What is going on everybody Astos here welcome back to another video so in this video we're going to be doing an overall market update looking at the Dow Jones the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq we're going to be talking about one trade that I made today on the 13th of March in 2019 as well as taking a look at some other stocks and ETFs that I personally see potential in over these next couple of trading days heading off into the end of March in 2019 here in the stock market but before we do get into that guys for everybody out there that finds value in these videos you enjoy the content here the market updates the breakdowns feel free to go down below and hit that like button it really does support the channel and supports me in general and speaking of the channel guys we actually just hit 2000 subscribers on the youtube channel I really do appreciate you guys and I wanted to thank everybody out there for watching the videos the long-term supporters people that just started watching me a couple of days ago it means a lot that you guys you guys all thanks to you guys got me to this you know to this you know realm of 2000 subscribers I never really thought we would get this far and the fact that we did absolutely blows my mind so I really do want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and let's just get right into the topic here of today's video starting off with the SPX the S&P 500 index the 500 largest publicly traded us companies we ended up closing off the market about two minutes ago at 2810 dollars up about 19 points nearly 20 points on the day up about 0.7 percent here the Dow Jones industrial average guys up about 150 points up about 0.6 percent and the NASDAQ composite guys the best day out of the three major indices we cover on this channel up about 60 points up about 0.8 percent at the close of the market so we're at levels right now guys we're you know at a point in the market where we're continuing to push up we all know this by now the markets have been soaring over the past couple of days and we're testing highs that honestly I didn't think we were going to be testing here you know for those of you guys that have been watching the channel over the past couple of months you know we and me including right me included we thought the market was bearish right we thought the market was going to push down and honestly we've been proven wrong and the levels that we are at right now really constitute a test probably for all-time highs in the SPX like you saw in the title you know is the SPX headed to all-time highs we're going to be covering that in today's video on a technical basis here technically speaking so let's hop back to the SPX the S&P 500 are we going to test all-time highs so for all you guys that have been watching the channel you know the two resistances that we've been talking about over the past couple of videos the first one being at around 2790 which we passed today and the second one being at around 2815 which we actually momentarily passed today but we clearly see we ended up closing the day about five points below this resistance so let's see on the one day one minute what ended up happening here so we can see you know more towards the beginning of the day today around 11 30 a.m eastern standard time we hit about 2815 and from there we saw this double top pattern which in my eyes I was like okay this could be a potential sell-off to the bottom a potential rejection on this you know at this resistance at about 2815 so at this point in time I was thinking we could potentially be headed back to about 2790 and potentially you know back into that horizontal pattern that we were trading in a couple of weeks ago but then we saw a little bit later on in the day we ended up holding the 180s and mays support here on the one day one minute and we actually ended up breaking out momentarily like I said out of that resistance all the way up to about 2820 and from there we saw some bearish fluctuation and we ended up breaking the 180s and may we ended up trending down to about 2810 and that's where we ended up closing the day right we ended up trading within this little mini horizontal channel here on the one day one minute between about 2810 as a support and 2815 ish as the resistance and that's where we ended up really pushing towards the end of the day so what am I going to be waiting for tomorrow for the spx to potentially get out of this resistance to test the next resistance which in this case you know is going to be around 2870 well you guys probably guessed it I want to see a break out of this 2815 to 2820 resistance for it to hold that level as a new support for us to potentially fill back up to 2870 and if we break 2870 guys that is going to be a scary sight in terms of us potentially getting to you know the all-time highs and why am I saying it's a scary sight right why am I saying that well I'm a long-term investor right I like buying stocks when the market is down right I like buying companies when they are cheap right when they are considered pennies on the dollar even though the markets are at all-time highs right now you know the levels that I like to see are lower levels that's why I was buying stocks during this crash when other people were scared right by when others are fearful and be greedy what's the what's the quote I forget what the quote is off the top of my head but you guys know what the quote you know you guys know the quote I'm referring to right and the fact that I'm saying that I don't want to get up here up to these levels is because I want to buy more stocks for my long-term portfolio that's just the complete honest truth here but on a technical speaking basis on a technical basis here I honestly do think we're breaking out here I honestly do think we're going to be headed back to about the 2870 level due to us holding this higher low from the 2730 ish level from a couple of days back which really constitutes the continuation of the uptrend pattern and the fact that we are testing this level today guys and the fact that we did have two three straight days of nice bullish push you know I honestly do think we are probably going to continue this run and break out of here but let's say tomorrow we end up topping off here and we slowly start to sell off my opinion on that matter is going to change which is why right now I'm kind of on like a 5050 basis here and I want to see what the futures and the large caps are going to be doing you know tomorrow morning before really making my full sound opinion on whether or not we're pushing up here so I think we could potentially push up but the fact that we're struggling this resistance right now you know that does give me some hope that we might sell off which in turn is going to open up some opportunities for longer term positions at better valuations right because although I am a trader I love trading the stock market I'm also a long term investor who likes to buy stocks lower right remember back over the past couple of months guys I was buying Facebook I was buying Apple down here I was buying a couple of other stocks down here which I'm highly in the green right now I'm up like 15 20% on some of those positions that I was buying and I want to get back to those levels I'm going to be completely honest with you guys I don't get scared when the markets are falling down unlike other people because I view those as buying opportunities so tomorrow I'm just going to be waiting for a very simple thing right I'm going to be waiting for are we breaking up which is going to be a sign that we couldn't be headed to the 2870 level or are we going to get rejected and start to slowly push down and if we break the 2790 support and we start to push down here potentially break the 50 SMA in this trend line that's going to be a sign that we're pushing down we could be headed back down in terms of the SPX which is honestly going to make me happy guys because I like buying stocks at cheaper valuations which makes sense for the long term investors out there so that's what the SPX is looking like right now in my eyes guys you know I think you know we are at you know a critical point right now and I'm sure a lot of you guys can attest to that the Dow Jones here it's still at a point of resistance unlike the SPX where we're really you know out of the 50 SMA in that first level of resistance at the 2790 level the Dow Jones is still technically speaking here under the 50 SMA resistance and it's under that first resistance that we see here from about 25,750 ish dollars from back in the beginning of December and this is mostly because Boeing stock we all know what happened now the two you know plane crashes in the six month period Boeing stock has been getting slaughtered Boeing stock has a huge weight on the Dow Jones and let's just take a look at Boeing the fact that Boeing has been doing poorly this has been dragging and not really allowing the Dow Jones to flourish in these green days that we've been seeing as much as you know the SPX and the uh what's what is it the NASDAQ right it makes sense Boeing has dropped from 345 down to about 360 it's lost like 80 90 points in the matter of a couple of days here which clearly has had a huge pull to the downside on the Dow Jones so what am I waiting for here guys technically speaking like we've been talking about the Dow Jones is still on a higher low it's still on a continuation uptrend pattern here the higher low from the previous it's looking good in terms of its uptrend pattern but again