This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. That plant of many resources, which wondered far and wide the ancient plant of food, fuel, fiber that was cultivated for millennia. As we venture through the past 10,000 years, we will explore and discover the plant from which cannabis derives. The many uses of the plant, hemp, cannabis, hashes, cannabis in religion, cannabis in medicine, cannabis and dear old Uncle Sam. So, our odyssey begins. Today, our odyssey is not long ago and far away. In fact, it is right here, right here in Honolulu. And so, as part of that odyssey, we are going to visit with Pam Lichti, who, for me, anyway, I think of her as the very beginning of this whole venture into marijuana, as it was called, in Hawaii. Pam, welcome. Thank you, Marcia. Pam is and was the drug policy forum for, what, 25 years now? Something like that. So, you were one of the beginners, one of the beginners of the whole— The co-founder, yeah. —of this movement. Now, my recollection of the war on drugs was a farce. So, tell me how you move from the war on drugs to making some kind of sense out of— or attempting to make some kind of a sense out of that. So, tell me, how does all this begin? Yeah. Well, I can't get into the whole war on drugs because that's been going for more than 50 years. No, but you're part in making sense of this. Yeah. Well, I have a public health background. I moved to Hawaii with my family in 1985 to go to the University of Hawaii School of Public Health, which no longer exists. It's now a program under the Department of Medicine, and it's shrunk. So, that was my beginning in learning about public health, which is about the well-being of individuals, families, communities, more communities than individual medical model. So, that has a lot of facets to it, of course. The war on drugs has always really been a war on people, or a war on drugs that we don't currently like. So, whereas in the Muslim world, you may—alcohol is strictly forbidden, but people may have easy access to hashish—it's all a matter of picking and choosing. And the war on drugs started in large part for racist reasons. It was the Mexicans who were bringing in the marijuana, black folks who were using cocaine in the South. Of course, the first anti-drug laws were aimed at Chinese immigrants in California, opium, opium dens. And there was also this thread of protecting white women against these drug-crazed minorities. So, it's a pretty terrible origin story.   So, today's—the war on drugs has not passed tense. It's still happening. Jeff Sessions, our attorney general. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III. Oh, let's—please, yes. I wouldn't want to give him a short shrift, yeah. No, it's in the DNA. Yeah. One of his big things is anti-drugs, and especially anti-cannabis marijuana, I'm sure he would call it. And so, that was kind of a backsliding, for sure, to have him installed as attorney general. But we don't want to focus on national because all the action these days on so many topics is at the state level. Yes. State and local level. And it's very true of the drug issue as well. So, what—I made a note here, so let me read it. As part of this—looking at the drug war differently as you're coming out of your public health, you mentioned the harm reduction. What did you mean by harm reduction? So, this is a phrase that popped up during the AIDS epidemic, or the height of the AIDS epidemic, I should say, mid-'80s to probably mid-'90s. When I graduated from the School of Public Health, all the jobs were either in bioterrorism or in the AIDS area. And after working at the legislature briefly, which is where I got my addiction to public policy, maybe, I worked in the AIDS area for a long time. And when that became a widespread problem in this country, there had been an ethos among treatment organizations that you had to be clean before you could seek treatment. That you had to be 20 days free of drugs or whatever before you went in to receive treatment. This includes people who were injection drug users, which was kind of the second wave of the AIDS epidemic after gay communities. But people who were treating folks realized that you have to meet people where they're at. You have to have a pragmatic approach. And so, harm reduction arose because AIDS at the time was a death sentence for practically everybody. So what can we do to improve people's lives, improve their health, improve community health, prevent this disease from spreading to their loved ones, children, and their sexual partners in particular? So, harm reduction is a philosophy and a set of strategies designed to lessen the harms, literally, from potentially dangerous behaviors like drug-taking. It's not only drug-taking.  So a really simple couple of examples of harm reduction would be wearing a seatbelt, having a designated driver. Those are not particularly controversial. In domestic violence, it's when you're having an argument and move out of the kitchen where the knives are. Really common sense practical kinds of things. When you translate it into the drug war, it's to look at not only the harms that the drugs themselves are creating or can be creating if there's problematic use, but also about what the policies themselves are doing. And we're talking about over-incarceration of people of color, which is true in Hawaii, just like everywhere else. The only difference is that instead of mostly African-Americans here, it's mostly Hawaiians and Filipinos have the brunt of the incarceration. And they get arrested at higher levels. They get sentenced to longer sentences. They stay in prison or jail longer. So that was a lengthy answer, but it's increasingly accepted. It used to be you couldn't even talk about harm reduction without people thinking you were a legalizer. We can get into that a little bit later. God forbid. But now it's really accepted, especially among service providers as a model that really works. So would the needle exchange be included in the harm reduction? Yes, a perfect example. Whereas the naysayers would say you're encouraging people to use drugs and to shoot up drugs. It's absolutely not true. Because it was controversial, there have been a million studies on the subject. And they all show that it does not increase drug use. But it helps people from getting AIDS, from getting other blood-borne diseases like hepatitis C. And it's really worked well in a lot of communities. And Hawaii was the first state to have a statewide needle exchange program. It started in 1990. So the needle exchange is that you give the patient or person clean needles and they give you the used ones. Correct.  But also giving people condoms and giving them and trying to create a bridge to treatment. So they're not coming there in order to get treatment, but it often happens that when you establish a relationship and they see that you care about them and their health and their community's health, then often they decide that whatever point is right for them, this is part of the harm reduction philosophy. When they are ready, which is when it's most likely to work, then they might go into treatment. So now you're, how do you translate that into the drug policy forum? Excuse me while I, this is harm reduction. That's fine. Try not to get too parched. Well, in, so the needle exchange program really started in 1990. So it was before my organization was founded. But in 1992, I went to a conference in Washington DC and there was a speaker talking from Australia talking about syringe exchange programs. They started them very early there. And afterwards, you know, how people come up to the speaker and they're chatting him up. There was another fellow there, a tall, bald headed guy, and his tag said University of Hawaii. This was in DC. So we started talking afterwards and it was Professor Don Topping, who at the time was head of the Social Science Research Institute at UH. And he was really interested in looking at the drug war in Hawaii and the harms it was doing and to see if there wasn't a way to improve the situation. And after we returned from that trip, he sent out a letter to colleagues at the University from law and public science, health, medicine, all the areas that are affected, among others. And we started meeting and formed a group in 1993. And it was very controversial, of course, and because we're questioning the war on drugs and at that time you kind of didn't do that. So the first board that we created was full of PhDs and medical doctors so that we had, you know, gravitas. And that's where it all started. So that was what? 1993? 1995 years ago. Wow. Yeah. Gee, has it been that long? I know. I was a mere child, obviously. So that was during Ben Caetano's? Let's see. Or was that, I'm trying to think. Was he before that? Well, let's see. Before him was Wahe, right? Yeah. So he... And after that was Linda Lingo. Yeah. So Caetano was in the late 90s. Right. And I actually have a story to tell about him. Oh, please do. So if I may. So we had started this organization but also for many years I've been on the board of the ACLU of Hawaii, the American Civil Liberties Union. And we had a legislative committee. Excuse me. And the chair of the committee was Tom Gill, the former congressman. Right. The late Tom Gill. And he and Ben Caetano, of course, knew each other from way back. And so we went as an ACLU committee to the governor to talk about what he had in mind for the coming session, which would have been the 1999 session. And to tell him what was on our agenda. So he kind of bowled us over when he said, I have three social issues that I want to promote this coming session. And the three are death with dignity, same-sex marriage, and medical marijuana. So we were pretty shocked because any of those three were kind of wildly controversial at the time. And we all know how long it took for us to finally get the same-sex marriage and death with dignity for that matter. But he introduced a bill in the next session for medical marijuana. It was a pretty, it was, California was the first state to pass by initiative a medical marijuana law. And that was in 1996. Then a whole slew of other states on the West Coast followed in 1998. So obviously Governor Caetano was looking at them and thinking this was something that could be helpful here in Hawaii. So he introduced a bill which was very, very strict.  And it didn't pass that year. But by the next year there was a lot of discussion, there was a lot of support for it. And after going through a million permutations, as bills do, and being watered down and so forth. It was basically based on the one that Oregon had passed just the year prior. And it was pretty careful. It did pass. And so the medical marijuana, and I'm calling it that because that's what we call it that day, has been in place in Hawaii since 2000. Many people are not aware of that because there was this enormous catch-22. Which was that you could grow it, you could use it, but you couldn't legally acquire it anywhere. So there was all this gray area, where do you get the seeds and all that. And there was no dispensary associated with it. Those were kind of the early days of the movement and a lot of those early states did not have a dispensary system. So after a mere, oh, 15 years, the legislature and their wisdom decided well maybe it would be appropriate to have a legal place to access it that was safe. And where you would get a product that had been tested and not something you might buy off the street in Waikiki. So finally, and the drug policy forum played a large role in that in trying to educate the policy makers, trying to educate the general public. So we need to take a break and we will be back in one minute and then tell us more about where we go, where the organization went from 02 to today. Okay, yeah, great. