will Send per email Maybe in the future Language Mailing list And then Translation expert can show The changes and maybe committed With the server This is nice Maybe we get Some things on Packages And some Smaller sites like this From Andreas Task packages that say Have Specified technical stuff And then maybe Physics Made Oh this is one spelling or something like this And can change it This is chemistry I should have translated that one I'm not sure it is very well translated Yeah It's very well translated Because nothing is translated That's what it is Did you ask any idea Of the translation No That's one of the points We really need to address In the Evolutions of the GDP And More Concept of owning Translation Something we are very Sensitive at Translation That joins The concerns about the quality And the QA processes But Still with the DDTP I think that The teams can set up Their own process Around the DDTP The Brazilian one Yeah He says yes He doesn't want to talk In the past For every translation The Translator and the reviewer Were stored in the database And only the First translation Translator can change Of course The first system We don't test this While we have Now this webinar phase Some languages Are required to log in And they have this also Then the Outdoor and the Translator And the reviewer are stored In the database And you can find them And can teach them But I think So the Warning was on the top of the page Or I can say Is that because it Logs some Yes It's the same in transcription Lots of people go to that page And just Click back and leave it Not because It should be something as in the time of Something like this So I should Click on abandon somewhere I was about to hit back Oops I guess I think so It works Well my personal idea about all this Is we have A tool that allows Some things to Do some massive work With probably sometimes low QA It depends I think the Brazilian Team Has a good QA For their work There is no QA for French I have no idea about the QA For German These are the most active Japanese I have no idea about the QA Process Maybe they are just translating stuff Because this is such a huge task But very visible stuff So This is a deal between Doing a lot But doing it White battery And doing better Work if we have all this stuff Maybe in the lower quality And it's best work to Find the errors and fix it Maybe we have Spending errors and all the same Then you can get Set a regular expression to fix it In this way That's completely studied Is there something about PO Because I know a lot about using PO For DDTP Where are we currently About using PO for DDTP Yes We have some ways to use PO or not We don't We can use PO Generally But we must change something Because the ultimate interface Don't use PO The interface don't use PO But we can change it Give you patches And make it in the store Install the data in PO files This is something we discussed I'm working Using PO files To do it one way and another Yes That would be interesting We are Putting the same Yes We try to We have one script to Export PO All the stuff in PO And put all this problem after this Because there's Too many I tried once To import Actually It's even more Because I have a script Very experimental stuff badly written That imports DPO data provided by DDTP into PO But PO completely explores I think it was only one Language I think For one or two languages Now it's working I tried to import Japanese And German And it works But if I import the entire data PO just Chokes PO PO Store is a flat PO file But the point is that We are basically talking about 100,000 files And it's using The file system To find which Which file were updated Since the last time Was started for example And if you want to start 100,000 files It takes a long time There is Work in progress By the putter developers There are Some of code projects About performance issues And lights Frider with the main developer Told me that First the SVN version Of putter would be more efficient But we are using the package version The release version One of their plans for the future Is to improve this situation But we are the people Who demand the most To putter country Who are the putter developers Are they being connected Or are they just committed They are being connected In class Putter is developed by Transfet.za Which is a company In South Africa Which is developed on A source forward project And I can't really Say what exactly Do the company But they are Doing a lot of tools But not only tools They are trying to Manage some translation In Africa You may have heard about Some translator Which are like For translation And so They provide I think some Infrastructure To some people In some country And they ride with the infrastructure And people can Work there on translating Some software I would say that now putter Is becoming A collaborative project More and more Modular people Are now involved How do you call it Putter or something Most putter also They are developing Some specific stuff for modula Open office is using Putter also That was what you used The profile Was a latest XPL Yes Yes Putter supports more than PO files Supports XLIF Files which are Professional style Translation stuff Translation memory So Last year Putter People gathered around The core developer Who were basically Freedom Wolf And when they Translates to it And No translators are using putter Some translation teams Have their own putter Some people The BASC team Would translate the BASC They have their own putter So I'm quite optimistic about How we could develop How putter Will be developed in the future But good Python developer Would help, I think There is a devian package If you want to install The putter server And also we have Very good contact with it So that's also Quite good news They are taking Use cases into a point Like Millions of files Yeah, okay I will need to manage the time So Yes, skin master Yes I think it's not One point One big problem That the translation stuff Is not really The FPP master The files on FPP master I think two years old or older And The BASC team makes some progress In this direction To fix this Actually the new ones Are in the FPP master already Actually, yes This morning They are not propagated Wait a minute They are waiting to be propagated In the next install Or the other one In order to install Okay, maybe I don't believe it I will see Okay, we make some scripts And test twins And Maybe we can start Daily updates Of the translation files To the server So that every user can Find And I hope then I can get This Fixed page For all bugs In the translation If somebody finds the things That are not correct And they can fill in the face And send this mail With the face to the translation Okay, we are Running out of time That's basically the status We are about infrastructure The point is To decide what to do With the three remaining things We have And make them really discussion And work sessions I don't know if I have The schedule around here The next meeting we have Is I guess Day 3 And something like that 12 o'clock 2 days, 12 o'clock I just wanted to see What I did put in the meeting Okay, this is not much The translation That would be a point To discuss And this one I really want to be A work meeting More than presentation stuff We need to talk about t-decks So we need to Take care to bring in To bring in the FTP masters The release managers And all the interesting people Of course To talk about these t-decks We will not make We need to really advance On no presentation Of what is a t-deck So if there are people around Who want to know What is a t-deck We will try to explain in the hands What it might be With your schedule Sorry, yeah I'll make sure Yeah, this is the one way So don't go to other stuff Thank you so much Thank you to the video For recording that stuff


Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our podcast from the Kamasutra to 2020. And Anwartha and I are delighted today to have with us Dr. Varuna Srinivasan. Varuna is a huge entity on Instagram, which is a very, very dear personal friend, of course. But aside from that, she is an award-winning sex health expert writer and advocate and is going to be with us today answering a lot of questions that both Anwartha and I have been getting on bisexuality. Varuna, welcome. Thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I'm so excited. I think Anwartha and I just realized after the last one that we did that there are so many questions that we felt that we just needed an expert to respond to for us because sometimes we miss out on or we can't put it across maybe as a simply, you know, with specific things. Yes, or sometimes they just don't believe us and they need like somebody else to come and say, this is the truth and so hopefully they'll believe you if they don't believe us. I also want to say that the podcast is called from the Kamasutra to 2020, even though we are in 2023, because we hold to the belief that nothing in the world of sex and sexuality has truly changed since, you know, 5,000 years ago actually. So it doesn't matter. The dates don't matter. So I'm going to actually start with the most often received question, which is, I don't understand what is bisexual? That is, yes. I also get that question a lot from someone who talks a lot about my own bisexuality, I think in a nutshell I can explain, and I prefer the term bisexual or bisexuality plus is bisexuality is an umbrella term, as most people do not know and it is LGBT and LGBT, many people seem to forget that, but it is sexual attraction and that is, you know, underscoring the words sexual attraction to two or more genders right and so under the term or the label bisexuality plus you have other identities and labels such as being bisexual, bisexual, fluid, queer or questioning. And I think as we move forward into of course the now 2023, it is evolving and I think sexuality is evolving with it. And so that's bisexuality in a nutshell. Actually, I'm glad you said this thing about bisexuality plus and brought in the idea that it's several. It can be two or more gender sexualities, etc. And that it's also fluid, because that's the one thing that you want to take over from here about how we got so much about trying to explain how normal it was. Yeah, I think as in, we would love for you to speak on because I think it's a very complex idea this thing about being fluid, you know, and and that your identity can be shifting or fluid or you know it can change because I think most people believe in the idea that and and this is true within the LGBTQ community as well that once you have chosen to be gay, you can't suddenly like it can't change but you know more and more people are now talking about their identities being fluid and obviously it becomes somewhat confusing. It's a longer journey, maybe sometimes to say, Okay, I am sexually attracted to multiple genders, but I might be committed in one gender and then what is my identity. So, you know how do you speak to that and what is your experience be. There are several things there and what you just said but I think I will focus on the first part which is on. We always seem to think in terms of the binary right like we live in a society so hell bent on living within this idea that chaos straight right man or woman, male female right, and there are always just two extremes, and the idea that sexuality is a spectrum and I don't like to think of it as a linear scale almost and no one is like measuring and that isn't a criteria or a point system where if you fill out a quiz or a poem or a questionnaire that you'll get so many points and that determines who you are and that is what you are on that scale.  I mean being human is such an amazing thing and the attraction that we feel is so complex right and when we think about sexuality again we think it's just sex up who we want to have sex with who we are attracted to right and I think it extends so much more beyond that and so at the end of the day I think we're all kind of indoctrinated into the cult of heteronormativity where we are constantly grown up to think that our girls, you know are going to have crushes on boys and boys are going to have crushes on girls and you know we have to resonate with the sex that we've assigned it but but again we are complex human beings and we're going to break out of that mold eventually and it's we have to break away from that thinking that if you experience sexual attraction to someone who you're not supposed to experience sexual attraction towards and I put that in air quotes that you're automatically gay right because it's just so hard for us to fathom that we can hold complex identities and we can experience attraction beyond just the person that we want to have sex with. You know we had this thing once we did a podcast with somebody on fantasies and under that I both realized that it when we fantasize we fantasize about women. And when we're actually with our partners that they're male. And again you know just explaining this to people was. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but I guess moving on to the next thing that again. A couple of people have been saying and they've been writing in over and over again that I think I'm by but now what, like, how do I take it further what do I do. Do you have any advice. Well, congratulations for staff, I think identifying in a world that forces you to erase your identity is powerful and it's rebellious and so by by folks experience tremendous mental health adversities because 50% of the LGBT community identifies as being bisexual we do suffer the most high rates of depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation from the difficulty in coming to terms with that identity right because it's easy for people to think that if you're somewhere on the spectrum then you just don't exist because you just haven't made up your mind yet so congratulations on coming out I think that's awesome. And I will say that it's not, I would almost omit the now what. Because coming out is a continuous journey, and it's experiencing what being bisexual means to you right and everybody is so unique that like I mentioned before there isn't a criteria there isn't a life plan that I can produce that can be applicable for every single person, I think it depends on your life circumstances, it depends on intersectionality and other intersecting identities, how you choose to navigate the world. And even your location right I think a lot of these things can play a big role in how you navigate your bisexuality. And I like to emphasize a couple of things, which is, I think chosen family and community can be incredibly affirming to your identity to your sense of self, having people that can continuously reaffirm and validate who you are.  And I think that was one of the more powerful things that I had sought out was finding a queer community where I feel validated where I feel loved and reaffirmed. And just continuing to learn more about yourself and how you experience your own bisexuality I think is what I would say to the now what. Marla, what you're saying is so interesting about the community because recently I had this experience as somebody was sharing something very similar that each time that they came out as a bisexual person. It could have been either way somebody could have said no you're straight somebody could have said no you're, you know, unless they could have had multiple and then accepting the identity was so difficult. However, as soon as they found somebody who was affirming as a mentor as a guide as a girlfriend as a boyfriend, you know, as soon as they had somebody who had actually affirmed their own identity and their identity. That was kind of like game changing for them to have that community where your identity is accepted. It was really game changing. So yeah, that's really powerful. Yeah, I mean I would also say I hate that most bisexual people I talked to and this only just breaks my heart a little that they say I'm bisexual but right like there's always a caveat right because we've heard those comments from so many people like I'm bisexual but I've never dated someone of the same sex or gender. I'm bisexual, but I'm married. I'm, I'm a cis woman I'm married to a cis man. I'm bisexual, but I only have straight friends right there's always this caveat why can't it ever just be I'm bisexual period. Do you have any recommendations for communities, organizations, etc. That we might be able to sort of recommend to people. Right, yeah. I know that GASY India hosts a ton of queer events. It's G-A-Y-S-I, I would follow them on Instagram and actually this is such a funny moment because I'm hosting like a, like a bisexual support group on March 15th. I'll share some of the details with you and this is a by plus space and we've hosted a couple of before on as part of Tata Health Media which is like a sexual health database that is geared towards providing culturally informed sex education and sexual health for communities of color but mainly focused on like queer South Asian and you know South Asian kids because I know that there are a lot of we are a very unique community and we have a lot of unique issues that are tied to our sexualities and our gender identities and I like to emphasize and bring those to light so that is one and I would recommend that there are actually a ton of amazing pages on Reddit. And I think that that's really just how you find community because you're on Reddit or you're on Instagram or you're on Twitter, follow them, you know, comment, engage with them because I feel like that's how I met a lot of my amazing friends who are not just me but who are really affirming, who are gay, who are lesbian and who see me for who I truly am. You don't have to exclusively find, you know, someone who shares exactly the same identifiers as you but I would recommend some of those communities and I can always share