the resistance points are there still they're very um you know it's having difficulty breaking out of those levels so what am I going to be waiting for for the continuation well I'm going to be waiting for a break above the 50 SMA and then a break above this first resistance at about 25 750 and then a break out of this next level which is going to be at around 26 200 but the first levels like I said guys we need to break out of this and then the next level there but let's say tomorrow we have a red day we start to sell off and we break this trend line we start to get rejected even heavier by the 50 SMA we start to test this support level here which I should draw out for you guys to give you a better understanding at about 25 400 we start to test that and we start to push down you know that's going to be the head and shoulders pattern that we were talking about and from there we could potentially sell off even more in terms of the excuse me in terms of the Dow Jones so that's what I'm watching here guys in terms of the Dow Jones honestly if Boeing stock didn't have that problem with the plane crashes in Ethiopia you know I honestly think that the Dow would probably be in the $26,000 level right now maybe even all the way up here you know the same you know technical levels as the SPX in terms of previous resistance levels I think we probably would be up there if it wasn't for Boeing stock let me know down below in the comment section what you guys think about that I would love to know and now heading over here to the NASDAQ guys the NASDAQ is absolutely technically speaking it's looking beautiful right we broke out of the resistance points that we were talking about over the past couple of videos the first one being the 50 SMA this resistance here at about 7100 the next one at about 7200 and now we're trending in this horizontal pattern here from the old resistance which is now a new support at about 7200 up to the next resistance which is at about 7360 7370 which honestly it's looking like we're going to be hitting that level here over the next couple of days especially if tech stocks continue to do well especially if the market in general continues to do well but one thing I do want to point out to you guys here on the major indices is the RSI level we do seem a bit overbought here on the NASDAQ and let me take a look at the SPX is it the same I didn't really take account into it see the SPX is not as overbought and let's see the Dow Jones actually yeah the Dow Jones is obviously not overbought because of the whole Boeing thing but the NASDAQ has been pushing up actually more in terms of percentage than the Dow and the SPX which is why that RSI does seem a bit overbought so in terms of you know these tech stocks like Apple and Facebook which have a weight on the NASDAQ they've been doing very well if they do pull back I do expect the NASDAQ in general to slowly pull back a bit to bring that RSI down a bit and that could end up bringing us closer to the support at about let's say 7230 7200 flat I'm not saying it's going to drop 100 points but if we do end up going back down to about 7250 on that little pullback that really would not surprise me so those are the levels that I'm really taking account here you know taking into account in terms of the NASDAQ composite now let's talk about what I ended up trading today and for those of you guys that watch my morning video I called out and talked about crude oil and UWT and that's exactly what I ended up taking advantage of this morning so crude oil is crude oil it's a crude oil future and we trade UWT which is a leveraged ETF that trades based upon crude oil whenever crude oil is going up in price UWT is what I traded today goes up in price as well and for those of you guys that watch my morning video this morning I talked about the crude oil breakout potential at the resistance at about 5750 5775 if it were to break that level that would be a breakout for crude oil and that's exactly what ended up happening today and if we look at the 20 day one hour we'll see this on a closer basis right the support at about 5530 the resistance at about 5760 5770 very clear horizontal pattern with the break today at about 9am into the 57 or really at the 5775 level this morning that's where we got that break and that constituted me to trade UWT this morning so let's see the movement of UWT so you guys can understand the correlation here so we saw this little downwards trending uh you know pattern here in terms of UWT of lower highs the higher at about 1650 1620 here and then $16 roughly flat yesterday and this morning we got that breakout pattern of the top of this resistance which really opened my eyes initially to trade UWT this morning and if we take a look at the one day one minute I actually ended up getting in on this little dip and as we started to confirm the bounce here on the 50 simple moving average and on the EMA line I ended up hopping in at about I believe 1630 and I wrote it for about an hour or two grabbed about a 1.4% margin of profit ended up selling at this higher high point here at about $16.50 very quick really in and out trade not really quick typically my day trades are a little bit quicker than this I ended up holding it for about 40 minutes 45 minutes got my 1.4 1.5% on it ended up selling off there and if you guys can see you know we ended up running up to about 1690 here so if I ended up holding the whole day I would have made triple of what I did make but I always preach and always talk about being consistent taking a smaller amount of profit and really just being consistent with it guys don't always aim for that home run trade don't be too greedy take what you can take and move on lock in those profits that's exactly what I ended up doing today on UWT and this is going to transition into what I'm watching for the rest of this week and for the rest of this month honestly and that is I'm watching UWT guys I'm going to be completely honest with you guys because of this breakout on crude oil I think UWT has a ton of potential here over these next couple of weeks so what I want to see now since crude oil is a bit over but I want to see a pullback and for crude oil to hold this old resistance as a new support to open up a better buying opportunity in UWT as a potential day trade tomorrow so that's what I'm actually watching for tomorrow guys I'm looking to get back in to UWT at a better price point primarily or you know rather you know I'm looking for a level at around let's say 1650 that would be a nice little pull back that would bring the RSI down a bit and give us a little bit more you know room to run from there because if you guys can see you know this level here if we do end up pulling down to the you know the previous resistance holding it as a new support that would be a better dip by opportunity than it would be if we just hopped in let's say we opened up tomorrow at about 1690 if we just hopped in there that might not be the best you know place to get in because at that point we're overbought we might see a pullback so that's what I'm just waiting for guys a pullback might make a better opportunity might open up a better opportunity in UWT so another one I'm watching tomorrow guys you know it's a marketing TF so let's say the SPX does end up getting rejected here this is one scenario that I'm looking to play let's say we get rejected here TVIX is going to open up to be a solid day trade a solid potential day trade for tomorrow and for those of you guys that don't know TVIX trades closely based upon the SPX whenever the SPX is selling off TVIX is going up in price as we can see here over these past couple of days really this bracket of days here from the 4th of March up to the 8th of March where we saw that pull back in the SPX TVIX did very well so this is something that I'm looking to capitalize on if we do end up getting a pullback in the markets since the markets have been doing very well recently we might get a pullback guys we might get a pullback but like I said in the beginning of the video if we break this level you know that's pretty much going to scratch that entire plan and I'll be looking to trade TQQQ which is an ETF that goes up whenever the markets are going up right so this is the combo of ETFs TVIX and TQQQ that I trade based on the markets and these are really just ones I watch when the markets are extremely volatile right so that's what I'm watching you know TQQQ TVIX you know UWT those are the three main ones that I'm watching what were the other ones that I was thinking about guys natural gas this is one that I want to point out to you guys too yep this was it you guys is looking pretty solid right now and I think that I talk about this one in this morning's video I don't think I did in this morning's video but I definitely did in yesterday's video it's looking as if we're trading in a horizontal pattern right now in natural gas with the support at about 275-ish 275-280 with the resistance at about 288-290 so let's say we continue to push up here which it looks like we are we break that 50 SMA I think tomorrow you guys can be a very solid potential play and it did pretty well today up about three percent up about a dollar and one cents and we do see potential here guys we're seeing a resistance here a potential break tomorrow if we do end up pushing up here out of the resistance on the 180 SMA and from there we could be testing hires you know higher the higher levels here at about $37 so keep an eye on you guys this could potentially be a