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Don't forget to check me out right here, the Prince of Investings. I'm your host, Prince Dykes. Each and every Tuesdays at 11am Hawaii time, I'm going to be right here. Stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe. And real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds, managers, all that great stuff. Thank you. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Cannabis Chronicles. We are having the privilege of talking to Pam Lichti who was one of the founders of the Drug Policy Forum Hawaii. So Pam, tell us now that when you begin the policy forum and how has that progressed all these years? Yeah, well first I want to make it clear that we're not only about cannabis or marijuana. That we're also involved in areas that are either directly affected by drugs, drug policy, like drug testing, which was a big thing here during the lingual years. They wanted to test teachers, they wanted to test everybody, students, drug sniffing dogs, all that. So we've been involved in things like that, but also in related issues like mandatory minimum sentencing, which has often been used for drug crimes and has contributed to the overpopulation of our prisons, which has been a problem in Hawaii for decades. But when Governor Kaitano came out with this proposal to do medical cannabis legislatively, then we jumped on that because it had the governor's imprint. And even though he wasn't necessarily beloved by the legislature, he was nevertheless the governor, and so they took it more seriously than they would have if some random legislator had introduced it. So now you become the Drug Policy Forum, so that adds weight to, as opposed to just an individual? Oh yeah, yes, of course. And initially it was a town gown organization, so it was really based at the university, at the Social Science Research Institute, and that was cumbersome. And after a number of years we decided we would go independent and become a 501c3, which is a nonprofit, which we've been ever since. And we also created a 501c4, which can do more direct lobbying. The other type is limited to the percentage of their budget. So the Drug Policy Forum has been very active at the legislature to a lesser extent at the Board of Education and the City Council. And I think we're very well known in those venues, but not so much by the general public. And however, we have become kind of the loyal opposition, if you will, so that now, after 25 years, the media and others are coming to us for our take on the situation. And they know that our members, our executive directors have really studied up on the issues, that we feel very strongly that policy should be based on evidence and science and compassion, and not by what's happening out in the street or moralistic considerations. So, but now that it is the Drug Policy Forum, I guess now we know what it is. But I wonder if the general public knows what, because of the name, do they understand, the general public understand that it is more than just drugs? That's a good question. I think drug policy, you know, it's hard to separate out. It even, it overlaps with agriculture and business. And now that we have dispensaries in town and they're private for profits, which would not have been my choice had I designed it, but they are. So now they're part of the business world and, you know, Chamber of Commerce and other organizations are all of a sudden interested. But really, we deal with, you know, and the opioid crisis, of course, is a huge deal. And the ICE problem that's been ongoing in Hawaii for decades. So I don't want to forget about them because they're the most dangerous substances that we're talking about. So one of the things we're trying to get out to people, policymakers and the general public, is to put things in context. Nothing is harmless. Your cup of coffee in the morning is not harmless. Your drink at night certainly is not harmless. So we're trying to look at it from a public health point of view to treat every drug or substance, including alcohol, appropriately. You know, alcohol prohibition didn't work. And so what have we done? We've created drug prohibition. But now people are beginning to understand that not only does it not work, but it's having terrible consequences. And I'm thinking mostly of the burgeoning prison populations. You probably know we have the largest prison population in the world, including Russia and China, which we think are so draconian, you know. And a large part of the growth has been fueled by the war on drugs, which, as I said earlier, is really a war on people. Well, now, of course, you won't remember. I don't think. We used to have the best marijuana in the world. Everybody understood that. And then when Frank Fossey came along and had the green harvest to get rid of all the marijuana, after that, the hard drugs came in before we didn't have hard drugs. That's true. That's true. And there actually, I saw a document, which is not online because it was too long ago, and I don't underestimate how old I am, Marcia. A document from, I think it was the FBI, I can't recall now, but essentially it said we've had our informants in Hawaii. And when the crackdown started on marijuana, green harvest, and other efforts to get rid of the growing that was happening mostly on the neighbor islands, not entirely. Then that's when ICE started becoming popular. It is. It came into crystal meth, came in from the Philippines in those days, primarily. And so people here were naive about it. It was brand new. And we're told, well, you know, this will get you high, and it lasts a long time, and it's cheap. And oh, by the way, we smoke it. Now, this is not how it's taken in other places where it's been popular like the West Coast elsewhere on the mainland. There they usually either shoot it up, inject it, or snort it. But here it was smoking, which seemed similar to marijuana. And how bad could it be if you just smoke it? Well, I think we all know it's pretty bad. And the attention kind of reached its peak in about 2003 under Linda Lingo when Duke Iona was her tenant governor and he was her drug czar, if you will. And he was really fanning the flames about ICE. And it was very sensationalized, the coverage, all the media bought into it totally. You know, there's no help for it. You're helpless, never talked about treatment or anything, which is useful for anything, including crystal meth. And that was kind of the heyday of this real hysteria. Yes. It's died down, but it's still in heavy use. And we have better relations these days with the police and law enforcement because they realize that we all have something to learn from each other. So speaking of law enforcement, now when this medical marijuana became legal, and how did the police department get involved in the medical marijuana? Well, they didn't really. First of all, there's two other things I need to add. One is that we were the first state to pass such a law through the legislature. Every other state until then had passed it by initiative, statewide initiative, which we don't have in Hawaii as you know. So I think the fact that the legislators decided to do this carried more weight than if it was only the people, only the populace who had voted for this, you know. So the police couldn't understand the difference between a drug dealer and a person who's sick. And you know, hasn't really been that much of an issue, but more of an issue with bureaucrats really. Yeah, well, that whole bureaucratic thing to put this under the VAM, then the Department of Health. Well, initially, that's right. Good point. Initially it was under the Department of Public Safety law enforcement, or excuse me, narcotics enforcement agency, which was really nuts because it's not a narcotic. But the thinking was it's so dangerous and this whole thing is so scary that we better put it under them, who are essentially narcotics officers. So that had the effect of scaring away a lot of potential patients. Yes. And finally, I think in 2011, I might be wrong, it was switched to the Department of Health, where it should have been all along. Well, you know, one more thing I need to ask you, and that was civil asset forfeiture law. This is an example of a law that isn't specifically about drugs, but is often used in that context. So civil asset forfeiture is, I'll give you an example, you own a house and your grandson is dealing marijuana from the house and you're not even aware of it. Well, the police will not bust him and not bust you. They will bring an order against the property, which has no rights because it's just property, and they will try to seize it from you. And then you, as the homeowner, are on the defense, and there's no due process or any of that because it's a civil procedure. It's not criminal. And this is often used in a drug context. Another example is I was on a conference call, a national conference call, and this family was traveling across the country. They had saved up money for years. I think it was a Latino family. From their little mom and pop restaurant, which dealt mostly in cash. So they had $10,000 in cash or something. And they were carrying it to California where they intended to use it for a down payment or something like that. Somehow the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, got word of this and stopped them, seized the money, seized the cash because they said, we think you're going to use it, that you acquired it through drugs and that you're going to, it was about where you acquired it. And then they had to go to court and go to different organizations to try to get their money back. Oh, dear. It's a really backward system. And just one more thing about that is that there's a national organization called, blanking on the name, but it's kind of a libertarian organization, so they care about things like property rights. And they have rated all the states about how they are on civil asset forfeiture in Hawaii, got a D minus. Oh, my. So that's one of the issues we're going to be working on. Okay. Now, I want you to look into this camera and I want you to tell us all about the party with a purpose. Okay. Thank you for that, Lee. Lead in. Since the drug policy form of Hawaii has been in effect for 25 years, which seems significant to some of us who were there from the beginning, we're having a celebration on September 8th, which is a week from Saturday. Saturday. And it's going to be at Cafe Julia, which is on Richard Street, right across from the Elani Palace in the YWCA. It's a great venue if people haven't been there. Lovely place. Yeah. And it's kind of a pahana gathering. It's from four to seven. And we'll have entertainment by Tavana. We'll have a speaker who is the new head of the Drug Policy Alliance, which is a national organization that works to stop the drug war and turn it into a more responsive science-based kind of an entity. Her name is Maria McFarland Sanchez Moreno. Oh, boy. It trips right up the tongue. She's Peruvian by birth. And so she'll be our speaker. And then it's also celebrating my final year as the president of the board. I've been doing it for about 25 years since Don Topping passed away. And I'm ready to move on to the next phase of my life. So it's a party for me. It's a celebration. It's a chance to hear Maria, who's terrific. And so they can go to your website to get tickets. Indeed. And it's drugpolicyformofy.org. So D-P-F-H-I dot org. And there's tickets at various levels. And we'll have heavy poopoos, of course. Of course. So thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure. And you'll come back and tell us about your new life. I would love to. Once I figure out what it is. Whatever it is. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.