additional ones after this call as well. And we can put them in the caption and then people can access them more easily. I was just thinking about 20 odd years ago. I used to run a support group for young South Asian girls in this country in the UK. So, and that I both based in London, who young girls were wanting to come out, and we're being told by their parents that this was against their culture, and they and, you know, starting back there where just young girls wanting to come out and trying to find somebody would hold their hand and say it's okay even to be South Asian and gay is all right. And we have come a long way. We have come a long way that you know we now support groups for so much more than that which is fantastic. Okay, coming into the next one which is what's the difference between childhood fantasies of being by and actually being by as an adult. I don't know, like you said you can't actually quantify something like this. But a lot of times when people ask these questions. I think that they really are looking to see how much of an answer we can provide them in the simplest terms so if you can find some way of responding to that that'd be great. So I will say that culturally speaking in the context of a country like India where there are so many diverse cultures and there are languages right so I think in specifics I love in New York City and I think that using this as a comparison. And I think I had seen some interesting headlines that said, why are so many more Gen Z and you know younger kids coming out to square. And I think it's because we have created communities that are safer and there are more people that are accepting who work in as public school teachers, you know, parents are accepting. But I also think that they we have found language to describe it right like, we didn't have terms like bisexuality plus. And so when you really think about India and its diversity and all the languages that isn't sufficient language right or sort of like a cultural archives even to say, we haven't really archived queer life we haven't documented it enough so when you're growing up and you're really thinking about this there isn't enough language to describe what you're going through and that's why I think we, we tend to think in terms of extremes that if you have a fantasy about someone of the same sex that you are automatically gay because that's the language we have right. And I think that children as young as four can have a sense of what their gender is right and they can have a sense of whether they resonate with the gender that they were assigned it but whether they don't and so I, you know I have pictures of my brother wearing my dresses, and you know my parents put me in a suit and we kind of as children play around with our gender identity and are kind of who we are, who we have brushes on right and I think this kind of develops into puberty and you know as teenagers we're kind of like experimenting and it depends on the context that we grew up in. And I some kids can come out of that with like a term or a label, such as by if they have access to that language. Others are just kind of just figuring it out, especially if you have a supportive environment and you know if I have a kid and at that point if I use language like partner or who are you dating kind of using gender neutral term or trying to talk to them you know as we're talking about sex education and all of that stuff. So it's kind of, I hate to use the term phase but it is a very critical phase though because they are figuring out who they are attracted to what their gender is what the gender expression is and that is so paramount to who they are as a person, right. And that can be fluid and it's very, very fluid right there are how they choose to identify is and set in stone and I think the same can be said as an adult right because right now I'm also kind of going through a fluid phase and 32 years old. You know I have my own house I pay my bills etc I've already kind of gone through that phase as a teenager but I think as an adult. I'm still having some of those questions right where I'm still like maybe I'm more pan and then I am bisexual but you know pan sexuality and bisexuality have a lot of like over that and I have that language to kind of describe it. So I do think that there isn't so much of a difference, but if you are young and if you are having fantasies or if you are kind of questioning, stay in that phase, but even if you do choose to like a label, you know just know that it's not set in stone. And how would you know so we also know when you were speaking about India and language and spaces. We know that just because of the taboo and shame around experimentation a lot of time happens with the same sex partner because that's just you know, like parents right, allow you to go and spend time with the same sex person but not the opposite sex and everything. And that sometimes gets confusing for people as well that they it's just curiosity as young person and you tend to experiment with same sex. And, you know, what would you say to people who have experimented like I find it troublesome to say you're not by or you're not straight or that was just experimentation, rather than keeping it just, you know, you tried something with someone and that's okay so I started not to box people in and I think that this is a problem that we fall into even today with this idea so I saw this interesting posts. I thought this someone had described that they are, they are lesbian, but because they have sex with men that they are not lesbian and people are not a lesbian. And I think this is the thing right like no one can tell you what you are. And these are labels and identities right and they, they affirm who you are and they help you find community in a place in this world.       Yeah, I'm having sex, having crushes can be valuable, but it isn't necessarily. It doesn't equate to one another. Sorry, I'm just going to go ahead with something. I just did an article for times of India. I write this column for them.   But it's, and, and I'm, okay, I like this term I hadn't come across this one men who have sex with men. Yeah, so you said it's called MSM. Yes, because we just received this email from this guy who said he's going through a tough time he's married he's straight blah blah but he says that when he needs solace. He performs oral sex on men and he finds that that comforts him. You know, there was this question around it. Yeah, sorry, go on. No, no, I was just going to say that this idea that the idea that men have had sex with men and we spoke about that seem about from the Roman Empire right like it's a leisure activity and talking about it. The HIV AIDS research always gets this fact that was true for even the NAS Foundation in London. They were finding a lot of heterosexual women contracting HIV.  That's why they were contracting it and you know they found the spots that were most common for it and everything and, but they run a group also, and they very categorically call it an MSM group and they have a gay group but they have an MSM group because a lot of Latin American and African men, people from those continents.  So even they run an MSM group. So, and I now have a question which I think again, it's been coming up a lot is, how does a by relationship work. Do I live with both partners, or do I move in with one or do I live between homes. That's a good question so we are conflating bisexuality with polyamory and those are not the same.  It's not a word style, or I will say that it is a type of relationship so when we think about monogamy and we think of polyamory we think about ethical non monogamy. And so polyamory can include everything outside of monogamy right so this is swinging this is ethical non monogamy, you know we've heard of troubles right and so everything that you're describing or in the question is polyamory. Monogamous people can be bisexual right and they don't think that your relationship status or you're the, the, the people that you seek out in your life are contingent on being bisexual and I will explain that a little bit more right. Polyamorous people can be bisexual, but not all bisexual people are polyamorous, right, and so I'll give myself as an example I am in a monogamous relationship with my husband, I am bisexual, me and him live together.  And I think that again I want to bring back this caveat right that many people feel like their bisexuality is not valid because they are in a monogamous relationship and they have to be in a polyamorous relationship right. And again this is rooted in biphobia and the idea that bisexual people are inherently promiscuous and confused and need to have a lot of sex in order to validate their own identities but this is not true right.  Why can't the same exist, you know for bisexuality and for other kind of you know identities within the LGBTQ community. And I really want to extend this to tell this person that you know you are bisexual in a relationship.  