solid play and another one I talked about this morning was ACB Aurora cannabis ended up doing very well just take a look guys at that candlestick holy crap from $8 all the way up to $9 that's absolutely unbelievable today 14% move in Aurora cannabis and we're at levels right now where we are a bit overbought I would be scared to buy at these levels but I would love to see a rejection here and a pullback and a hold at about the 820 830-ish level maybe 840-850 this level the old resistance as a new support I think that would be an extremely good entry point for ACB that is what I'm personally watching right now in terms of you know that stock Cron we talked about that one this morning it ended up not playing out so well it's looking a bit bearish right now especially if we do end up breaking this trend line that I've drawn out right here let's see what CGC ended up doing yeah CGC you know the same thing we talked about CGC this morning it was in this wedge it looks like we got rejected at the top of this wedge so I'm keeping an eye for a potential break to the downside here are we gonna pop to the downside here or really you know push to the downside and hold it as a new support or hold it as a support from there are we gonna break that which would be a bearish move or tomorrow are we gonna break out of the top resistance of this wedge which would be a bullish move these are all things that I'm going to be watching for tomorrow and let's see guys what else did very well today Tesla had a very solid pushback today and honestly guys if Tesla ends up breaking this 50 SMA here I think the uptrend well really the uptrend is still intact right now if I show you guys on this 20 day one hour we can see we had the pullback yesterday this would have opened up a nice entry point here on the pullback and we popped up today if we break this 180 SMA resistance on the 20 day one hour chart I think this could be a runner to the upside I see a lot of potential there on Tesla and if we go back to the 184 hour chart we can see if we break the 50 SMA that could also be a runner there which is why it's super important to look at multiple timeframes right we can see and point out different resistance points on different timeframes and honestly I do see some potential tomorrow in Tesla stock so those are just a couple stocks guys Tesla UGAS UWT those are the three main ones I'm watching TVIXT QQQ the market ETFs and of course what was the other one the marijuana stocks ACB Cron CGC CGC and Cron they're at critical points CGC especially if it breaks out of that wedge or to the downside that can play you know with different opportunities there whether you want to play put options to the downside if we break to the upside of that wedge that could be a potential swing trade there's a bunch of options out there right now that I'm personally looking at and I would love to know what you guys are looking at let me know down below in the comment section and also if you guys have yet subscribed to the channel you made it this far feel free to subscribe hit that notification bell if you guys do enjoy the content you want to be notified every time that I do make a video and also while you're at it guys why not hit that like button and if you guys enjoy this content I'll see you guys in the next video I appreciate all you guys for watching and getting me again to that 2000 subscriber milestone I'll catch you all in the next video I have a special video planned for you guys tomorrow not necessarily related to the stock market but I know I really know you guys will enjoy it so stay tuned for that I'll catch you all later peace out


Today I want to bring Workspace and the reason I want to do this is because One of the things that we do here at Photonerd University is we mentor students, photographers all around the United States Through this mentoring program we work on a one-on-one basis with students who want to better their workflow or their experience with Lightroom, Photoshop, things like that. If you want to know more about that service Just go to photonerduniversity.com forward slash services But it never it never ceases to amaze me that every time I log into someone's computer that their desktop space is just a Mess it's very rare that you get with a client whose desktop space is nice and clean If you look here at my desktop space You'll see that I have created a little bit of a disaster just so you could see what I'm talking about This right here is what I see all the time whether it's loose files folders You know plugged in hard drives, etc. And since I'm a little OCD this kind of stuff drives me a little bit batty But what really drives me crazy is that if I see this that usually that tells me That you don't have an efficient backup system or that all of your files aren't backed up properly Because if you've got this stuff here, it probably isn't backed up. That's a problem. So In today's tip we're gonna talk about two tips that we can do to clean up this mess This has nothing to do with the backup part, but at least clean it up so that it's a little bit more presentable The first tip is actually something I like to refer to as the junk drawer Everyone has a junk drawer in their house. Some people have more than one junk drawer two or three Some people have a junk closet a junk room a junk garage It's a little out of control, but the point of a junk room or a junk drawer is When you're looking for something usually the junk drawer is the first place that you go to So if you can create a junk drawer Chances are the files that you're looking for probably there and you can do that very simply by just making a folder on your desktop calling it junk drawer and And putting it off to the side and from here it's very easy You could just take all the files that you have on your desktop Just select all of them and drag them into that junk drawer folder and for something like this It doesn't matter if you're a Mac or a PC user This will work because we can all create folders and we can all drag everything into there Already this looks ten times better than a bunch of files just thrown randomly on the desktop But there's one more thing that I want to talk about that takes this to a whole nother level and it's something that I absolutely Love it's a new app or an app called hidden me and What you do is if you're a Mac user you just head on over to the app store You search for hidden me It'll come up right away and This is a free app, which is awesome and all you do is install it once you're done installing it Just click open and what this will do is it's gonna put an icon in your menu bar at the top of your screen It's just a little circle and what you can do is you can click it and Then choose hide desktop icons and as soon as you click hide desktop icons all the icons disappear And what's nice about this is the icons aren't gone. They didn't leave. It just appears as though they did In fact, you can bring them back by going to the icon once again and saying show desktop icons And they immediately come back. I love this. This keeps a nice clean minimalistic setup So all I'm looking at is a really cool wallpaper or something like this. I'm not looking at all those dreaded icons The other thing to note is that even though they're hidden They're still available if I were to go into my finder window and go to desktop You'll see that that folder that junk drawer folder that I created is still available Even though when I'm physically looking at the desktop, you can't really see it There's one more little thing or a little tip that I want to mention here And it's that you can also create a global hotkey for this So for example, if you wanted to create a keyboard shortcut That automatically Turned or activated this on you could do that right here by going in here saying record a keyboard shortcut Maybe I want my f1 key for example to be the key that Activates this so once I'm done doing that I can I can turn that off and now every time I hit f1 My icons will appear or f1 again. They'll disappear. So rather than going to the top. This is a faster way of doing it Hopefully you enjoyed this video.  Thank you so much for watching My name is Adam. I'm out