hings that we've talked about before associated with that I really appreciate you mentioning both the downtown and neighborhood because the neighbors have talked about that at the various other meetings we've had at UTAC and different other meetings and how that might impact them and so I appreciate you bringing that to UMass this attention again and then in terms of public-private partnership you know we've talked about this for decades in terms of being able to actually do this and the idea would be under a public-private partnership that we would receive tax revenue from the or I mean what's the basic when we tell people what this means now that it seems like it could actually happen because it's happened at UMass Boston and UMass Dartmouth what does it mean to us other than more beds will be created it's not the same as when they built the North Apartments for example which was just an expansion of housing on campus I think we may have different opinions about what it does for revenue and I think that's something that we would need to work out in it we believe of its private enterprise doing something on campus that it should be taxable but I think they we will have to have that conversation with them. Thank you because then it's not there's not a bright line apparently we believe there is but they may not agree but there's a bright line. They have a different bright line. There may be bright lines but in different places. Any other questions relative to that? Well I was just going to add sort of not up to speed but my days on the Board of Assessors I know that just the fact of it being on campus property by itself is not the determinant so I'm sure those conversations will happen back and forth of all of that it's clearly important to us to have it in our favor meaning more revenue but just the fact of the land isn't by itself my understanding of the determinant but if Mr. Burgess were still here I'd put him on the spot. And then when they said they're looking for responses to the next stage and their analysis of January 2019 so if in theory they get a good response I believe you said January 2019 for response to RFP really just a few months away and so when people respond what was the impression the trustees were left with in terms of so therefore that means that we might have a thousand new beds by 2020 or 2022. So I'm actually from my nose I'm not clear whether the RFP goes out by January 2019 or if it's so I just need to clarify that but I would say that of the responses that they received to the RFI the bulk of them were for residential. They put out a lot of different things that they were searching for hotel kinds of things they put in the RFI but most of the interest was on residential and that's what they responded to. That's where the market was. But did they give the trustees any impression today of and then if we continue to get good responses on residential we would then the idea would be that the borrowing would happen in 2022 or 2020 or 2050. Do we have any idea? They met at 130 this afternoon and they didn't report. I just said just text me when the meeting ends and if they voted yes or no so it's unknown and that's okay. That's different than it's going to be a year from now. I think there's a lot of planning because it's just a concept at this point saying we want to put housing here so there's going to be a public process. We want them to have it engaged with us in a very public process and we've asked for that and they've heard us I think. So other things. This weekend Electrify Amherst is having their event which is that to paint some utility boxes downtown so on Saturday all day you can go and watch people paint utility boxes. So the marijuana review town review team I don't know remember the name we settled on had its first meeting today to sort of scope out how it wants to move forward in terms of the recreational marijuana recommendations that it's going to make and Kruger represented the board at that meeting and it was a pretty efficient meeting and got some good things laid out. The meeting is scheduled for recreational marijuana one on September 26th at 6 p.m. at the Hangar and one on October 1 I don't know at the time probably 6 location to be determined for two recreational marijuana producers who have to have their required public outreach meeting before they meet with the town review committee. I don't know how many things coming up. The just let you know we've received bids for our property and casualty insurance so we're reviewing those bids in hopes that we'll be saving the town in schools money. This Friday the first responders pick picnic so our DPW police and fire along with University and Hadley first responders in North Amherst and sponsored by the chamber and a number of other sponsors as well which we really appreciate and it's their way of saying thanks to all the people who are putting in extra effort and are the first ones on the scene of any kind of natural or person made disaster. The bid block party is a week from tomorrow night September 20th. I'm not sure if I reported this last time but they on the day of the meeting last week they came in and basically said there's no expectation to provide relief from the moratorium for the foreseeable future and they're going to be starting to add campaign saying there's nothing we can do, we need our pipeline or else we can't expand our supply and so there's clarity on that but they don't have a backup plan so that was pretty disappointing. The going to have a cup of Joe with the police chief at share coffee this Friday September 14th from 7.30 to 9.00 a.m. and that's pretty much it for my report if you have any questions. Question about the community outreach meetings as we've known before those are just something the companies are required to hold and we find out about them because up until having the marijuana review team we they're required to meet certain state requirements but they haven't been particularly effective at communicating with the town that they're doing them and I know that was one of the things that was talked about in the guidelines for the marijuana review team and so are we now able to put a little influence on them to get that information out more to our community since we have a wonderful town calendar for example that they could themselves submit to right so it's not just that a staff member has to do it they could submit just like so many organizations due to community events because it's not a posted meeting but it's just one more thing the way that people would see it because we all know people don't read legal notices so. Right and I think you know there is some influence the economic development director who is our lead on this has been advising them to not do it on Friday at 5 30 before a three day holiday weekend that that's exactly at a location that nobody really knows how to get to even though it's a public space to heaven places where people know put it at we felt like I think the committee felt like six o'clock generally was a decent time because it could be it would be after work but if business people were around they were still here if you were going to attend your board meeting so and trying to do it on a day of the week that was accessible to people again allowing staff to make that extra effort so that more community knows about it. Yeah. Any other questions for the manager if not we're on to select board member reports and I gave mine earlier relative to PBTA that was the main thing I had as far as news and notes have some things to offer relative to their liaison work or other well mr. Bachman reported on the marijuana proposal review group whatever it's named and we had about 40 minutes today to get going and mr. Kravitz has distributed the proposals and members will go to as many of those outreach required outreach meetings as possible and if we can't we'll get that information from mr. Kravitz and also the applicants have to report on those meetings so it was good and the next task is to read the proposals and work together on some questions because each applicant will also have an interview with that group and then we'll get to the recommendations we made to the manager so we're a pretty fast timeline of being done by early October and remember if we picked an actual date but intent is to get this done there were six proposals to look at and so that was good to get going kind of a defined chunk of work my other update member report is the that this morning they hadn't met during the month of August this breast drip planning director came and presented the three concept plans for the North Common that we talked about and discussed last time in a somewhat similar select board there was a variety of opinion in that group not one consensus opinion and I think some of what was said would be communicated back the design firm saying take this from that one take this from this other one you know nobody liked X so I think some of it was similar to what was said here but they did make that stop or that was it was presented to the working group and they were appreciative of that and the other update is that there are I think four proposals to come in for the parking consultant that will be helping to update the parking data study and make other recommendations on how to better manage our parking system and there will be three staff members and two members of the downtown parking working group and that will be Christine our chair Catherine Porter will be the two representatives from downtown parking work group sitting with staff to review proposals and make a selection so that can get underway as well so I think that's all I mean definitely lots of meeting notices and scheduling coming in tomorrow the municipal strategies subcommittee is meeting first of the season this community coalition is scheduled to meet next week on Yom Kippur so a bit of everything starting and sort of feel the pace of September right you didn't have anything else besides minutes from that side of the table I've reported on mine did you have I was just going to mention that I appreciated the firefighters including the community in the 9-11 ceremony on Tuesday they're holding that and welcoming the public to it it's a small and brief ceremony but it's always very meaningful to the people who attend so thanks for sharing with us we could have some folks there to attend I couldn't make it but I know a couple of you did I have a completely couple things just to follow up on another time trivia be if we are I doubt that we are up this year but hey if people want to have a rah rah talk board team that's on October 25th Thursday the 25th that morning is the chamber legislative breakfast which I many of us frequently attend but in terms of a group thing we had the group thing sometimes we've done the trivia base so people are thinking about that that's the date but the other group thing we do do and that the town takes care of for us is the chamber A plus awards so we'll ask us that's being arranged because that first week of October is coming right up on us so Miss Brewer when you said maybe we'll do a swan song team does that include you because sometimes you get us all psyched up but you don't want to be on it I did it for years my role became cheerleader so if you would be willing to be on it I would consider it but don't get us all psyched up because they're going to start sending us emails pretty regularly till we say now I think we could have some great costumes for what does an outgoing go-to-select word passed yes I'm sure we could be quite inventive so I think however for this evening that we've gotten through our agenda unless there's other member reports so if there's nothing else I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn move to adjourn is there a second all those in favor please say aye and we're adjourned at 9 29 which seems so much later thank you Amherst media


Tezahal Kokong City Located in the southwestern province of Kokong, Kokong City is a small provincial capital located 10 kilometers from the border crossing with Thailand to Cham Yen. The town has a wonderful laid-back atmosphere and sits on the banks of the Kadopal River. Although once isolated from the rest of the country due to poor road infrastructure, the province is now easily reached by road from Phnom Penh and Sihanook Vail and Highway 48. The province is one of the least developed regions of Cambodia and the drive to Kokong City offers some amazing views of the beautiful Cardamom Mountains. Around Kokong you can find islands, mountains, jungles, rivers, waterfalls, a zoo, casino, and a lot more. The Cardamom Mountains offer the chance to explore pristine jungle and tropical waterfalls. Nearby Kokong Island, Cambodia's largest island, has some of the best beaches in Southeast Asia. On the mainland there is plenty to occupy your time including jungle trekking, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking and more. On the coast you will find Asia's largest mangrove forest and if you would like to get out and explore the area on your own, there are plenty of bicycles and motorbikes for rent in Kokong City. For a more relaxed pace of life, the riverfront is the perfect place for a late-back evening stroll with vendors selling sugar cane juice, barbecued meat and beer, it is a great place to unwind. The city is also home to a number of restaurants and bars.


It's my prayer that we would be given not just the ability, but the desire to say, Jesus, spend my life for your glory. Pour me out as an offering every last drop. When I stand before the Heavenly Father, I want to be able to know that I did everything. I gave everything. I tried everything that I possibly could to bring him glory.