You can choose to be polyamorous if you want to, but most people are monogamous and very happily bisexual. And so I think it really depends on what you are into and the kind of relationship that you seek. What you said is really powerful and it's a great role model. What do you say to people who are very afraid that their bisexual identity gets lost when they, you know, they're in a committed monogamous relationship. You know, so you have a husband so the world might see you as a heterosexual couple in some ways, and you are coming out as a role model saying I'm still bisexual yet. And also how is the process for you to, you know, choose like was it difficult to give up, you know, was it confusing or difficult to say that people might not see me as bisexual if I get married, or how was that process. It's very difficult right and I, I don't enjoy the word passing, because I do think that it reinforces the, the societal structures that we live in, but I will say that, you know, being in a heterosexual passing relationship it offers me and I did a post about this a couple of, and I've had some really interesting conversations about this where it offers me a definite privilege right because we do live in in violently heteronormative cultures that prioritize that and so if I was in the same sex relationship, or if I was in a sex relationship where it's that much harder for me to access healthcare it's harder for me to, you know, get a loan so that I can educate myself, sign a mortgage buy a house etc right because there are so many biases that that exist within us, like our societies. I would say that being in in a heterosexual passing relationship definitely awards me many privileges. But it is a double it sword right because it is extremely erasing, and I think this is something that I had brought up before that we suffer from elevated rates of depression anxiety and uncertainty around our identities and I think being in relationships.  And they, I said, oh I'm married and they were like no no I just want to dance with you so I was like okay cool like we're just dancing and lose me and another woman and. And then I was, we were just having a normal conversation and I said, yeah, my husband is a is you know xy and she's just like your husband, I thought that you were queer. And I was like, I am.   And at that point I was like, first of all that's a very interesting conversation to have with someone right and I was in a gay bar which is exclusively like, you know, gay men, more geared towards gay men and someone had called me.  And it is referred to words straight women who only exclusively have gay friends. And I think that you know when you listen to sentences like this or when you hear sentences like luckily my friends start out for me it was like she's actually by so she's in a queer circle right now like she is valid and she can be here. But I think it's interesting that when you talk about your life and you talk about the way you look and etc that I think the world needs such a like an immediate reminder of who you are and sometimes I feel like I talk about my bisexuality because it's an active rebellion because you're trying so hard to understand what it is, but sorry, you can't. I'm going to keep talking about it about how fabulously bisexual I am. And I, that I just wanted to bring that up right so it is the doubly it's warden that I deal with a lot of flag from the, from the LGBT community and from, you know, the heterosexual straight community, but it's also that I have a lot of privileges in my relationship and that I'm able to navigate a really heterosexual lifestyle. But it's like a, it's like quicksand, isn't it?  I think at one, what I really feel is that you have to keep proving your identity rather than people just being like it gets erased or it gets passing but you just have to keep identifying with it or like you know it's so that feels really like it feels really difficult that you have to constantly reaffirm it in some ways and it couldn't just be. It has to be reaffirmed each time. Right, and I think that this is why it is so important that we have affirming spaces and we find so I go for therapy and I have a queer therapist right who is also a member of the LGBT community and I talk a lot about this with her. I also have a very, very supportive partner and a group of friends who identify as gay and lesbian. And so when people who are ignorant make comments especially on the internet or in real life, to me it no longer bothers me because I feel like I have such a rooted existence and identity and I'm very lucky and that's why again and again I feel like this is why it's so important to keep having these conversations and to keep having kind of like a north star or almost like a group that you gravitate towards because in the end everyone's going to tell you what you aren't. This is what people love to do they love to tell you who you are and who are you who are not.  And I'm extremely grateful and privileged to have this really amazing community around me that is like, don't listen to them they have no idea what they're talking about you're so by. And I have to tell you that, you know, a lot of our, a lot of the people who are my friends, you know, the circle of friends that I have around me have kind of come to accept that Seema talks about sexuality Seema is just going to say stuff that most of us wouldn't talk about but we kind of smile quietly and listen. And the other day I said this at a party I said you know, we were talking about this question that I'm with and I answered last time about this young man who said that he's very young is only intimate relationship to now has been with his best friend who's also guy. And he says I'm not gay but that's been my relationship till now. And I was trying to explain to these ladies that that happens all the time I mean I you know when you're younger, especially in India, you don't necessarily have access to people of the opposite sex.  And I was saying how growing up, I went to boarding school when I was five years old. And it was an all girls boarding school and there's a certain amount of experimenting that was done.  But you have to understand that I enjoyed the experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hence, I wish to repeat it so in the earlier part of my growing up. I did have one to maybe even three friends or maybe four friends along the way with whom I shared this intimacy. I was old enough to find somebody from the opposite sex and then, you know, understand what I like better or what I prefer to whatever but those fantasies and that pleasure didn't ever go away I mean that's always stayed in my mind. And there was just this shot silence because it was like, that was a step too far.  And just trying to explain to people that, you know, this is something that the body and the brain reacts to it's, it's what turns you on it makes you excited. And then you can move forward, in whichever way you want you can decide. No, I was just going to say next time you can say to them that your sexual identity is completely different from who you're sexually active with so you can be sexually active with girls, but you can identify as a heterosexual or heterosexual or whatever. I'm going to quote Varuna the next time. I'm going to quote Varuna the next time, but it really was such a show. And you know, a lot of them said, Oh, but would you say this again in front of people and as long I say it I say it in interviews I say it in public. And people are going to listen to this podcast and they're going to now label me some more I mean I'm bad enough as it is. Unless you have something under that I have one final question to ask Varuna. No, I was just going to add and that was what you know Varuna had said that that person had specifically said I am not gay, you know, he had chosen that this was something that he enjoyed he liked it. I met that he wanted to engage in it, but he did not identify as gay and I think what you were saying earlier about giving the choice, you know, giving what resonates for somebody and what their preference is, is more important than who they're having sex with or how they are so their identity is very different from what they might be experimenting with or enjoying. And we really hope that everybody listening is actually going to take this on board and that it's been reiterated sorry Varuna interrupted you. No, not at all.  You know, depending on who you have sex with or however you identify right I think it's an active rebellion in this world that forces you to to conform and to identify as being straight and they love those labels right they we love gender reveal these we'd love to say no that's a boy he likes think you will marry a man you are straight.  