Welcome everyone. In the last couple of lectures, we started our study of a landmark paper in stochastic control. It was the paper of Hans Wittzenhausen. That paper basically gave us a counter example to a claim or a belief of that time regarding linear quadratic Gaussian systems. The belief of that time was that any system when so long as any problem so long as it has a linear system with linear observations and all the noise in the in the system was Gaussian and the cost was quadratic. In such a problem would always admit a controller controllers that were linear in their information. So and this was a consequence of the separation result that we had shown earlier where you had to you your control this was this was believed because of the separation result we had shown earlier where we had we had the optimal controller taking the form of a superposition of the deterministic controller followed by followed by an estimator. The estimator because of the jointly Gaussian nature of the problem of the random variables involved always gave an estimate that was linear in the information. And as a result of that the control the optimal control also turned out to be linear in the information. Now this belief continued for a while because that is that it seemed like this is all that was needed. The 3 assumptions were L, Q and G which is the linear system quadratic cost and Gaussian noise and that always gave us a linear that it was believed that that will always give you a linear controller. Wittzenhausen's counter example which we discussed last time was that he showed that this does not hold if the information pattern is not classical. So if the information pattern is not classical which means that if at some stage you have that the information known at the previous stage is not known at the current stage some there is some loss of information across stages then this is not true anymore. And his the example that Wittzenhausen talked about was this was this simple 2 stage problem. If you remember there was an initial state initial state was this was a this here was taken to be Gaussian this was Gaussian there was this state was observed perfectly by the first controller who produced an action u 1. So this state was observed as y 1 y 0 the first controller produced an action gamma 1 of y 0 that then changed the state to x 1. So x 1 became x 0 plus u 1 this was observed in a noisy fashion by the second controller. So the second controller saw the observation as x 1 plus noise where the noise here again this again is taken to be Gaussian and independent and in fact independent of x 0. So you got x 1 y 1 equal to x 1 plus noise this is what is observed by the second controller and then the second controller takes an action u 2 based on this and so he produces an action u 2 equal to gamma 2 of y 1 that is this one and that the resulting state then is x was x 2 equal to x 1 minus u 2 right this was the resulting state. And the problem was to minimize this this cost which was quadratic cost but the challenge here is that u 2 unlike in the in the classical information pattern u 2 is being chosen as a function of y 1 alone and u 1 is a function of y 0 alone. So in the classical information pattern u 1 would be chosen as a function of y 0 and u 2 will be chosen as a function of y 1 and y 0. So u 2 would also have access to the information that would be that the first so second controller would have access to the information that the first controller would have but in that is not the case anymore. So this part here this here is the non classical information pattern non classical information pattern or information structure. Now if you write out the cost function is explicitly as a function of gamma 1 and gamma 2 here is what you see you see that you have u 1 substituted in terms of gamma 1 that is a term you get here then you get u 2 substituted as a function of y 1 which is x 1 plus v but x 1 itself is x gamma 0 of x 0 x 0. So plus sorry this is x 1 is gamma 0 of x 0 plus x 0 my mistake here this is there is a plus x 0 and that plus you get that plus v and then you have out here again this term has come in because there is x 2 is x 1 minus u 2. So this becomes therefore the cost. Now the important thing that is happening in this problem is that the information of the first controller of the second controller the information of the second controller is influenced by the action of the first controller. The information of the second controller is influenced by the action of the first controller. Now but controller 2 which is the second controller does not know what controller 1 knew while choosing this action. This is basically the issue of non classical information pattern. So controller 2 does not know what controller 1 new which is Y0 while choosing this action. Now one point I want to make is that the first part here which is you know the information of control 2 being influenced by the action of controller 1 this also holds in an MDP this also holds in an MDP this is basically holds in every dynamic problem because the information that is that is that is that later controllers will have will depend on the state and that state would get influenced by by the actions of the previous of the previous controller. So this all holds in every dynamic every kind of dynamic problem the non-classicality comes up because of the second part that I have written here which is that controller 2 does not know what controller 1 new while choosing this action this is the non-classical this is the non-classical information structure. So what is the how is this therefore different from from the classical information structure the the difference that that occurs is is because when the when the difference occurs because because when this when the second part holds when the when the second controller does not know what the first controller new while choosing this action then the then the policy then the policy of the first controller affects the information of the second controller. So you can see that you can see that explicitly out here see if you if you if you have to choose gamma 2 as a function of function of its information right the information is x 1 plus v but x 1 itself is x 0 plus gamma 0 of x 0. So there is a implicitly a presence of gamma 0 here right. So gamma 0 needs to be known in order for you to be in order for you to evaluate what the optimal gamma 2 should be. On the other hand if you also knew the if you also knew x 0 here or in other words y 0 if you also knew x 0 here then in that case gamma 0 of x 0 could be reconstructed from that information x 0 itself and therefore this presence of gamma 0 then would not be important because all the information that you can that you can get from gamma 0 of x 0 can be reconstructed once you know x 0 itself right. So as a result of that knowing the once the the non classical information pattern exists what tends to happen is this particular issue that the information of the later acting controller depends on the policy of the first acting controller not just the action the entire policy of the first acting controller ends up making an appearance here. So how is this different from an MDP well in an MDP also the past action affects the affects the information in the future but the important this distinction from the in the non classical problem is that the that in an MDP although the past action affects the information the past policy does not affect the information. So one does not need to know what policy resulted in that action because we already have the information that is going into that policy for choose you know for choosing the action. So all all that we needed to know is completely encompassed in that input information and therefore the policy itself does not matter right. So in an MDP past action affects information but past policy does not right. So how does a so this is this is basically the key difference that that happens because because of the of the non classical information pattern. So if you if you recall we were also talking about how exactly does the past policy which means gamma 0 sorry which means there is a mistake here this should be should be gamma 1 yeah how exactly does gamma 1 affect the choice of gamma 2 right. So we can see that we can see that out here. So remember that so suppose you know suppose let us let us look at the let us look at the the the optimal gamma the gamma 2 the optimal choice of gamma 2. Gamma 2 star remember of for any value t is really some simply the conditional expectation of x 1 given x 1 plus v and x 1 that in turn is equal to the conditional expectation of x 0 plus gamma gamma 1 of x 0 condition on x 0 plus gamma 1 of x 0 plus v. So this equal to t let me write it this way this equal to t right. So now if I wanted this here the this therefore is the is the is is gamma 2's gamma 2 star of t. Now if by chance suppose if you if you had a classical information pattern so if gamma 2 star gamma 2 star also had access to x 0 then the conditional expectation would then change it would then change to we would get gamma 2 star of of t okay we or we would get let me write in the conditional expect then the conditional expectation then the conditional expectation would change we would get this equal to the conditional expectation of x 1 given x 1 plus v comma x 0 and that in turn would be expectation of x 0 plus gamma 1 of x 0 conditioned on x 0 plus gamma 1 of x 0 plus v comma x 0 itself and as a result of this what happens as a result of this what what you get is this actually becomes very simple this becomes just gamma 0 plus gamma 1 of gamma 1 of x 0 the the the the the knowledge of x 0 helps this term come out of the expectation right. But more importantly what is happening is that the the knowledge of x 0 is more than that what is happening is now that there is now that there is x 0 known here I do not need to know x gamma 1 of x 0 out here. So, this here it becomes equal to simply the conditional expectation of x 0 less gamma 1 of x 0 given x 0 given x 0 and if you want we can from there we can also compute v so it becomes just x 0 comma v right. So, in general if you see if you have something of the following form so suppose you are you are trying to you have you are evaluating say g of t g of t which is the expectation of some function f of x given f of x plus v equal to t this conditional expectation remember is this here would be a this as a this is now a function of t and for evaluating this function for any value of t right. If I want to evaluate this function for any value of t I need to know the the probability distribution of f x plus v right. So, what this here remember is a random variable is a random variable let us call this let us say let us call this z say this is a random variable z its distribution depends on x v and f. So, the probability distribution of this