So, yes, the title sounds a bit strange. And I truly will lecture on linear forms and logs. So Bakel's theory and focus on applications. And maybe an emblematic application is a question of rational approximation to as a right number. So, for instance, we call that if you have a real number sigh. Say, irrational. Then, you know, by the theory of continued traction that there are infinitely many rational X of a Y.  So maybe move the piece of your paper down by one or two centimeters. I'm a bit too far up. Nice. Maybe one more line. One line, one extra line feet. I still can't see the top line. I can see half of it now about. It's very determined because. It's good. And my screen is fine. Okay. So, okay, maybe it's just an issue with my screen. So, which I stole says it's okay for him to so please continue. Sorry. So. Then there are infinitely many rational X of a Y. So, what happens is that. Close to side at other tools, such that side, minus X of a Y is at most one, one of a square. So, what happens with. There is a famous theorem of you will think that if XI is algebraic of degree B, then there exists C of XI such that. Simon X of a Y is at least several C of XI divided by Y to the D. So, it's. It's a Y, so C of XI is positive. So, you rush an algebraic number of degree D cannot be approximable. At an order greater than D, then it's the degree value rationality. So, we know more from words of two or dies and Z, etc. communicating with the result of rough, which says that for every epsilon positive, there exists C side epsilon positive such that Simon X of a Y is at least two times epsilon of a Y to the epsilon. So, but the disadvantage in rough result is that this C side epsilon is ineffective, the sense that we cannot compute it. So, no formula in terms of sign it's silent for it. Why do you feel the result, we have a clean value explicit value for several times. So the question important questions when these that is three. Is it possible to improve the result. Or say, maybe to get something smaller than D in the denominator here in the exponent, but still with some effectively computable number at the numerator. And this is question. I mean, under this form was answered. The right man is 71. And proof that there exists. How positive effectively computable to XI C of XI such that Simon, if it's a Y is at least C of XI, why does a D minus tau for all these other ones. So tau is positive. So you have an effective improvement upon Louverry's inequality. And that we are very very far from rough result power is very small. So the ingredient of the proof is Baker theory of linear something. So I will now give a crash course on this. And this theory. So the goal is to get a lower bound for the distance between one on a product of powers of algebraic numbers. So alpha one alpha and algebraic numbers and the experiment be I be I integers. So many problem in different approximation differential equation. Can be reduced to expression of this form. That we can bound from above. And it's then we can say something. So if we can prove that this expression is non zero, and then you apply Baker theory to get a lower bound and combining the information with the upper bound, then we did use, for instance, finiteness of the number of solutions, sometimes I'm going to quit. Okay. So. Fine stands. In the case where the alpha rational number. Is trivial estimate, which is one of them. It's one. And to the be. I put, I put one of the denominator. I put one of the denominator. X I X I is the maximum of. I Y I on capital B is the maximum of the. So this is really the trivial estimates will give nothing interesting in the applications I have in mind. And you see it can be rewritten as log of lambda. I put some of log. Times. Well, I will put to be if all the via one. And. Sorry. And what gives a better theory. It's precisely the improvement I wrote. So at least minus your fan source. Effective. So explicit. The product not to some product of the log of. And times. So what is crucial for applications is to get here. Something which is. So in most of the applications, it's enough when you get something. If you get something. Which is little off capital B. Okay. So method. Give some. That's possible. So I will. Write this more generally with. As you write numbers. And we use. The very high. And. It's convenient to use modified. Version like this. So for instance, you get that age of a rational number. Is not max. It is written in under its reduced form. For what. Make a theory. And I mean classical form. Is an inequality of this type. So. H star. Times. Where. Is the degree of the number field. Generated by. And C and D is an explicit constant. This is not my point. My point is. This capital B here. And. Try now to explain to you that. It's, it's not enough. So if you. If you look. If you are interested in. Improvement upon. So. With. Simonus. Why. What. The plan is to. Bound from above the size of solutions of two. Equations. So. I have. I have a. Side one. Side to. Gala conjugates. Consider this. Equation. So for your homogeneous. For you on your. I want to. You take. An integral. And you consider this equation. And. For the maximum of x and y. In terms of, for this theory, the better theory is extremely suitable. And there's a connection between the first problem on this one is that can check that psi minus x over y is essentially m over x to z d. Okay, because say be very brief. So if so, and it's fixed. And it's a wire large. So here you have a product of D terms. One will be very small so psi will be very close to each other why. And the X over why we cannot be close to the to any of the other Galois conjugates of sign. So it's minus side to why we'll be roughly speaking capital X to some constant, depending on. On the distance between sign and it's Galois conjugates. So you end up with this. And if you manage to prove that it is at most, and to some power C, then you get that psi minus X, otherwise, is at least one of x d minus one of our C. Some constant. So the problem is to bound x from above in terms of. So when you do some algebraic number theory. You end up with the linear forms, which is of this form. This quantity where the alpha one up to alpha and are well, well defined is essentially a unit suitable number of it. I'll find plus one is so control so it's eight is expressed in terms of M. And we can prove that this expression is very small, not zero. And when you use the theory, they have three to do to bound it from from below. If you do this with the estimate I gave you here. So then you get, and one gets that X is bounded by M log log M, which is good, but it gives obviously an improvement of you will see the quality. So you can then deduce that Simon speaks of a Y is at least one of a Y d minus C by log log Y. You have to trust me. But this is not as clean as I have asked a clean result. So one of them I gave. So we are not very far but we need to remove this exponent log log M to replace it by C. There is some point is that there's one information that we haven't used that here. I said that this number alpha one and two alpha N are known control on this one as a large eight depending on M. It's it's exponent is very small it's one. And in this particular case, we have an improvement of the theory. This has been also noticed by Baker 72 that if BN is one, then get the logarithm of the same quantity. And here you have what I like to call be prime is be divided by H star of alpha. So here you have a game. So be. The application B is large. H of alpha is large true so this be prime is much smaller than B. So this lower one is much better than this one. So as a result, as a result, we get an appointment like this, instead of X. Sorry, it's me again. So yeah, great thanks. I moved sorry. So, if you say differently if you, if you consider irrationality exponent. So what you will give is this result rough if this result. But I call it a rationality exponent. It's just the experiment of why. So which measures the order of approximation by rationality. And with this upper bound cannot deduce anything better than this. But with this one can deduce the point in the, in the secret of the tool. And we're trying to convince you that that this situation occurs extremely frequently for a variety of problems. And that we have essentially three results. The trivial one obtained by you will see an equality or whatever. Trivial or easy one. And the best possible one using rough there and also Schmidt substrate. So, so the best possible one is ineffective. And the easy one is effective. And by the use of a bigger theory, one can effectively improve the easy one by some small amount, small quantity, and the key for our work to get this improvement. So in terms of the exponent, some exponent of approximation is precisely this. We find meant here. Be called the crime. So I will now describe one, another problem with some approximation will see that it works essentially in a similar way. And it will be on the functional parts of power of, of algebraic numbers. So here you, I will, I will take three hours to see. So double bombing distance to the nearest integer. So here, you have some easy lower bound, one of the other denominator. And this has been improved by by Mahler 57. And large enough, this is, this is at least two to the power minus epsilon M. And for any epsilon body, you have this result, and it's a consequence of write out theorem, so p. The question is, can you get some effective improvement. Upon the classical, so to your result here. And the answer is yes, it was done by Baker and course. Yeah, yeah, there's a, there was a question in the chat by Dimitri Vazian. Dimitri maybe you can just ask directly was about the dependency of the constant in terms of the height and the degree of the algebraic number. How small is C of algebraic number in terms of the height and the degree. Guess it's in there for which for which question from for. It wasn't in the previous slide, you said that you get the original exponent of D minus C of zeta. And I'm wondering how small she was it is very, very small. Right. It's very small. So that point. I could upset that too. So, you mean this slide. Yes, yes. Yes. This is very small. But this is a generic result valid for all. So parties in certain cases. There are other methods which give something effective and effective in between two and D. But for specific number for, for instance, if you take integral roots of rational numbers. So these root of A over B, then you can, you can improve this effectively. And even you can get as close as possible to two. But what about the C at the top of the page. Sorry. What about the C at X is less than M to the C. It's very big. It's one of our town. Okay, so it's always bigger than log log M in practice. In practice. So better on codes. Improving effectively this and the proof that there is this town such that three over two to the end module of one is at least one month. And what I put this like this, so tau is positive. And it's effective. It's also very small. In this case you can put 0.99999999999999999. That's been proof. Really? Small. Using theory of linear functions. And this is the Archimedean, the non-Archimedean theory. So what I gave previously was a lower bound for the distance between one and a product of powers of algebraic numbers for the Archimedean absolute value. But you can also consider a periodic absolute value. And I will try to explain you rapidly, very rapidly this. So I write a n being the nearest integral to 3 over 2 to the n. And then you define mn, which is 3n minus a n times 2 to the n. And you consider the 20th variation of 3n minus mn, which is clearly at least n, because 3n minus