And the, at the end of the day they're all just labels right they're all just identities, and, but I think making a point of what you just said that you can experience all kinds of attraction, we don't necessarily have to follow that through you can be monogamously with somebody in your chosen identity, and yet feel everything else as well. Exactly. No I absolutely agree. So I want to finish with one last question, which also I think about three people in the last weeks and then saying, what if my partner is not by, I feel like you answered it to some extent but would you repeat that bit for us. Absolutely right and so bisexuality so I'm bisexual, my partner is heterosexual, I know a ton of people who are by whose partners are also by right and that is that they're the people that they are sexually like sexually attracted to words is more than the person that they are sleeping with or that they are in a relationship with and so it's not necessary again this is one of those criterias that we seem to be obsessed with is that if I'm by my partner needs to be by. In most cases, you don't have to be with someone who is by. I know a ton of by people that are in relationships with a gay person so I know like same sex couples one of them is a lesbian and another one is bisexual. And again, as much as I would say that my, my relationship looks heterosexual by saying in that case that identity could also be a race because it looks like a homosexual relationship or a same sex relationship right. But one of the people in that relationship is by and so I don't really think that you need to be with someone who is bisexual you just need to be with someone who affirms who you are and allows you to be your best bisexual self. And I would just reinforce that that I think if somebody is biphobic or you know is homophobic then that might not be a partner that you'd want to go with that has to be somebody that is affirming is open. It's not going to put down your identity in any way if it were to come up so I think that is way more important than them being from the same, you know that they're both bisexual or they're both both partners are gay or bisexual. It's more that they're affirming of your identity.  Yeah, I love that that is very, very true because I feel like even though my partner identifies as being heterosexual is incredibly affirming is incredibly supportive and that's all that I could ask for. Please thank you so much, both of you for being over here, everyone of course out there knows and loves Anvita, Dr. Anvita Madan Behl who is a psychosexual therapist and is actually wonderful at everything that she does on this podcast and Varuna. We've been so privileged to have you with us today really it's been, we've been wanting to do this for so long and I'm so happy we finally made it happen and I'm sorry about the last couple of times of my messing up and not making it happen. So, and generally, when we finish, we always ask people that if they want to get in touch with somebody. Is there a place where if somebody has questions, Varuna is there somewhere that they can reach out to you. So if you follow me on my Instagram, that's at dr varuna sri and IVS and so that's at dr Varuna Stringy Busson, and then you can also follow at our health media where, which is a sexual health database and we actually have a comprehensive queer database that explains all the queer terminology So if you have any questions that you can DMS. I would like to say, Tara help. Yes, I will put it in the chat here. Brilliant so we will put that in our caption below so that everybody can access that more easily. And of course, if you need to get in touch with on with that for a consultation she is at. gmail.com but once again it'll be in the caption below. And if you want to send any questions into me I am on info dot Seema dot on and that gmail.com. We receive our questions over there and we try and answer them as best as possible. I hope that you found this podcast useful and if you did, please do comment like subscribe. In the meantime, look after yourselves stay healthy and we will see you here very soon again.


We do have the Montpelier Charter and I see Andrea just invited Representative Hooper to join us so and I know John Odom's already here so if you don't mind I think it would be good to get their testimony if everybody's okay with that. Seeing thumbs up but not so okay great thank you John since you are here do you want to start testifying and and then we'll let Representative Hooper. Absolutely thank you Mr. Chair and it's always a pleasure and an honor to speak before this committee nice to see most of you all again. I will try to be very brief since I know you all have the you know I did speak to this committee fairly extensively last time around and I know that information was then reflected in the bill that went to the floor which was was was passed pretty strongly. I know we had Tacoma Park City Clerk Jesse Carpenter speak before you all as well as Peter Teachout speaking to the constitutionality which was you know then followed by the extraordinarily you know thorough report from the Legislative Council which was terrific. We also had Dan Richardson speak to you who's one of our city counselors and who was key in drafting the the the the Charter Change proposal. I'll just blast through I guess the the sense of the community and this did pass by about 66 67 percent in Montpelier. I guess our thinking was first off the idea that you can be a citizen of the city without being a citizen of the state. I mean the citizen in the in the general sense who we consider a member of the community who can participate. For example I am a citizen of Vermont but I'm not a citizen of Montana so that doesn't necessarily mean that the being that citizenship is completely one-to-one linear stuck together and that's what we're talking about who are who are essentially citizens of our community. The Montpelier proposal was not about the state or any other town this was not an attempt to make a statement about state policy. It was just Montpelier citizens deciding how they want to decide their their own affairs basically. These are our neighbors they pay property taxes they have kids in the schools we had a couple folks testifying who were examples of that. They participate in community life but they are not allowed to vote on who represents them on the city council or what the budget should be and the Montpelier citizenry has clearly made the statement that they think that's unfair. Now a lot of the common arguments you hear that is that it's well I already covered that it the question of constitutionality I think that's been pretty well covered. It's worth saying repeating again that we wouldn't be the first non-citizen voting has been happening in several municipalities in Maryland at Tacoma Park for literally for a generation and it hasn't been an issue but in San Francisco in Chicago you have opportunities for non-citizen parents with kids in school to participate in school board elections you know Hyattville Maryland Mount Rainier Maryland Chevy Chase Maryland a few more towns have been doing this in other nations to the extent that that you are interested there's a huge list of nation that they allow non-citizens but who are who are essentially citizens of the community members of the community to vote on municipal issues sometimes more issues than that and that's Canada Switzerland New Zealand Ireland Argentina Belgium and the list goes on and on non-citizen voting was the norm in the early days of the U.S. which means the founding fathers and all their children voted in elections alongside non-citizens non-citizen voting rights in most states were scuttled by constitutional amendments and or statutes mostly between 1880 but as recently as 1926 which is a period when literacy tests poll taxes restrictive residency and voter registration requirements were introduced generally in response to nativism movements at the time non-citizen voting would the ballots would specifically be designed for them so it would include or would not include national state school or other municipalities such as the central Vermont public safety authority which is chartered as a municipality there would be two separate checklists maintained by the clerk so that that can be distinct from any questions about it mixing in to the secretary states you know the federally mandated overall voter checklist that is kept undocumented immigrants will not be at risk at having their information revealed because this only applies to legal residents the voter registration in the issue that that came up just briefly about how you verify and why would just be the oath first of all I would say the oath would still apply since Montpelier is a creation of the state swearing to vote in a way most conducive to the best good of Vermont still applies but the concern about additional ID requirements is the creating higher bars for non-citizen registration is a slippery slope it opens up the sauce for the goose sauce for the gander argument which could allow you then to start raising that bar for other