random variable depends on the distribution of x v as well as on it right. So, whatever you are conditioning on its distribution itself depends on the function f. Now on the other hand notice what is happened once if I if I gave the information if I gave access to x 0 then the dependence on this gamma 1 has gone and all that is remained is just x 0 and v right. So, in particular suppose if in the same way if I had here given given access here to if I had given access to x here then this conditional expectation would then become just conditional expectation of f given x comma v and as a result of that this the it would not the whatever you are conditioning on this would be independent of f of course it is a different matter that f appears here which is which is what you are taking expectation of but that is not that is not important the point is that the whatever you are conditioning on it becomes independent of it right. So, so this is where the difference becomes if you had where you go when you go from classical to non classical if you if you are in the classical information structure that means if then you would have access to x and then whatever you are conditioning on would be would become independent would become independent of this function f here this function f here. So, whatever you are conditioning on is would be a random variable whose distribution is independent of this function f. So, in the case of a stochastic control problem that the thing that you are conditioning on would become independent of the previous policy right. So, in the so in an MDP this is exactly what happens in an MDP past action affects information but past policy does not whereas in a non classical problem in a non classical problem past policy can affect the information of the future. So, as a result of this the optimal choice of the policy of the future would depend on the policies of the past right this is in fact would be functions of the policies of the past. So, the optimal policies of the future. So, optimal policies of the future which means optimal policy at time two is a function of the policy at time one. So, if you remember the way we solved MDPs is that we MDPs came about through a nesting of policies the you had an action that you took at a certain time that result in an a state that state then resulted in an observation that observation then resulted in the next action and this is how we there was a nesting of policies where the previous policy came up was being composed with the next policy which was being composed with the next policy and so on. So, in an MDP what we see is a composition of policies right. So, the policies of so policy of in other words policy at time two time at time two this gets composed with the dynamics or policy at time one let us say gets composed with the dynamics which then gets composed with which gets composed. So, policy at let me write this. So, what we see in an MDP is something like this. So, you have a you have policy at at time one which gets composed by with the dynamics which gets composed with the policy at time and so on which will get composed with this dynamics again. So, you see that there is a composition happening of policies and so on. On the other hand in a non classical problem you do not have a composition what you have is that the policy at time two is a function of the policy at time at time one. In a non classical problem policy at time two is a function of policy at time one. So, the policies are function the later policies are functions of the policies of the past. So, because there is no so because of this reason you cannot nest these policies. So, there is no nesting no nesting of policies possible possible and no dynamic programming arguments no dynamic programming. So, you cannot make there is no dynamic programming arguments possible. So, as a result of this the policies of the past have to be determined alongside the policies of the future knowing that the policy of the future has to is a function of the policy of the past. So, what one needs is basically to what one has to do is if you want to any plausible way of solving this problem what one needs is that the policy at time two should be written as a function of the policy of time one. So, you this and then you search over the space of policies in order in over the space of policies at time one and then optimize over that set of policies. So, this therefore becomes this enormous complexity that I was talking about in the previous lecture. Now, the other thing that manifests in the Witsenhausen problem is this. So, as I just mentioned the policy of the past affects the information of the future, but the policy also has its native purpose which is to minimize the cost. So, the policy appear and ends up having two roles to play. On the one hand it has to minimize this cost term here and on the other hand it also has to give the right amount of information to the future because it is implicitly present in both of these terms. So, if you see this term the policy is present in this yellow highlighted term here it is present here as in the again as a cost term, but it is also present here as an argument to this to the policy of to the policy at the second state. So, consequently the policy comes up makes an appearance in a dual way. So, we say so the policy of the past contributes to the cost through an action, but also to the information available in the future. So, as a result of this policy we say that the policy has a dual effect we say in that case the policy has a dual effect. So, I will define this more formally in the coming lecture, but this is what the dual effect basically means that the information of the future it depends on the policy of the past. It of course depends on the action of the past and that is given and that is true for every problem, but it depends on the policy of the past which is the issue at hand. In that case we say that there is a dual effect in the problem people also use the word by in which they say that signaling is present signaling is present. So, we will now what we will in the next lecture we will look at some more some variants of the Wittson-Hausen problem you know and there we will examine whether the dual effect will formally define the dual effect and check if the dual effect actually holds in the in these variants.


I mean, when it comes to DFW, I like Bugatti Casino. It's a couple of cats out here. You know, I'd be like, okay, I rock with them. But for the most part, now, mode three was a take us to that next, you know, over there to that next level. You know what I'm saying? And you got yellow, like yellow, BZ and trap. Boy, Freddy, who's doing a thing is where yellow had a big hit. You know what I mean? But the mode three was coming with something that's going to stay. I feel like I don't boss talk one on one. You asked about the music, man. How do you feel about the music in the Dallas and the metro area? And with mode three passing away, how do you feel like that that done? Well, the positive or negative to the music scene in Dallas. Well, Mothroo's the only kid I was listening to at the time in Dallas. You know what I mean? Like now after this two year window has passed, I like big exit plug. You feel me? It's a couple of cats out there that I've been running across. They never okay. He's I like, I mean, when it comes to DFW, I like Bugatti Casino. It's a couple of cats out here. You know, I'll be like, OK, I rock with them. But for the most part, now, mode three was a take us to that next, you know, over there to that next level. You know what I'm saying? And you got yellow, like yellow, BZ and trap. Boy, Freddy, who's doing a thing is where yellow had a big hit. You know what I mean? But mode three was coming with something that's going to stay. I feel like I feel like yellow had that hit. That was that was that one hit. But I felt like three was going to come and put us in the game and keep us there for a while. Three can sing a rap. Yeah, losing mode three. Miss Dallas. So, bro, but Dallas is a I'm going to say about Dallas, bro. Dallas is a greedy.  You know, half the I heard be hating on each other. Dallas is most definitely a credit card crab in the bucket. But all that's true. Don't ever think that's not true. And they say that about Dallas, bro. Dallas hate to see other Dallas win, bro. They don't like it, bro. You'll lose your life coming up in Dallas, bro. If you famous in Dallas, boy, take that. Boy, what they supposed to be me? Take that. Wow. And that's Dallas. So anybody ever say it's not true. I've been in this game in Dallas for 20 years from the rap into the blogging, bro. Yeah, then that's our blogging. Some, you know, they didn't rock with it.  Oh, it was down. But now guess what? I don't need you to write. I wanted I was trying to get some interviews and you when I first started them blew up. Hey, man, let me do my thing.   You feel me? Wow. Yeah, now that you them blew up and turned your stuff into something, I knew we didn't got rid of you. Now, like, you know, more than one shot. Talking bad about you behind the scene. Yeah, but I love it, bro. I love it. You you definitely didn't embrace it, man. And did you ever see it like this whole side of the coin? When you I know you came for a C certain things. Yeah. But for you to to become successful in the blog world like you have done. Did you even see a smidge of that happening?  Yeah, not really. But I mean, I didn't need it. Yeah, not really at all. Like for me, I never thought about it. Yeah.