mn is divided by 2 to the n. So the 20th v2 of something is the highest power of 2 dividing by number. And here, with Baker theory, we have also an upper bound, I mean for the 20th variation, which is a lower bound for the 20th absolute value, of a similar thing. So I take h, which should be h star of 3, h star of mn, and log of n, the exponent, divided by h star of mn. So mn and 3 are integers, so it's simply the log. So if you do this, then you end up that n is bounded from above by some constant, depending on log mn. And if you do things correctly after that, then you get a result like this. It's just to illustrate on an example. So the fact that here in this number is a constant, so you move h star of mn, so you get that n divided by h star of mn is less than some constant times the logarithm of n divided by h star of mn. So you get something, it implies this. So if you don't have this denominator here, you get only, you have an extra log log mn, and not a clean result like this. It's exactly the same thing, but the application here is much simpler. So when you see this result with 3 half, the natural question is what happens if an algebraic number of psi, if an algebraic number of psi, can you get a similar result? And this is with a nu. So what about, so you take psi and algebraic number. What can be said on the distance of the nearest integer of psi to the n? So the problem that, for instance, can you prove the same thing, so is it true that psi to the n is always at least 2 to the power minus epsilon n when n is sufficiently large and the number of psi is true for 3 to the n. Well, of course, you have to assume that psi is not an integer, but that's not the only restriction. You have to assume that psi is not pizzo. We call that pizzo number as an algebraic integer, which is real greater than 1. So if whose conjugates are in absolute value strictly less than 1, so you have to assume this. But you have psi to the n, so you have also to assume that psi to the h is not pizzo for an arbitrary integer h. So if psi to the h is not pizzo for every integer, integer h is 1, then psi to the n is greater than this, private, and this was proved by Kovaya and Tzanyi in 2004 by means of the Schmitt's substrate theorem. So the question then is whether you get some, you can get some effective result, trigger one first and whether you can improve it in some way. And actually it's not too difficult to prove that you will type a flow of bound, which is this one. And for some C of psi, so for some, I will not write it explicitly. It depends on the conjugates of psi and the leading coefficient of the minimum of defining polynomial of psi. But this is really, this is really elementary, rather an expression of C of psi. On the point is that also as long as psi is not a quadratic pizzo unit, then you can improve this that there exists tau, possibly such that psi to the n is at least C psi minus 1 minus tau and for every n large enough. And this is explicit. So this is another example where you have best possible result with Schmitt's substrate theorem. You will type easy result and some small effective improvement using Baker theory. Here you need to use as an actually an entry and also a non actually get to get this. It's not, it's not really difficult. And so again, the key for this is this B prime. So there are other, I will not give all the examples of the experiment of approximation. It works for all of them works like this. And now I will give a last application to another question, which is a question as part of it. So the problem is a, is a following. So you have a set N which is an infinite subset of N. Yeah, so the top line again, great. Thank you. I don't not care for enough. So you take some infinite subset of N, it has its final set of crimes. And as is the largest divisor of N. Composed. From us. And the question is. So. And. So for instance, say, consider the prime students free. And so said. And composed of integers of the firm and times N plus one. Can I pound. So the greatest divisor of N and plus one composed only of two three five. So, of course, here also you have an easy bound. Which is N and plus one. Good. It's unlikely that N and N plus one have only the divisors 235, but why not. It's not. Obvious. Yeah. So what is interesting is that. That. More generally input with us. So. Right. Enter this form. One half. So it's for every positive. Yes. For every N large enough. And then you have to use rough terrain to produce. You want to have you cannot do better because as you can, you can always take a power of two for. So if you have two in your set S, you take four S for N, a power of two. So here the experiment here is one of the degree of the polynomial that you get here. So the question is to have some effective improvement upon this obvious bound. Yes, you can. So there is this tau positive such that N and plus one. Yes. Yes. And then plus one. For every N large enough. And this is. Think. I can schedule a proof. Very quickly. So it means that. And so this is much more general. So you can replace this by. You have to be careful. So the point is that to prove this, you consider the set. And one S of crime members. And you write. And is some. And one new one. And plus one is some. Say not a one. Yes. And then what you do is. And plus one minus N. And plus one over N. Is very close to one. So this is, you will recognize your linear form. You have your linear form here. So it's going to be is a V. I, or minus UI. So you apply. So the result. I gave to. To bound lambda here you don't know. The eight of this element L one L S are fixed. So you're. Here's a smallness of your lambda. So the logarithms of log N. Here numerical constant depending of this. Then you have the eight of a one. A not. The log of the maximum of the exponent. So I would say max UI. So this maximum is nothing more than essentially log N. So again, you get that. Log N. Bonded from above. That's this. So he is. If you prefer it takes a log max. And not a one. So that ice. One of them. Is at least N to some power. So I saw a not or a one or both. Is N to some power. So you have a saving because the S part of N. Plus one. Is at least N. To the bar one minus. Oh. It's N divided by a not. It's at least N minus. N to the power of one minus. To have this. This. Is one minus. It's again. Because of. Okay. As I will stop here because my time is over. And I've just put on the archive. This morning. Survey paper on this subject. So someone's interested. It should appear tomorrow. On the. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello there it's Sandy and today is the final day of coloring tags in my 24 tags of Christmas series. We've been doing this now for six days and on this one it's a very subtle type of technique of coloring. I'll be coloring on red cardstock. The inspiration came from Sherry who sent in this card in my holiday inspiration challenge and I loved what she did here. Making these poinsettias pop out without being popped out if you know what I mean. She really did a great job on them and trying to figure out reverse engineer how someone did something is not an easy thing. But I took the new stamp set from Ellen Hudson that has all these sprigs in it and it has berries and leaves and all sorts of things. One little poinsettia and arranged them on a rectangle and I lined it up in my misty at the one inch mark so that my stamps could hang out on the left and the right. And I wanted to just do one stamping for the whole thing and get them all done quickly so if you're trying to mass produce things make sure that you think ahead to be as efficient as you can. Using some no-line ink so that the lines just kind of disappear into the paper. I'll stamp all four of them and get busy coloring with my Copics using an R89 to start with. And depending on the hue of red paper that you choose you may find a different color is necessary. If it's a lighter red you might want a lighter color and you might also want to test to see how the colors look when they fade into the paper. The version that's on the left that's finished already I use different things than I'm using right now because those didn't work very well. I used grays to do my shadows and here I'm using reds to do my shadows. Switch now to an R37 which is the color that I often use to transition from an R89 into a lighter color and just adding those shadows going to the left and bottom of each section of the flowers and the leaves and the berries so that I build up the shadows so it looks like they're laying on the paper. Next I was stuck with okay what color do I use to to transition from that R37. I don't know. I decided to futz around a little bit with the R37 first and add some shading to the center of the flowers and a little onto the leaves and then I went for an R35. I thought I'll step down a little bit and it kind of worked. It gave me a bit of a color difference, a bit of a transition but you have to wait for each one of these colors to dry in order to see what those edges are going to look like. Do you need to soften them even further or are you going to end up with a weird hard edge to them because the alcohol in the markers wets the paper and until it dries out completely you can't tell. Well I didn't have too much of a hard line there but I decided to go in with an R22. It's a pink. If you know what R22 is, it's a light pink color well you can see a little bit of it on the outside on that white paper and the R22 worked great to transition from that R35 into the paper color. If you tried to use a colorless blender I don't know if it would work that well but this was enough color that I could add a little bit to it and it would give me a little of that transition without being too much. I added some gold onto some of the berries and the center of the poinsettia and Sherry had used in her card her notes said that she used a white pencil around the edges of the flowers. I decided to try a pink pencil because on the one on the left that I tried that was white pencil and it just didn't there was something that just didn't look right. I had to go over that with other colors to try to dull it down because it was too bright. I wanted something really subtle that was going to look like Sherry's and my white pencil for whatever reason I think I was pushing too hard or whatever a pink pencil worked a whole lot better. Play around with which pink that you have that's going to work because different pinks on different papers are going to act a little differently. So I decided I also needed a little affirmation of the stamp lines for the berries because they sort of disappeared into the paper once I started doing all that coloring because it is no line ink so I had to add the stems back in and then I colored the others so I now have four of these tags then it came time to stamping the sentiment and I found this one that would suit it perfectly from Colorado Craft Company has a nice vertical sentiment to it with script on it and I could emboss it in gold and it would look quite beautiful just like Sherry's card and I have my leftover wow embossing powder from the first embossing just poured it back onto the card stock and then grabbed my heat gun I did learn after a previous video to take away the sheet full of extra embossing powder before getting the gun out yeah I did that I did but you can't say I don't learn from my mistakes so haha there's the beautiful embossing I love watching embossing appear and then we have the final here of the tying of the bow I just wound a piece of wide ribbon through the hole and tied it with a piece of twine just a knot in a bow around it looks gorgeous just trim off the edges and fold the thick ribbon in half so you can cut it at an angle and get points on the top of it bada boom bada being done so here is a review of the tags that you have seen throughout this week if there's any here that you have not seen make sure you go back and look at them you can check them out on my videos tab on my youtube page or scroll back through my blog whichever way you prefer and leave comments on all of them so you can qualify to win one of these tags and on Monday I will announce on the blog who won the tags so make sure you claim them and go over today to see their compilation of all of the tags that I have done for years now over on the blog I put them all together in one place so you can reference all the tags to your heart's content all right I will see you guys later take care and have a wonderful day go make some tags go make some comments and I'll see you next week