citizens it could create a sort of justification for that and again I think what we have is in Vermont has worked quite fine and we're talking literally about sharing that at the local level um tip districts bonds council priorities those are all decisions representing the overall will of the community itself not any individual voter a set of voters and again Montpelier has the right to this or should have the right to decide who it considers members of its own community and we've spoken pretty clearly and decisively on that topic as a as a you know on the ballot I don't know if you all have any more questions but that's sort of the quick review of what what I discussed with y'all last time around well thank you John and before we go to questions I'd like to give Representative Hooper an opportunity to testify I know she's very busy so Representative Hooper so thank you and thank you very much committee for taking up our charter amendment frankly I did not prepare any testimony for you and I'm sorry I missed the beginning of Montpelier's most able city clerk and I totally agree with what he presented what I heard um the the last biennium when this committee considered this proposal your former legislative council did some really interesting research in terms of of what how how this issue had been treated in the past and my recollection from one of those pieces was a dissertation on perhaps it was a legal dissertation on the value of allowing non-citizens to vote on municipal to vote as a way of introducing them to the political process and engaging them in community and making them part of who we are and this was something that was written in the 1800s it's my recollection but never trust my memory but I just thought that was terribly compelling in terms of how we create community and I know that in the city of Montpelier we have many long not many we have a number of long-term deeply engaged residents who do not have access to engaging in our community and that way they contribute a huge amount to our civic discourse and our and our into who we are as a community and asking them into this process through through the voting process I think is just one more way of building a really strong community which is what we're all interested in but in this instance Montpelier's just asking to be allowed to engage her own citizens in a way that makes sense to themselves and so we would deeply appreciate the city of Montpelier would deeply appreciate if you would support the vote that we have taken in the past and I would note what was supported by this committee in the last biennium as well as by the house in the last biennium we think it is a way to build stronger more vibrant communities by engaging all of our residents not just a few anyway you understand what I mean thank you thank you representative Hooper questions from the committee thank you mr chair this isn't necessarily a question but a few things that have come up that other folks have talked about when you talk about property taxpayers john in particular there's been a discussion around maybe second home owners or people that own property outside of the town that are property taxpayers as well they they don't necessarily have a vote I guess there's a fairness issue in a sense I have a know of other Canadian residents living here in my district who are very outspoken they certainly let me know what's on their mind they are not able to be involved in in voting so there's there's still a few issues out there that that concern me thank you john do you want to respond to that sure I've definitely heard that concern before I think that is a very distinct statement of legislative policy um I I think connecting the two is is difficult they only connect in the most general sense I think of how conceptually voting is done in the state for example 18 year old to vote you know that that sort of thing I I think there I don't think there is a one-to-one policy connection at all and I think if that were to come up in the future I know it's discussed a lot I think it would have to be discussed on on very much its own terms as you know certainly you know the work that legislative council and others have done on this does not speak to that and does not really apply to that now would argue would not be relevant to that I think that would be really a specific policy question that stands along thank you john representative yeah thank you rep Hickley reference the tax issue that people being represented you know having a voice in taxation and I I do not make the argument and I don't think our community has made the argument that this is about representation for taxation purposes this is an issue of how do we engage people in our community not how do we give them a voice around taxes so I agree with our city clerk that these are two separate and distinct issues in in caution against putting the two together and the first the what we're advocating for is essentially a community building tool a way of welcoming people in and giving them a voice not in tax policy but in all of the policies that we are involved in so we see it more narrowly thank you and I believe the original draft of the Vermont Constitution had a very similar concept contained in it so I mean this is something that's been long part of the history of Vermont any other questions from committee okay I realize this is listed as markup and vote but I know I know that the memos that the Tucker Anderson has talked about that deal with the constitutionality of this issue are not posted on our site Tucker can we get those posted yeah I'll take a look for them right now and send them along to Andrea and are you available this afternoon at all or I certainly can be I think Andrea has access to my calendar okay thank you Tucker and thanks everyone I think we're done for the morning


Good morning! My name is Charlotte Ng and for 12 years I was an art conservation scientist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA, where I studied a vast array of works of art ranging from Mayan ceramics to contemporary jewelry. Three years ago, I left the museum world to work as a forensic microscopist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory investigating completely different objects, nuclear materials. Although I have switched careers, I was given this great opportunity to present a favorite topic of mine which provided a lovely stroll down memory lane for me as I share with you my experience researching 3D printed objects. To follow up on Nick's talk in the next 25 minutes, I'll be giving a broad overview of the many printing materials that are available, focusing on the ones that are more common. There are many, many 3D printing materials and it would be impossible to cover them all so I will just cover a few. The diagram shown on the left presents the interconnection of the desired material and technology used to ultimately create a 3D printed object, in this case a piece of artwork. The printing material selection will depend on the design. For example, if the artwork design requires a high level of detail, as well as the 3D printing technology that will be employed. For example, if that technique requires the starting material to be in a powder form. In terms of material types, the printing material can be wide ranging. The most variety can be found in the polymers or plastics category. These materials can be categorized as either thermoset or thermoplastic. Thermoset materials undergo a curing process to become their final form. This is irreversible, much like cookie dough. Once the dough is baked in the oven and becomes a cookie, it will no longer be the thick, malleable elastic paste that it once was. On the flip side, thermoplastic materials are those that can be melted, but they would still retain their original properties once re-solidified. These materials are like chocolate or even when it melts into a puddle on a hot day, once it returns to a cooler environment, it retains its delicious properties. Continuing with the dessert metaphor, composites are like chocolate chip cookies. Composite materials have two or more constituents that are disparate, but when combined together, are synergistic and have enhanced properties. In addition to polymers and composites, 3D printing materials can also include many inorganic types of materials like metals, ceramics, glass, concrete. For this talk today, I will actually focus more on the polymers and metals which are more commonly found and that were identified in a few 3D printed objects that were in LACMA's collection. Here on the right is a table that shows what materials can be used for the various 3D technologies. For VAT photopolymerization and material jetting methods, thermoset resins are used that are cured by UV or visible light. This is what Nick mentioned when he was talking about stereolithography process. Thermoplastic materials can be printed using extrusion when it is in filament form or powder bed