Everybody for us here rip in 2022 Bowman inception baseball hobby a box half case number 16 Random teams you can check the results anytime elite sports cards calm. Let's go ahead and get started Okay, so next is that a redemption. Yeah, it is. I haven't seen a redemption in this yet. All right We got a Dodgers Eddie's Leonard to 25 We go in the orange 21 to 25 Dodgers that is Eddie's Leonard. Let me see what this will be numbered to nice Yeah, big redemption to Brewers Jackson choreo base prospect auto fuchsia foil Parallel that'll be number to 75 monster choreo brew crew Carl Congrats Carl. We got a Frank Mazzicato to 399 Royals auto. Yeah, that's a great hit He's the top ranked prospect in this set at least I believe It's either him or uh, there are two number parallels here. Oh, there's I got an auto You're with V Voss 250 are they out of them? I think I got it just out of order You're with V Voss Dodgers gold out of 250. That was a Luis Mesa No There's two parallels. Okay. All right. We'll take that though Roger Garry a 74 and 90 90 Yankees and Trace Sweeney red to five. There you go. Yanks Tracy F Let's break his killing it so far. Well, Maggie Trace Sweeney won a five red Sweet Sweeney and a Dalen Lyle auto 294 399 Double parallel box had the red dude. That's crazy. Sweeney's a good one, too I guess so Carl big redemption magnet. Don't forget to mention that part. Oh Shane. That's tough man Was it a good redemption or was it just a meh? Also, that would have been with a different manufacturer if we talk about points Got a headbert Perez number 48 of 50 Brewers parallel Red Sox auto Alex Benelus number nine of 75 and Dodgers auto blue color match at Jose Ramos 45 and 99 San Miguel Vargas for the Dodgers is gonna be Good rookie this year. Oh nice Carl Jamo is gonna be like almond raw. These guys are gonna be studs together Gold to a 50 Henry Davis for the Pirates Yankees now a Roderick Arias auto 44 of 75 Great hit Yankees Crushing it with that red Sweeney and an Arias auto now and a Red Sox Marcelo Meyer auto 178 of 200 This break is outrageous right now Marcelo Meyer going to Boston Andrew M Benny Montenegro number 36 and 99 for the Rockies A's auto Ryan Q sick 368 of 399 and Red Sox again a gold auto Tyler McDonough 10 of 50 All right, number 40 of 50 Christian Santana Tigers One of one inception foil fracture auto yourland confidant Reds Yep Yep, we've lost it. We've lost it. Jeff to lost our minds We're going bananas Grads Reds on the confidant auto. I'm sure Sam would be loving this one if you pulled it. I Got to it first though. So you you guys are lucky Congrats Cincinnati one of one yourland confidant auto And a Jordan McCants Marlins auto 131 of 250 cubs Alexis Hernandez 95 out of 99 White Sox auto Eric Hernandez 16 of 25 White Sox nice orange 25 and a trace Sweeney primordial prospects auto to 99 now Yankees Yankees killing it Still killing it. I haven't seen a Jordan Walker tonight. I believe Jordan Walker only has a base I don't think he has autos in this. We've got a Pedro Paneta 49 to 50 for the A's We're pretty close to full Shane. It's gonna be for sure after 1 a.m. Tonight. It'll probably be closer like 130 145 now Last time I checked anyway. We go A's denser Goosman 10 of 99 angels auto You go angels denser Goosman auto to 99 This is crazy dude another red Padres auto Yendri Rojas for a five Congrats Padres. We'll get that one mag as well the red to five Insane eight box break best break of this. I've seen consistently all day. We've had we've had some huge hits But overall as a break goes that was crazy crazy Autos we had Frank Mazzicato Jordan McCants Tyler McDonough Ryan Cusick Dale and Lyle Marcello Meyer Jose Ramos denser Goosman trace Sweeney Alex Benelis Roderick Arias Robert vivas and an Eric Hernandez Maggot cards we had a red trace Sweeney one of five Yankees red four or five auto yendri Rojas for the Padres Prospect auto fuchsia foil the 75 redemption Jackson choreo brewers and One-of-one reds inception foil fractor auto Gillian confidant That'll do it. Thanks again, everybody. We're on to a full case of inception


Hello everyone and good evening. My name is Taryn Earhart and I'm the Arts and Special Events Programmer here at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. On behalf of the library and the West Vancouver Art Museum, I would like to welcome everyone to tonight's art talk, Douglas Copeland in conversation with Hillary Leckwin. While I recognize that we are all in different places this evening, I would like to acknowledge that the West Vancouver Library and Art Museum reside within the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Squamish Nation, Slavictooth Nation, and Musqueam Nation. We recognize and respect them as nations in this territory, as well as their historic connection to the lands and waters around us since time immemorial. I am personally grateful to call the Pacific Northwest my home, and I'm thankful to the Coast Salish communities that continue to protect the natural beauty and animal diversity that surround me every day. It has been my great pleasure to work with Hillary and her guest tonight to bring this event to our community. And now I would like to pass things over to Hillary, who is waiting for us over at the museum. Have a great night. Thank you very much, Karen. We are so delighted to be presenting our artist talk with Douglas Copeland this evening here at the West Vancouver Art Museum. We are sitting in our exhibition, Radit Lane, which is a project that we've been working on for the last two years. And the exhibition, of course, is on here at the West Vancouver Art Museum until May 28th. So, Doug, welcome. Oh, thanks, Hillary. Nice to be here. It's so nice to be able to get together and to reflect on this project that we've been building for the last little while. So, let's talk a little bit about how the project came about, and then we'll shift gears and speak a little bit about the book. So, we started working together because I sent you an email and said, we'd like to work with you here at the West Vancouver Art Museum. And you very kindly got together with me and started to talk about what a project here would look like. So, in our initial conversations, we spoke a lot about how West Vancouver, the place, influences your writing and influences your art. So, what about Grofer and Nakoma appealed to you for this particular project? Oh, boy, I think it has to do a lot with the relationship we have with both time and with history. And at what point does something that is old become history? What do we choose to forget and what includes history? And what happens to us, or accidents, slips through the cracks and actually does become history. And the book, the show's based on Grofer and Nakoma, was written in 97. And it's set in this little neighborhood of the British properties in the very eastern wastage, Rabbit Lane. And by sort of a geographical accident, it's very up against Kaplano Canyon on one end and this big empty golf course on the other. And I used the expression, it says, though time stood still back in 1966, they just put a bell jar on top of it, and it never changed. And I've met so many people since and said, oh my god, you noticed that about that place too. And so in the book, you have characters who graduate from high school in 78. And then one of them, Karen, goes into a coma for two decades, and then she emerges. And that's where the discussion about time and history begins. She remembered what shocking was not shocking. And then through a sort of a metaphysical catastrophe, time itself ends. And then so what happens when you're living outside of time? And what happens in it, which is essentially a world of consequences really. And so maybe you've actually been inhabiting real time as if there's no consequences as well. You know, shape up and maybe you have to renegotiate your relationship with being alive in a world. I think that's ultimately the story of the book and the show in turn. So we set about to stage these scenes from the book, or from the coma. And you have a brilliant idea of crowdsourcing our cast members and our cars and our homes that we use. You've done a bit of crowdsourcing before for Gumphead, for example, and some of your other projects. What about this particular project did you think would appeal to all of the very generous people who got involved in the project? I think that if you look at the images in the show, you'll see that we have the characters who inhabit the photographs, but the photographs themselves have been inside and outside of this form of architecture that most of us here grew up in. Which I guess technically comes up with five and ten dollar blueprints supplied by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation back in the 50s and 60s. You know, they don't do house tours of CNHC homes in West Vancouver. They're just very homely and drab. But the people who responded to the call for volunteers almost to a one grew up inside these houses, they instinctively understood what I was talking about in terms of the sense of time standing still, compressing, shrinking in and around these places. And I think they wanted to help commemorate that part of history. Because I don't think it's ever actually been, I've looked at museums across the country and I've never seen this sort of house celebrated or acknowledged even. So I would say that pretty much everyone that volunteered is from and of the environments that we were working in. And certainly of the people that I spoke to over the course of the photo shoots, the idea of there being a sort of worldwide plague or pandemic that leads to everybody's death, except of course for this group of friends. I think people found the idea of a pandemic because we were in a pandemic when we were doing this project. I think they perhaps found that quite appealing as well. The project began shortly before COVID. The film production company that owns the rights to Ropeta Nicola. They contacted my agent and said, we're pleading for a special order. We can't make this movie because real life is a clip stick. And we could never make it. And I think maybe that's just them being cheap bastards and whatever. But it was this sort of, you know, the book when we began seemed