Awesome. Appreciate it. You too. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie to y'all man. It felt more embarrassing to just walk in there and buy crocs than to do the pickup line video I did last time I was here. Hi, excuse me. Do you have a holofame ankle breaker? Because I keep falling for you It's a corny pickup line. I apologize. My name is Dean. Who are you? Hi, Christina. Can I get your number? Uh, it's okay. I'm with my younger sister. But the guys there were mad nice man. I'm gonna link up with Phantom Davis and the whole crew. We're gonna walk into sneaker con. I'm gonna have to transform into what's possibly gonna be the most cringy outfit of all time And I'm gonna do it in an environment where everybody's trying to glow up and look fresh. And I'm still wearing shorts right now. It's colder. I generally tend not to care when people say this or that about me. But when it comes to wearing these crocs right here I'm actually gonna be embarrassed. I'm ashamed that I went to the store and bought it. The guys there were super cool though. But to put these on in a sneaker convention When folks is gonna be trying to kick it with the best possible kicks, I'm out of my mind. I'm gonna have some backups just in case you know I get nervous or something, man. Remember my dame twos? They're basketball shoes, but I said you know what I had like 10 minutes to pack. Alright, I picked the closest thing. Boom, we're here.   So me, Davis, Peter pulled up. We're here at SneakerCon. This is packed right now. Yo, very soon I'm gonna do the transformation. I'm gonna throw on the crocs. I'm gonna get my shorts on because It makes no sense to be wearing shorts in this temperature. I'm gonna confuse the folks.  And I'm doing it in an environment where everybody's trying to glow up and show out, right? I saw man's walking in with six shoes like this. And I said, we're? So I'm about to look really goofy today.  We got money, man. Taking pictures with my hands. Yo, whose kicks is better? Yo, me or you? I know my kicks. We got the better kicks. I do. Is it a contest? Nah, you got it, bro. You got it. Yo, you see the sticker I got right there? See that sticker I got? Yeah, I like it. I like it. That's a gem. I got that from eBay.  Hey, take as many photos, man. I like that light. Hey, let's have a vote for Phantom's kicks. Make some noise! For my kicks! Game over. Yo, those better be empty. Listen, somebody can easily just snatch one of them bitches. Easy. Anybody looking to buy crocs for $500? Yo, you got the crocs? Right off the block, the crocs. $500? He's a Jerusalem 7. No one's looking to buy some crocs. Are you guys looking to buy some crocs? Nah, I know y'all can't put some heat, man. I got it for you. Alright, you're missing out. Deal? $500, man. $500 you can get. Not even both, because both is $1,000, right? Wait, can I get a picture of you? $4.75. $4.90. If we do $4.90, then we're cool. $4.90. My sharp shooter is better than yours. What'd he say? He said again, man. My sharp shooter is better than yours. I don't know. You're out of control. Hey, I'm serious, bro. Anybody looking to buy these? These are off the press, bro. Trust me, I have a lot of offers. Do you have the off-white crocs? The off-whites? Nah, we don't have that color yet. That one just sold out, man. I'll be back if you have that. Bet, man, I appreciate you. They're looking out, fam. Yo, look, there's a clamp on them too. $200 for these right now, bro. You need $400 for both, but I'll give you this one for $200. Oh, I can't. It's ATM right down there, bro. You can be back in five minutes flat. Thank you, man. Thank you very much. It was $20 on Amazon. It's just something about the crocs, man. When you put on the crocs, everybody's attracted to you. Everybody just wants to say what's up, even if they don't even know who you are. But that guy did, yo. He said to give him a jump shot. I told him Mike Wang could be anywhere. We don't know him. Yo, this man Asian is out here swagging out, bro. Man, look at that, bro. I'm looking too fresh, man. You know everybody comes out here and they're trying to wild out. I did it on a budget. You heard it first, bro. I did it on a budget. It's crazy, man.  First thing sneaker has to do is they look at your kicks.  It's priceless, man. What is we doing? I mean, I thought I was going cash. Bro. Are they looking fresh, though? I need a pair. I ain't gonna lie. $30, bro. Hey, we made it to the house. I'm chilling at the Airbnb currently, man. You got a minute. A minute? Yo, that's too much. What? A long time. And a long time? Yeah. All right, it's a long time. All right, two minutes. Three, two, one, go. No, bro. Bro. Oh. Fandom's here.  And one of them includes rapping people on saran rapping tape and trying to get them to escape. I'm watching. I'm not going to get involved because I don't want to put myself in that situation.      All right, I'm finally back. I'm exhausted. We're chilling for an hour. Those guys could freestyle for centuries. I was just watching because you know me. I can't freestyle. That would be too cringy. It is a prime tournament that's about to go down. I have to pay attention because at the end of said prime tournament, the brackets that drop for the next tournament, which I'm going to be competing in. And since I'm out in New York, I haven't played 2K in a few days. And on top of that, all these teams have so much chemistry. I haven't played with my five yet. The brackets just dropped. Y'all see that? Game breakers up top. We get a first week buy. We're facing Hank's team or the bench all-stars. We really only play like three of these teams so far. So it should be fun to play some of these competitive teams. Anyway, I'm going to end it on that. I got a bunch of stuff after record today. I'm out. I think SneakerCon's on today. I'm not sure if I'm going to go a second time. Ok, the first time was embarrassing enough, man. If you enjoyed, make sure to drop a like. Subscribe if you guys are new. I'm going to catch you in the next one. I'm out. Peace.


Good morning, everyone. This is Tom Peters. I'm calling from Fargo, North Dakota today. I'm at my NDSU office. I'd like to welcome you to the Grand Forks Grower Seminar. Yes, it is unfortunate. It's two years in a row now that we're doing this meeting remotely. But that's just the way it is. Before I get into some introductions, I'd like to acknowledge the Sugar Beet Research and Education Board. So our funding for the projects that we're going to discuss today is from the board representatives that represent the various factories. And ultimately, that's a lot of the people that are participating today. They're responsible for the solicitation of projects and some of the priorities that we have. So I'm very honored to acknowledge the Research and Education Board. Second, if we were to have lunch today, Crystal Beat seed and Sumitomo would have sponsored lunch. So unfortunately, we still had to pay for lunch. So we thank them for their generosity. So today is the first. On February 3rd, we'll be at Moorhead. And we're hoping that we'll be in person at the Holiday Convention Center for the Moorhead Grower Seminar. And then on February 17, we'll be at Grafton. This year, we're going to be at Frosty Fox. I was thinking of Frosty Lady, but that was a song from the 1960s. So we're going to be in Grafton at Frosty Fox. And we'll have our meeting there. And AMVAC will be our sponsor for that meeting. Before we get started, I want to indicate that the presentations today will be posted on the website at the end of the meeting season. So we use the website to post our various information, including the research reports that we write from our projects. And we post a lot of other information there, including presentations. So our website is SBREB or sugar beet research and education board.org. So you can find the materials at that site. Okay, I'd like to introduce the first topic. And that's going to be weed control and sugar beet. But you're going to see this time that I'm going to also speak a lot about crops growing in sequence with sugar beets. Because many times our most effective strategies are what we're doing in other crops. So you'll see a strong tone towards that. I'd like to acknowledge Alexa Leestead, who helps and does a good job of helping us to set our priorities through the summer. And Alexa is very active right now with helping us get the report summarized, which we'll get posted on the website. Speaking of the website, I was interested in a question recently and was curious about what we've had for our most important weed over years. And it started just to check on five year increments. And before I knew it, I was looking at every year all the way back from 75. And it's really interesting to me that we've done this survey 45 times. And 39 times we've picked pigweed. So of course, it wasn't water hemp until recently. But for many, many years, red-red pigweed was our most important troublesome weed. And I would add to it, it's not only troublesome, but it's very common, which is probably why we're selecting it. But the one I want to start with is Kosha. And that'll be the first topic that I'll go through. After we're done with Kosha, I'm going to go through a series of other, I call them chapters in the presentation. So I'm going to talk a little bit about water hemp, including crop safety and water hemp, our experiences with ultrablaser. And then I'd like to visit for a few minutes about herbicide carryover. I want to make sure everybody is thinking about the prospects of carryover on their farm. I have some words about common ragweed. And in addition, there are some labels that are in that section. And then finally, we'll end with an update on Palmer amaranth. So I want to start with Kosha. And as you know, I spend a lot of time driving. And I saw a lot of Kosha this year, or last season, unfortunately. And I have a concern that Kosha is going to be an important weed in 2022. So my presentation on Kosha is mainly to create awareness, but also to help you to start thinking about Kosha in the crop sequence. So why so much Kosha? Well, we saw it in the survey. We had stand challenges and where we didn't get good stands of wheat, we didn't get anything to grow, and Kosha came into those fields. And we know that Kosha makes seed one or two years, seed that's viable one or two years. So I'm really concerned about some of the sugar beet fields. And I'm wondering if this was your wheat field that's scheduled to be in sugar beet next year. I'm wondering if maybe we should consider an alternative, because unfortunately, as you're going to see in my presentation, the weak link in Kosha management is what we do in sugar beet, especially if you have glyphosate resistant Kosha. So what would a Kosha control strategy be? And I'm looking at the rotation here, and I want to focus on the soybean year, the wheat year, and then sugar beet coming up after the wheat year. So I want to introduce some products that maybe you haven't thought of before in soybean production, especially for controlling Kosha. So Valor is a PPO herbicide that's soil applied. And Valor can come alone, or it can be in mixtures with Zidua, which is called Fierce. And then sometimes Metribuzin is also either added to the tank mixture, or it is part of the pre-mix. And that would be called M-T-Z, Fierce M-T-Z. So the combination of these actives, triazine, acrylacetamide, and a PPO inhibitor are very, very effective for controlling Kosha and soybean. Second, don't forget about your herbicide trait. So especially the extend soybean trait and the use of dicamba, but also liberty as well. Both of those traits are very effective. And the herbicides that you use in that program are very effective Kosha products. I want to really call out dicamba for a minute and emphasize if you're going to use dicamba, you might consider pre-emergence, because in my opinion, in my work, that's the most effective use of dicamba to use it pre-emergence before Kosha germinates and emerges.  