fusion when it is in powder form. Metal powder is used in a number of methods that can and can be either directly melted or indirectly, the latter of which requires subsequent de-binding and centering after the printing process and I'll get into that a little bit more later. So let's dive a little bit into the more common materials, photopolymers, thermoplastic, composite and metal. I'll discuss liquid photopolymers that are used in 3D printing. It requires an energy source like UV radiation to cure the resin so that a solid object can be the end product. There are many photopolymers available, all consisting of three ingredients. The first two are monomers or oligomers. The polymerization of these reactants is induced by radiation and promoted by the third ingredient, photo initiators. Photo initiators are usually the free radical type or cationic type, the latter of which continues reacting even after the energy source is removed, so a consideration to keep in mind. The photo initiators become excited when it absorbs the incoming energy, be it UV or visible light, and become reactive species that will instigate cross-linking of the monomers and oligomers to transform them into polymer networks. By carefully selecting and combining these ingredients, a wide range of mechanical properties from elastomers to rigid materials can be produced. Common photo initiators usually use UV light, while monomer and oligomers are either acrylate-based or epoxy-based. Benefits of using photopolymers in SLA and material jetting applications are its ability to obtain high detail and being able to create order-tight objects. The plastic material more commonly used are nylon, PLA, ABS, PET, and CPU, though there are countless others like polyethylene, polypropylene, ASA, polycarbonate, etc. Each material has their pros and cons in terms of how expensive they are, their mechanical properties, their long-term stability. Nylon is the most common because it has better mechanical properties such as being able to resist abrasion and relative flexibility. It is also relatively stable, under museum conditions particularly. However, one of the drawbacks of nylon is that it's hygroscopic, which can affect the quality of the final product and requires that the starting material be stored in a dry condition and also used dry. On the other hand, because it is hygroscopic, nylon can be dyed easily, which is what I actually found in the letter F object that came with our 3D printing kit. This object was printed using the SLS technique, although nylon can also be in filament form and be extruded. Under the microscope, you can see the object was not made in filament form and used under the fused filament fabrication method as the surface of the letter is made of many, many fine grains adhered to each other. Also under the microscope, I observed that in abraded areas, which likely occurred during shipment, some of white areas peaking through. Given these objects were not art per se, I went ahead and did some destructive analysis and confirmed that indeed the black color was imparted during a post-processing step, as you see from the cross-section of the object. Another material that is a thermoplastic 3D printing material is ABS, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. This is commonly used in fused filament fabrication or FFF. ABS filament is extruded through a nozzle that is at an appropriately hot temperature, much like a hot glue gun works. ABS is considered non-toxic, which is a good thing because that's what Legos are made of, relatively stable under museum conditions and not prone to off-casting. Similar in properties to ABS is PLA, which is short for polylactic acid. Its key characteristics is that it is cheap, easy to print and considered a renewable bioplastic and can be composted in high temperatures. However, long-term stability of the material is not fully known under museum conditions and degradation of the PLA could lead to unwanted products. The blue rocket is an example of a PLA object. For transparent materials, PET polyethylene terephthalate or its cousin, PETG, is commonly used. This is the same material our soda bottles are made out of and like ABS, reasonably stable under museum conditions. The last polymer I will mention is TPU, a thermoplastic polyurethane that also can be transparent and flexible. It's usually the smartphone covers that is made of. The green tea in the 3D printing kit is actually made of TPU. TPU is composed of block cold polymers that have both hard and soft segments. Given that the tea that was provided is quite rigid, I suspect that there is a high ratio of hard segments to soft for this particular sample. Nowadays, more and more materials are composites, which as I mentioned before are made up of two or more constituents. Most common are thermoplastic material mixed with reinforcement fibrous materials like carbon fiber, so that the end product can be lighter and more dimensionally stable. Glass beads or bits of wood or metal can also be mixed in. Examples are shown on the right, where you see alimide, a nylon based material used in SLS that has aluminum flakes to impart a metallic like surface. In your 3D printing kit, you'll also find a wood filled filament, which is a combination of wood powder similar to fine sawdust and PLA. The addition of wood is in part a wood like appearance and even smell, although I didn't smell anything from the sample in our kit. And you'll see that the bits and wood fibers interspersed within the predominantly PLA matrix in the image. The wood is usually a few tens of a percent, and depending on the manufacturer, the wood particles can be from specific tree species, can be a mix, or even be not wood, such as bamboo or coconut. In the next slide, I'm going to interrupt our regularly scheduled program to talk about a case study of a composite that we encountered at LACMA a few years ago. I'll be doing this again once more when we also get into this metal section. A necklace came into the collection made by Ted Dalton, which was to be put on display for LACMA's Beyond Bling exhibition. Fashionista Golden Girl at first glance didn't appear to be 3D printed by the naked eye. Only when we examined more closely with a digital microscope did we see evidence of the telltale steps or stair casing that indicated this object was indeed 3D printed. The steps appear to have been partially obliterated during a post-processing step. At higher magnification, we were able to distinguish clear spherical beads commingled with plastic grains that appear to be partially attached to neighboring grains. Using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, we were able to determine that the clear beads were made of glass and that the plastic grains were made of nylon. Glass bead filled nylon is indeed used in 3D printing to improve structural properties and reduce dimensional changes during the printing process. Also, do note the color gradient in the high magnification image. This is evidence that the necklace was probably dyed afterwards as opposed to being printed with purple nylon powder. Of course, unlike the SLS nylon T sample in our kit or F sample in our kit, I wasn't able to break off a heel of one of the shoes to find out for sure. The colorant and its light sensitivity was never identified, though if the object will be exhibited again in the future, microfaith testing may be something to consider. Similar to the paint industry, where additives like dyes, fillers, plasticizers are introduced to the base material to improve its properties, 3D printing materials now have many, many ingredients. To combat degradation, be it during storage of the raw material or its end product, antioxidants, fire retardants, UV absorbers have found their way into 3D printed materials. Interestingly, the shift in view of the object being ephemeral prototypes to a stable product may be beneficial for us, for those of us in the museum field. Although it is noted that like many traditional plastic art objects found in museums, 3D printed ones may pose significant conservation challenges in the future as the polymers inevitably deteriorates. In the future, one would expect new formulations and new types of polymers as manufacturers try to optimize their products to improve their working and mechanical properties from the materials. In particular, materials specifically designed for 4D printing seem to be on the horizon. 