fantastical. And then as real history in real time and on it became not really fantastical at all. And the things that were really bizarre two and a half years ago were quotidianized to an almost amazing and amazing level. So we flipped out on that slide at that stage. And it was remarkable how excited people were to be involved in the project. It was wonderful. So everything, the photos has been borrowed and loaned, including the cars and the costumes and the houses themselves. That to me is certainly a remarkable part of the project. People would ask, what do I wear, of course? And we'll just sort of, you know, you're going to the same one. It's 1998. And people brought like five or six alternatives. Some people brought 10. And then we had these informal polls of, okay, what looks most 98. And that was so democratic. And I've been on a lot of union shoots. And they were just saying they were going to go over time so they could back up the dough. And everyone here was just dawdling, just trying to extend the happiness of the experience. And then a few of the characters, Maya and Gemma and Scott, were in a lot of the photos. And they became sort of like we're all superstars throughout the shoot. And the opening was really lovely to see them and it felt like a family reunion. It has been really fun to see the cast members come in and see the photos. Because of course they saw a very rough version of each photograph on the day of the shoot. We showed them the sort of the very rough version. And then as they come in to see the photos, a lot of them and taking photos of themselves in front of the photos. And it's a really neat aspect of the project. It used to be just a very good time to point out that the photos themselves, although printed seemingly largely here, we were filmed using six high-definition cameras by a cameraman and photographer Blaine Campbell. We did a superb job of knitting them all together. The images are ultra high-definition and a lot of the people comes from that. But I think the structure of the photographs owes a lot to, I would say, classical painting. People in the shots, they would say, how do I pose what do I do? And I think we've all watched so many movies and cartoons and TV shows where there's a wind machine going and there's someone saying, you know, make love to the camera. And instead we were saying, well, you know, the last supper, you know, everyone's sort of in relationship to everyone else, try and actually go for that kind of look. And it translated seamlessly. I don't think there's one person who didn't understand what we were saying. And so it was nice, you know, we're talking about time and history that, you know, suddenly you're being the 16th century in the equation. And then in the moment you said painting, or we said painting, people suddenly realized that they were a part of something, a time stream outside of just the here and now that would actually make you wrong. That was kind of, that was magical. That was a really cool feature of the, of the posing. And of course, all of the models had to hold that pose for 30 to 50 seconds, right? Which is quite a long time trying to stay in one place. I was watching this set of Barlow comedy, A Million Ways to Die in the West a week ago. And a running joke in a movie is like, you heard this, there's this guy in Texas who actually smiled for 30 seconds. And it became sort of like the selfie of 1856 or something like that. And very few of our models were able to hold that smile for that period of time. We had a few, but most people found it a challenge to hold that particular smile. It's really hard. I couldn't do this. So they, not only were our models generous with their time, but they were also extremely patient while we captured the images. And that was, that was, yeah, the classical painting references I think were really important because as you say, they bring us into a discussion about time and these sort of character prototypes. But they also gave our models who were not actual models with one exception an idea of what we were looking for, what we were looking for. I mean, I will say that this week, maybe it's just because it's spring and everything's sort of bouncing back to life that, yeah, I'm 60 now. And the world's going to go on with or without me. And it's very, very humbling. Park Royal still going to be there in a hundred years, likely. She knows what how long we'll be there for. So like, oh, I really was just passing through here. And I think there's this sort of assumption that comes with modernist thinking that somehow you'll go on forever, but you don't. And maybe it's a weird self-executive day, but I'm feeling very emotional today, I think. And these pictures make me feel like a band-aid for that. Thank you. So let's talk a little bit about what's changed since you wrote the book because it is coming out for 25 years. And I get the sense that there are some things that have changed since we wrote it. I'm remembering back to the 298. And I've always tried to set my books in what I call the extreme present when I began writing, which is going back 30, 30-something years ago and all. I was like, oh, your books will just be dated. And I know what's happened now is each of those just become a really hermetically sealed time capsule of the era that they're from. In the 1909, it was no existence. Back then, you had a very nascent internet that had yet to become a magnet. You had no smartphone technology. You were actually still, we were living inside of Francis the Viano's and the state liberal democracy, Fantasia. And it was sort of, you know, 9-11, and you've been on the roller coaster ever since. There was a kind of purity and innocence about the 90s that I think is remembered when we come back.  And I was at the opening of the Mall of America in Minnesota, Bloomington, Minnesota, I think it was. And it was the opening day. And it might as well have been the 19th century. I was up on this podium at the local WKBC radio station. The 4-H Club was like awarding prizes to check-ins. And there was this roller coaster that was coming every 62 seconds and we were like within like three feet of our ears. And there's all these people walking around and eating ice cream. And the guy from the radio station looked at me and sort of misjudged me and thought, well, Mr. Smarty Pat, you must think this is all pretty silly. And I said, not Moody's Bit, not Moody's Bit. I think that in 100 years we're going to look back on an event like today is some sort of charm to the magical period that can never ever come back at the time of almost ultimate peace and prosperity and friendliness. And his reaction was like, oh. That's his speechless. I mean, I think that's awesome to know. You had these characters that were, I think, inhabiting a political vacuum, certainly an ideological vacuum, a moral vacuum. Again, coming back with the bell jar and the nothingness of it. I think actually, and just looking back on the book, reading, I've already read the whole thing. It's quite hard to reread something like that. In the book, the characters, they have older cycles and they get around quite easily from here and there. But I realized that what we've learned, trees stop all down very easily and they block roads instantly.  So I realized in retrospect, they probably would have been confined much more in two-point neighborhood. They wouldn't have had the agency to go around and see the world. But I do recognize that, I suppose. Absolutely. So let's talk about the scenes that we staged in the photographs because there was certainly some logic to the scenes that were selected. But there are some surprises as well. So the scenes generally are moments of drama in the narrative. But we also had some considerations around the expense and feasibility of certain shots. We definitely wanted to avoid gore. At least I wanted to avoid gore. And we could have gone as we could. I know, I know. Okay. Because there certainly are moments in the books that the leavers, for example, the bodies of people who died, which are all over the place in the last part of the book. So we avoided those over-signs of blood and guts and gore and really went to scenes where he could insert that sense of doom, that sense of commonessness and certainly some of the photos of that. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what your criteria were for picking the scenes that you did. I think I was looking for charged moments throughout the book or taking moments that had some charge in amplifying that sense of drama. Some of the photographs don't map on to exactly that scene inside the book, but they're suggested by certainly. I think that, for example, you have the character Pam who is in the photo with the baked beans on the floor. She's wearing a macrame jumpsuit. Highly stems directly from Anne Margaret in the movie Tommy. In the 70s, they're, and I'm just old enough to remember a certain kind of decadence that really no longer exists. And a way, I think, what is decadence? It's an abuse of responsibility. And I think that these characters certainly embody that. And I think that when she's in the baked beans ready to be able to do something decadent in the photographs here right, there's a sale that's going on which happens in the book. But there are like three large sized boxes of fruit loops on the floor. And I think in one sense with the photograph, I would really like everyone who's not seen the book just come in these photographs and say, what the hell's going on here? I need to know what is happening.  And there is this other world that is hidden inside all of us. I was thinking of the real kind that was certainly my favorite poet. Each of us has a letter inside of us that lies in wait to be opened. And I think that the photographs here, they all inhabit some moment in time when the letters are being opened and you're actually seeing something that lies inside of all of us. The thing I don't understand, Hillary, is why is it so hard to know yourself?  