And that's an effective Kosha control program. Jumping ahead to wheat, and here I want to emphasize fluoxapyr. So fluoxapyr is sold under the trade name Starane, and there's a lot of premixes, but those premixes contain fluoxapyr. And what I want to really emphasize here is you've got to be using at least one and a half ounces, at least one and a half ounces. And I would prefer that you spike in extra Starane to get to two ounces. That's going to be the most effective Kosha control in wheat. And as I mentioned, there's a lot of different mixes in wheat, and I would encourage you to check the wheat control guide if you want to look at some of those names. And I have a slide coming up as well. Now I mentioned the herbicide traits, and we have three of them. We have Roundup Ready soybeans. We have the Liberty trait, and we also have Enlist. And I will say that I would prefer that you not use any of these herbicides by themselves. So the Liberty data looks pretty good, but I'd want you to combine Liberty with something else. And we've seen really strong results with a Liberty PowerMax combination. So it's true, we do have some glyphosate resistance, but usually that's partial resistance. The combination of Liberty and Roundup is a strong program. Now the 2,4D, 2,4D choline, or 2,4D by itself, is not an effective Kosha product. So if you're going to use the Enlist trait, it's going to be really important in that case, what you mix with Enlist. And we would prefer that you use the Liberty trait on that one. I mentioned the wheat herbicide mixes, and here's some of the names. I want to call out Tallinor. Tallinor is a long residual program. It's a Group 27 herbicide. So that product, while it's very effective for controlling Kosha, isn't going to be very useful in fields that are rotated back to sugar beet the following year. But lots of different products there. And as I mentioned, please use the weed control guide to look at those products. And as I mentioned, you're probably going to need to spike in extra starane as well. So that takes us to sugar beet. And usually when I get into a jam in sugar beet, I call Tim Kenyon. Tim has a lot of experience with Kosha and sugar beets. Tim would say, and I know Tim's on the call, and Tim's saying use as much ethos you can pre-emergence. And that would be the starting point in sugar beets. In my data, I usually have very good results. But in a lot of the fields I'm studying in, I have a mixed population of both sensitive and Kosha, and sensitive and resistant Kosha. So that may not be the case on your farm. We're starting to investigate the utility of blazer for Kosha control. And I will tell you that our results are all over the board. And part of the reason is because you've got to spray very, very small Kosha with ultra blazer. I believe if the Kosha is bigger than three inches, you're wasting your time. And that's probably one of the reasons why I have control less than 50%. The Kosha was too big. The combination of ultra blazer and PowerMax looks pretty promising. And that'll be the basis for some of the work that we do in 2022. Now, the second product or the next, the second weed that I mentioned in the beginning was pigweed species. And I want to start with a question. So why is pigweed such a challenge for us? And I think there's several reasons for that. So one, sugar beet and amaranthus species are somewhat closely related. And as you know, it's very difficult to find herbicide tolerance when you're dealing with a weed that's closely related to the crop that we're trying to cultivate. Number two, and I mentioned this earlier, the pigweed species, and I'm talking about water hemp, now they are both common and troublesome weeds. So common, meaning they infest a lot of acres, and I'll show you a survey data shortly. And then the second part of it, they're difficult to control. And I know you already know that. From a biology standpoint, they germinate and emerge in response to light, moisture and tillage. So starting with moisture, when we get a rain event and then seeing the drying that occurs after rain, that is a trigger for water hemp germination and emergence. And that means water hemp can germinate and emerge anytime during the season. And we've seen it anytime from April through August. And that moisture event or the light response to moving soil, even with cultivation, is responsible for the season long germination emergence that we have. Towards the bottom, water hemp makes a lot of seed. And it depends on the situation and when water hemp germinated and emerge. But it's not uncommon to hear people mention half a million seeds per plant. If you have one of those plant making seeds, that means you're going to have to work really hard to clean it up, since water hemp is viable for up to six years. Now I've gotten a lot of support from the cooperatives on surveying. And the poll that we completed a few minutes ago has also been very helpful for us. And what I want to just focus on here is the year 2020. And I want to indicate that in the American crystal sugar area, three of our factories have greater than 75% of the acres where water hemp has been called the most troublesome weed. And even more interesting or maybe even alarming to me is in Drayton factory where I don't always see a lot of resistance in water hemp. We were measuring over 50% of the growers in Drayton indicating water hemp as their most important weed control problem. So I think the inevitable is happening. I think everybody is going to be experiencing water hemp probably sooner than later. And this survey data certainly supports that. Our water hemp control program is very complicated. So gone are the days of one or two or three glyphosate applications. Our water hemp control program is a program. It starts with pre-emergence application. We use a concept called lay-by application where we're using the chloroacetamide herbicides at two and six to eight leaves. So pre-emergence, early post and post are creating layers in soil for us. And it's like a barrier in the soil to try to stop water hemp from germinating and emerging. Now we know and it's inevitable that there are escapes. And we've investigated a number of different strategies for controlling scapes, including ultra blazer, liberty through the red ball hooded sprayer, inner row cultivation, the use of the weed zapper and even hand weeding. And I would say that any of those are fair game and they should be part of your strategy for managing water hemp. Now at this point I usually jump into the weed control data and I decided this time I was going to go a different direction. I wanted to focus on crop safety. So often I'll hear the comment that you know I'm using your lay-by program, but I don't think my beets are growing as fast as my neighbor's beets. And my neighbor is just using the PowerMax program. So what's going on? Is that lay-by program injuring beets? And we had a very, very nice experiment that we did this year across multiple locations. And it compared that that PowerMax application to the lay-by program. So the lay-by program meaning Esmetolachlor or in this case dual magnum applied at the 2 and the 6 to 8 leaf stage in combination with PowerMax and Ethol. And what we did with this experiment is we compared with a pre-emergence program and without the program. So the data is in the table. So first of all seven days and yes there is a difference. We did see more injury from the lay-by program seven and fourteen days. And it really didn't seem to matter if you used the pre-programmer or not, but it was different than the PowerMax control. However, and this is important, however at 21 days everything looked the same in our experiments. And this is an across location and analysis. What about yield and quality? So the same treatments you can see pre or no pre-emergence. And then we've tabled here root yield sucrose and recoverable sucrose. And this was a really nice data set. You can see how close these yields are. And what we saw is there was no statistical difference. No statistical difference with root yield sucrose or recoverable sucrose. So what I'm hoping here is that this data set gives you the confidence in using these programs. We know that we need to use them in some places because we have water hemp. And those of you that are just beginning, I'm hoping this data gives you the confidence that these programs aren't going to injure sugar beet. So let's move into the section 18. Our section 18 was approved on June 1st. The North Dakota label came out on June 7th, on June 2nd. And what it called for is a single application of ultrathlaser at 16 fluid ounces per acre. Could you mute please? Robert, could you mute please? Thank you. So that application was made with ground equipment. And it targeted water hemp that was less than four inches tall, but we would prefer water hemp less than two inches tall. And you're going to see why I say that in a few minutes. But the other key part of this is the sugar beet had to be greater than six leaves. That was very important. We discontinued our applications the 1st of August. And we also had a 45 day PHI. So the first thing that happened after we got the section 18 is it got hot. And it was interesting in five years of development, we never had temperatures as hot as they were the first week of June in 2021. So that was a very, very significant curveball for us. We tried to time those applications for late in the day. We were using the same rules as Betamex. And we were also very careful with how we used ultrathlaser. And I'll show you that going forward. But that stated, we did see a pretty high level of adoption with over 32,000 acres of ultrathlaser applied in sugar beet in both North Dakota and Minnesota. So how did we use it? The first thing that we did is we put out some grower demos and we call these one to five. And one was very simply ultrathlaser by itself. And then we built by adding surfactants. And on the other end was what we would call our fully loaded treatment, where we combined ultrathlaser with PowerMax with a nonionic surfactant and AMS. So we sometimes said going five was going nuclear, because we put everything in that we could. And I would say that these demos were very, very good for us, not only to get comfort level with the agriculturalists, but especially for growers in the neighborhood, they also got to see what the crop response would look like from using these treatments. And we took some notes as well. Very quickly, we