4D printing materials shape shift in reaction to external stimuli like humidity or temperature. For this type of printing, it requires a combination of material type, which tend to be a blend of say PLA and TPU for example, as well as a well-designed origami-esque structure design. As Nick mentioned, these types of objects may end up in museum or private collections, and it would be prudent for us to have a good understanding of how they were made and what they're made out of in order to identify approaches to their care as well as reprinting. Another significant category of 3D printing material is metal. The challenge in 3D printing metal is the high melting point. Although with high enough power lasers, metals can be melted directly. Two methods, DMLS and LND, can achieve this. However, to get around needing to melt the metal directly, other 3D printing methods can be used. One method is to basically do wax casting where a thermoplastic object is printed and then used to create a plaster mold where molten metal can be introduced, or the actual mold itself is printed in either sand or plaster. Recently available are metal-containing filaments, which are basically a thermoplastic material mixed with metal powder that is then extruded using fused filament fabrication. Once the object is made, is then sent into an oven to de-bind, which is to burn off all the thermoplastic that is not desired in the final metal object, and then sintered to coalesce all the metal grains together to compact and densify the object. Another method is SLS, which has metal powder where metal particles are individually coated with a polymer. When exposed to the laser, the polymer melts and adheres neighboring metal grains together to make the object. In this method, subsequent de-binding and infiltration of another material is needed to complete the object. This leads me to two case studies that will highlight this interesting technology and its final products. The first case study is another contemporary piece of jewelry from the Beyond Bling exhibition at LACMA, the Doug Bucci's eyelid bracelet. Like 10 Alton's fashion use the Golden Girl necklace, at first glance this object did not appear to be 3D printed, aside from the intricate design that one would think would be difficult to create using traditional jewelry making methods. The answer revealed themselves under the microscope once again. For this bracelet, the outer surfaces were polished smooth with some defects here and there. However, when you look through the bracelet to the inside surfaces, the character's six-step pattern was observed. Of course these areas are difficult to access and thus the staircase couldn't so easily be polished away. Under high magnification, we saw islets of our own, golden islands in a gray colored ocean. Interestingly, the two materials appeared fused together. With our handheld x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, we found iron, chromium, copper, and tin. The elemental analysis indicated that the surface was then made of regions of stainless steel, which explains the iron and chromium, that are then adjacent to regions of bronze, which is composed of copper and tin. This doesn't make quite much sense in traditional metallurgy, but it is found in 3D printed metal objects. We were able to put two and two together and confirm that this bracelet was made using indirect selective laser centering. So how does it work? As mentioned previously, the starting material is metal coated with a thin layer of thermoplastic polymer. For this bracelet, the metal was stainless steel. Using SLS, the 3D object is printed using this coated metal powder. You can imagine that the object is very fragile as the powder is only held together tenuously by bits of melted polymer. After SLS, the object is considered in a green state. The object is then gently removed from the SLS system and put into an oven where the polymer is burned off. However, if the polymer is burned off, nothing would be holding the steel particles together. Enter bronze with its lower melting point than steel. Molten bronze infiltrates all the nooks and crannies of the steel via capillary action, filling up all the voids left behind by the binder to create a solid metal piece composed of the two different alloys. Once the object cools down, post-processing like polishing to a shiny finish is performed. As you can see, when it entered the museum's collection, the bracelet was in relatively good condition. Given what I knew from working on the next object that I'm about to present, I will reveal an inherent vice that these types of 3D printed objects have. Similar to Doug Bucci's bracelet, Greg Lynn's flatware was made using indirect SLS. Instead of stainless steel, polymer coated toolstale was used. Unlike the bracelet, the flatware exhibited condition issues, namely rust. It was noticed that some pieces of flatware was significantly warm in tone than in others, which were a lot grayer as well. Hand-held XRF analysis confirmed that the cooler tone flatware pieces had much less bronze and thus more porous and delicate. Enter inherent vice. The steel and bronze in intimate contact with one another can lead to galvanic corrosion, especially under high humidity or wet conditions. In this situation, the bronze acts as a cathode and the steel as an anode, which results in the steel corroding sacrificing itself to protect the bronze. That is why rust was only found on the surface of these objects. It didn't help that some of the flatware pieces were incompletely infiltrated with bronze, so there were many pores resulting in a lot more surface area where moisture can come into contact with the object. Seeing these results, conservator went ahead and removed the rust and devised storage and display strategies for the objects, which included desiccants to remove the moisture from the environment. Last categories I only briefly mentioned are ceramic, glass, raw earth, and concrete. For ceramics, the 3D printed object is made prior to firing. Clay can be extruded or particles of clay can be stuck together using thermal plastic binders that is then burned off during firing. Researchers have even found a way to create a stable silica resin mixture that can be used for SLA. Similarly, glass can be extruded in molten state or silica particles can be mixed with a polymer that is then burned away during the sintering process to create transparent glass objects. As for raw earth and concrete, next video of the house made of concrete reminded me of the recent habitats built in Italy made of soil, water, organic fibers, and binder, which are akin to rammed earthhouses. In both cases, whether it's raw earth or concrete, the material has a dough-like consistency that is extruded like toothpaste to create the layers. I'd like to wrap up this presentation with one last topic, ways of looking at objects to determine whether they were 3D printed and perhaps with what method. A careful visual and microscopic examination is in order to find any obvious clues. Things to look for would be evidence of layering as shown in the center of the slide. Be warned that sometimes these steps could be obliterated during post-processing. For SLS, surface may appear to be composed of particle grains that are adhered together as shown on the right, which happens to be an optical micrograph of the letter I in our 3D printed kit. For fused filament fabrication, do take a look at your green tea object in your 3D printed kit and you'll notice the rounded layers created during the extrusion process. For extruded objects, you may also find flaws such as those found in the blue PLA object that I had where you see layers not fully adhere to each other and deformations as it rounds the corners. In terms of analytical methods, I found it useful to use non-destructive spectroscopic methods like FTIR and Raman to clearly identify the base polymeric material for 3D printed plastic objects. This may require having a comprehensive database of FTIR and Raman spectra or you may need to look in the literature to compare peak positions. For metal, it was very useful to have the handheld XORF instrument to identify the alloy elements in the material. In all identification methods, do be aware of being led astray. Post-processing can remove or introduce materials. For example, coatings may be present. Plastic objects can lend themselves to being plated with metal and metal objects and sometimes be coated with polymer for protection. This may be found more commonly in printed jewelry in order to mitigate interaction between the metal jewelry piece and the skin oils as well as moisture. I hope this presentation gave you just a taste of what 3D printed materials are available out there, how they're being used and associated with the various 3D technologies available. 3D printed objects grew out of the prototyping field where longevity was never a goal. As the industry matures and focuses placed on additive manufacturing of products that are not prototypes, products hopefully will be more stable and have less preservation issues. It is thus very important for us to understand both the printing technique as well as the printing material to fully understand the challenges that we may face with objects of this nature. I'd like to acknowledge my former colleagues at LACMA as well as the co-organizers of this conference for allowing me to give this presentation. If there are any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.