Why can't I access what's really going on in here? Maybe people do therapy. It's really, really expensive. It's like going to Antarctica. It's incredibly expensive. And when you get there, there might not actually be anything. And so I think maybe what art does or what art tries to do is just let you open and just see inside a little bit. Maybe something that's there that's very, very hard to access. And maybe it's for the common good that we all don't know too much about ourselves. So that actually is a fantastic way to express what a lot of our visitors have been expressing when they've come in to see the photographs. And I'm thinking in particular about one image, 5.30 a.m. grad night. And in that image, we've got the two young high school students who just had their grad night in these amazing 1970s tuxes, ruffled shirts, orange and blue tuxes. They are a sight to behold. And that particular photo from the series elicits the most significant response from visitors because I think they just get walloped by this sense of nostalgia when they look at it. And it never ceases to amaze me. That's the photo that people immediately gravitate towards. More than the bees, which in my mind is even more dramatic. So let's talk about nostalgia for a minute and how, you know, certainly back to your childhood here in West Vancouver. This is a hyper-local project for you. It's a very personal project for you. Did you get a great sense of nostalgia as you were looking on this particular project? First of all, I'll say that the blue tux in that photo is identical to the one I wore. And the two teenage guys who modeled for the shot, they just looked at these bags as like, seriously. The feathered pair. And you have to understand that every single guy on Earth had that hair. And every girl on Earth had the feather or the Dorothy Hamilton one cut. And that was it. It was really the only option you had. I didn't think of it as nostalgia. I thought of it as historical accuracy and just getting it right. Even down into something like the license plates which we had to research to make sure they were not authentic. And I guess what's changed between then and now is to look at some of these interiors. They don't look that different from right now except if it was right now there would be something somewhere with a little tiny LED light blinking somewhere. Or there would be a lot more in the summer down near the floor. There's this idea that I've been thinking about. And then I've been talking about some friends of American museums and futurology and that sort of thing. And what if there is no next big thing? And what do you mean, Doug? Well, okay. We've had search forms of digital communication. We've had the way that those ideas play out with things like Uber or PayPal or what have you. We're 23 and you get used to sign or to solve murder code cases, etc. But what if there actually is no next big new technology coming down the pipe? And then I don't even think this idea has a name yet so I'm trying to find one for it. But then what does that mean? It means that the technology we have right now is possibly all that we're stuck with, all we're going to get. And this can work out a number of ways. Number one is like, but wait, we're so used to having these idiots in Palo Alto withdrawing. Something new it is, 18 months. And apparently it'll be another decade before we get another big thing thrown at us. And then it'll only come about as a result of AI. So like it or not, we're sort of trapped in this... I want to see rat nays, something like Arcusanti or something. What we have is all we're going to get in the next decade until we change things again. And so what will your living room look like in 12 years, what will mine look like? It'll probably look very different except for, you know, right now it's a blinking LED. It could be one little wire that comes down from the corner that's on the present. We, in Vancouver, a big surprising thing between now and then would be all the water and air conditioners. Two things that you'd never have seen in a house back in 78. And so things change, but they don't change. There's this one photo, it's in this kitchen, this house in North Vancouver, which never you and I were scouting out this other house and then we're like, hold the phone, what is that? And it was a really seminal ghost in me from 1958. And you called the owners by the contractor's sign and they said go on in and do what you want to do and what a score that was. So we went in and there was this kitchen and in 1958 it was the most modern kitchen in Canada. But then the original owners, they put that kitchen in and then they set it up sale as well. That's it. We're never going to change this kitchen ever again and they didn't.  And because at that point we were still scouting it out, we felt like we were in someone else's house or we felt like we were in a sort of sacred spot. And I think that, of all the shots, that's the one we just did. We have to do something here. And so we took a picture I had of an alarm strong and put it in. And it just sort of speaks to itself really. And then of course coming in and then do it at the top, its top-up corner is this great big log in like 20 something, you know, 2019 or something else. I love that photo. And I love the sort of the happy circumstance of the way that whole photo came about. And we did do a great deal of planning for the shots and making sure that we had the right props and the right people and the right costumes and the right cars. But there were always those accidental moments that I think also shine through in the series. And certainly that is one of my favorite instances. I also love the Cleveland Down shot that we did, which was the very last shot that we did in the series. And if I remember correctly, we shot that in October. So we did most of the shoots in August and we read it until October to do Cleveland Down because we needed it to be dark enough and we didn't want it to be 10, 30 at night. So Cleveland Down is a place near and dear to your heart. Do you want to talk a little bit about that particular? Well, I grew up from kindergarten right through the grade 12 just right up above the Down. It was never more than a six-minute walk away. And the thing about the British Properties is that there's never been any retail allowed. I don't know why. Growing up, if you lived up there, you had to get some butter.  It is an ecological travesty, I'll say that.  So my only experience with retail growing up was Hardy's grocery store, which you had to go down and down and across. And to this day... It's in North Bend. In North Bend, yeah.  It's magic. That's astonishing. But, yeah, no, we... I know every square inch of the forest down there. That's where what my ashes scattered.  The canyon? Oh my God. I'm so glad there's no social media back. Then, you know what? Did you get an assistant trouble there? I had a poor pair in the state. I had three brothers and my two older brothers, especially the Hell Army, all of us. You know, here's something else to remember. North Bend, Cougar and West Bend, Cougar, back in the 50s and 60s, there was this caricature of West Bend, Cougar and the British properties being martini hill. And those people had no idea that every house up there was basically some young family's first mortgage ever. When people back then had three, four or five kids, it was just like Central Ireland before the potato family. There was just like kids everywhere, crawling over and under and into things. And there was an actual sense of community. And I've been one of those people that keeps in touch with people. Albeit not by Facebook, which I don't like to approve of. But it was a nice time to grew up there. And to drive through it now, I think it's been through several different iterations since the time I grew up there. I think now if you drive up, especially through the properties, it's completely hollowed out socially. There's zero sense of community. Half the houses are empty. The large number that were there, like who knows who, they're going to get torn down. It has, weirdly, I read this in New Yorkshire, and it was the highest rate social dysfunction of kids going to school. In a lot of cases, the families just dump the kid there.  They just play video games, all the noodles in the basement, and then they can't function in the real world. So the disconnect between then and now is really something.  The tower on the summer was a barn in the cross creek or highland. They completely make a tunnel over the road. And in a weird way, one of the properties is turning into a form of rabbit lane. Rabbit lane itself seems to tick along. There's a few monster places going down there, but it still has that air of charged boredom. In one of the photos, there's the Yeti who's made out of videotape. And we just went and videotaped it, and glue got it and taped it on. We had no idea how successful it was going to be. And it was put on top of a little round UPS postal outlet, a jumpsuit. And Jay, who works here at the museum, she volunteered to put it on.  And dogs freak out. The dogs would freak out. I think it was your Helen in the costume. In my Halloween costume. But growing up, there was always the Yeti, or the Sasquatch, out in the Capilano Canyon somewhere, maybe up in the watershed, or up in the Hollywood mountain. And who was the Yeti? What was the Yeti? It must be very lonely being the Yeti. Maybe he's not evil after all, bang. I once read that they were going to... The one way to find out that there was a Loch Ness monster for sure, was they'd just electrify all the Loch Ness and then the monsters would go over and talk. And so I thought that with the Sasquatch, in a weird way, what's happened with globalization and sort of our cities and neighborhoods losing their innocence, is that somehow all the sort of Sasquatch is floating through the top. And I soon miss that innocence. So that is nostalgia. I miss what used to be there. I think this is probably a great time to wrap up our discussion. From Rilke to Futurology, you've covered a lot. And I'm very grateful to you for the chance to have worked with you on this project and to speak with you about it this evening. Well, Helen, it could never have happened with you. So thanks and no thanks to Library for doing this talk. The exhibition is open until May 28th. We are open Tuesday till Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and we are looking forward to seeing you here soon. Thank you.