had less injury from ultrathlaser by itself. And we had more injury when we combined a second herbicide. So one of the things that we learned about ultrathlaser is that it responds to surfactants. And they could either be in the tank, or they could be a formulated surfactant, for example, the ones in PowerMax. So this is a picture from a producer field. So it happens to be in central Minnesota. And it's one of the first fields that were sprayed after the section 18. So anyway, this was about two weeks after application. And you can still see some bronzing in these picture. That was very, very common. And quite frankly, if you didn't see bronzing, I would question if we did something wrong. Now looking at the pictures on the right, we did see some regrowth that occurred. And this is where the part about weed size is very important. And I would also call your attention to the picture on the bottom. It looked like on the trailing side where the sugar beet itself was maybe providing some cover. We didn't always get good coverage. And you can see that we had some weed escapes that occurred. But I would say regardless of the weed escapes, in many cases, the damage we did to water hemp slowed the water hemp down enough where it gave the crop an opportunity to have a competitive advantage. But certainly size, spray quality, water volume, the nozzles that we use are all pieces that we're going to have to spend some more time considering as we prepare for the 2022 section 18. A couple of other things. So 95% of the respondents who took the survey said the emergency exemption was beneficial. And 92% of them have encouraged us to do the section 18 again in 2022. And we're planning to do that. I've already mentioned the point about spray volume and size. We saw the bronzing. And what was interesting is sometimes bronzing last quite a while. And it seemed like soil moisture and how active the beets were growing had a lot to do with how quickly new leaves came out and how quickly the beets re-grew.  And we heard the opposite in other cases where you used ultra blazer, we had some more. So that might be something you might want to put into your own research next year because quite frankly, I hadn't really thought about that question when we did some of the preliminary research. Okay, I want to say a few things about herbicide carryover next. And I will say this, that the weed guide or our labels have guidance for crop rotations. And these guidance messages are targeted to average environmental conditions. But for conditions like what we had in 2021, I think it's safe to assume that in certain environments, we might see some carryover if you follow the guidance from the labels. And why is that? Well, I think this cartoon that was done by the University of Wisconsin does a good job of explaining it. And what it's showing is that for one reason or another, the herbicide just doesn't degrade as quickly in drought conditions as it does in average or wet conditions. So I want to get into why that is and what some of the precautions we might use are. So first of all, it might be because of the herbicide itself. So herbicides bind to soil. And it takes water for them to move into the soil solution. And in the soil solution is where we get microbial degradation. And I will tell you that microbes are the most common method by which herbicides are degraded. And of course, moisture is very, very important for that to occur. And I've said this in some of the other meetings, just because you get moisture to incorporate the herbicide into the soil doesn't mean you have enough moisture to keep the herbicide into the soil solution through the season. Number three, temperature is important. So the best conditions for microbial degradation are temperatures from 70 to 85 degrees. And I'm thinking about the rain events that we got in August and September. And I'm wondering if those conditions were warm enough for degradation to occur. I think it was because it was pretty warm yet in August and September. But at least the people that study this would say that the best case for degradation occurs is when there's moisture and then in the months of June, July and August. And then finally, the characteristics of soil are also important. And I would say that organic matter is the one that stands out the most. Degradation is fastest or most rapid in higher organic matter soils. This is a table and it features different families of herbicides. And then how we would expect the carryover risk to be for corn, soybean and sugar beet. And I'm going to go through this quickly because I'm starting to run out of time. The oxen herbicide, we're going to have a risk maybe in soybean. And I'm going to call out cloperalid stinger in the next slide or two. Certainly with the ALS inhibitors, we don't use them as much anymore. But we would have a concern with sugar beet following those. Likewise with the HPPD herbicides. And Lottis is one that's commonly used in the corn crop before sugar beet. So especially for the growers to the south, I'm worried about Lottis carryover occurring. The PPO inhibitors, they're all over the place. Some of them are long residual products. Some of them are shorter. I'm certainly concerned about those. And I want to have that conversation if you use those products. And finally, the photosynthetic inhibitors. So I want to use cloperalid as an example just to make my point. And I'm going to focus on soybean. So one thing I want to remind you about cloperalid is it's used in a lot of different crops now, small grains, corn, in addition to us using stinger and sugar beet. Stinger is degraded by microbes. So all of the factors that I mentioned in the previous slide apply to stinger degradation. The phenotype that you're going to see in soybean is different than what you would see from 2,4-D or dicamba. So you're going to see stack nodes. You're going to see a lot of plant to plant or area variation in fields. And then I'm going to show you a strapping phenotype in the next slide. So on the left, you're going to see that variation in the field that I think is indicative of stinger carry over to soybean and look at the close-up and all the variation. And then look at the phenotype that you see in, and I call this strapping, this is very different than the pictures that you've seen from enlist or 2,4-D. So the stinger phenotype is certainly unique. Just a couple of quick messages about common ragweed control with stinger. So the pots on the left, on the right, excuse me, were sprayed with three ounces and six ounces of stinger. And as you go from the front to the back, those are different populations from different places. And you can see some of those populations in the table on the left. And what I want to tell you is I have some concerns that stinger is not as effective on common ragweed as it used to be. And I want to encourage you that you need to talk to your agriculturalists and make sure you're using rates that are sufficient for common ragweed on your farm. So if we're talking about the current formulation of stinger, I would like to move you away from two ounces and to move you to three ounces as a starting point and maybe even consider four ounces under some certain situations. Okay. So in 2022, we're going to see a high load stinger formulation. So it's a five-pound gallon product. So what that's going to do, it's going to change our recommendations. It's going to change from two, three, or four ounces into these, I guess I'll call them fractions, 1.2 fluid ounces, 1.8, and 2.4. So I want you to make sure you know if you're using the old version of stinger or new stinger high load because it's going to matter for the rate that you choose. The other thing is the maximum now in one season is 6.4 fluid ounces as compared to what we used to use 10.7. And speaking of label changes, we're also going to see a new glyphosate formulation. So PowerMax is going to change from PowerMax to PowerMatch3 and what that means is the use rates change slightly. There's more glyphosate in the jug now and you can see that that's indicative of the of the rates. So the changes are minor, but they are nonetheless changes that are occurring. Now quickly, I know I'm almost out of time, Mohammed. I want to create awareness about Palmer Amaranth. So Palmer Amaranth is another pigweed. It makes a lot of seed. It competes with our crops and it certainly will compete with sugar beets. We're working on a publication that we're going to have out early this year. And as soon as we get that publication out, I'm going to put it on the website. But the real concern that we have is the number of families of herbicides where we've seen resistance. And again, this is with Palmer Amaranth, but this is really striking to me that many of the favorite families that we have have resistance. Quickly a map, and since we're at Grand Forks today, I'm going to focus on Minnesota, finding Palmer Amaranth in fields in two different places. One in Clay County and the second in Polk County. So in Clay County, they found it in chicken feed. Okay. So this was feed that someone purchased and they put the manure out in the field and they found Palmer Amaranth and traced it back to the feed that they used. In the case in Polk County, this was an egg trailer that called and said that they have Palmer Amaranth or something that looks like Palmer Amaranth. And it was traced back to screenings that were fed to animals and then the manure spread the fields. On the North Dakota side, we have issues as well with Palmer Amaranth. Very quickly, you can see them, the map with the various counties where we've detected Palmer Amaranth. And the last message I want to leave is if you see something that looks suspicious, call me. I don't care if it's day or night, I want to get that call because it's critical that we identify Palmer Amaranth before it gets established. We have a number of shop meetings coming up. These are going to be in Grand Forks District. We'll cover lots of things in the shop meetings. And then finally, there's a lot of people that contribute to my program. And I want to call out especially the growers that helped me to conduct my experiment. So thank you very much for your support. And that is my last slide. So Muhammad, maybe in the interest of time, I'll take questions on chat if you think that's a good idea. Yeah, it may be wise they can kind of put the questions in the chat screen. Is there anybody who would like to, let me just kind of, I think they can go ahead. If anybody has a question? And I've stopped sharing. So I think Ashok is next. Maybe you can put your talk up while I take any questions. It could be Mark next. Oh, Mark, sorry. I see a question here, but you are, are you ready, Tom, for this? Yeah, go ahead. The Travis Peterson is asking, would you expect a similar crop response slash yield result if you added singer to the tank mix with deal, etho, and glyphosate? That's a really, really important question. And the answer is yes, we do. We tend to see a little bit of a yield bump. And so one thing you might say is, well, why haven't you talked about adding ultra blazer into the lay by program? Well, the oil that we get from dual Magnum is too much. It puts us over the top, and we do get a yield loss. Now with Stinger, it's more subtle. For 2022, we are not going to allow that mixture. And we're going to continue to evaluate it. But it's all about the formulated oils that are part of the formulation, maybe related to that. It's the reason why we're using non ionic surfactant as well. Instead of crop oil or MSO or one of the others, those oil based products just make it hotter. And we're just not comfortable going there yet.