So I'd like to introduce my cohost, Winnie Dang, and our two very special guests, Akinksha Batnagar and Ethan Sinak, and so I'll let them say hello. Hi everyone, my name is Winnie, like Winnie the Pooh. I work on the conference team so you'll be seeing me around today. Akinksha. Hi everyone, my name is Akinksha. I use your pronouns. I'm calling in from Ottawa, Canada. I was going to say Edmonton because that's where I'm originally from. And I've been on the Open Ed Steering Committee and this is actually my third time attending as a student. Awesome. Hey everybody, I'm Ethan. I use he, him. I am based in DC, but I'm from New England originally. And I am an old hat when it comes to open ed. But this is obviously my first virtual one, just like the rest of y'all. So I am excited to be here. Well, we are so happy to have both of you with us today. We're going to talk about, we all brought our mugs, so we're going to do our show and tell on our mugs and we'll talk, we're going to talk a little bit about our mugs. And then we'll go through and talk about a few things. Akinksha is going to talk about her student leadership and her Canadian federal advocacy, and Ethan is going to talk about how to have hard conversations and how to navigate them. And he's going to talk a little bit about his plans for a social event later. So we're going to start by showing, we'll all show you our mugs. And I, we're learning how to use the webcam. Not sure if you can get a clear picture. I'll start mine says, I don't sweat I sparkle. And this was actually a gift to me from my lovely sister in law, because she knows that I like to run. And so one of the crazy things that I did with with the pandemic as I started running every single time, which is something I never thought that I would be able to do. And so it's, I joined a virtual race. And the first one I did was the great virtual race across Tennessee, and I had to run 635 miles and three months. And some of it was walking, some of it was walking. But now I'm doing a circumpolar race around the world. Of course, this is virtual, right. These are all virtual, where I'm on it. I'm on a team with 10 people and together we're going to run 30,000 miles in 18 months. If we do it in 12 months. I know right. If we do it in 12 months we get a gold medal, but we're just doing it for fun. So, so yes I sparkle. Wendy, which month did you bring today. So I brought a double our diner mug. My boyfriend is a huge Twin Peaks fan, number one show for him. And he got me to watch all of them we started dating. And so for one year I surprised him as a four trip to the actual diner, and then we bought this one. So it was it was a awesome experience and a mug that reminds me of an amazing trip. And a shout out to all the 80 children who remember Twin Peaks. Alicia, do you want to tell us about your mug? Sure. So my mug is this little like gold plated elephant mug. So elephants are my absolute favorite animal. I recently got a stick and poke tattoo actually of an elephant that was inspired by this one. But the reason I got it is because I used to work at Starbucks many years ago, and they used to do things called partner discount so every single day you get 30% off but there were some days where you got 50% off. So I got like every single mug usually that was there so I got this one. There was another one of a giraffe and then there was another one of the map of Africa the continent so it was really beautiful and now I just like only wash it very carefully and it's just so hard to go into Starbucks now and not want to get all the mugs but I don't get the discount so it's less exciting. Ethan, what about your mug. I don't have so I don't know because it's white. It's going to get blotted out but my mug doesn't have much of a story but we usually do a like white elephant of mugs only among my friend group here in DC.  And you are fabulous Ethan. Thank you. Absolutely perfect. So, when he's going to tell us a little bit about. Sorry. We're going to have today as part of the program. Yeah. I'm going to be connecting at tea time at 130 EST so that will be with some plenary speakers. And then I'm also really excited for a 530 to 830 a three hour long social programming if you're up for it of dungeons and dragons. And I'm going to read off really quickly the storyline that they've set. So for decades, Alaria Fae wing known as the master of Merriam bow has trained and mentored groups of young adventures and exploration magic and fighting. When you and your friends completed your training and paid a let Alaria Alaria farewell just three days ago you didn't know that you would be her final students. She died in her sleep that very night but she left you a message in her will. It appears she has one more task for you. They'll be using role 20 if you want to join and check out the description to get set up beforehand. Awesome and when you do you know do you have to be like a veteran. Like a D player or can you doing like level one characters and they all I think they'll have some characters available. If you want to, sorry if you want to create your own character you're going to have to sign up for role 20 as soon as possible. But they have some pre made characters ready to go and it's kind of just imaginative. And you go with what so if you have a big imagination you should definitely definitely do it. And at times yeah that sounds like an amazing event. You know and I wanted to also recognize that that is a holiday and many countries, and we want to recognize those who are honoring this day, and also those who have served, and who have given their lives. We wanted to, to, to, to think about this day as we're going through our, our, our conference programming. Okay, so, so I don't know if y'all heard, if you tuned into the late show last night, but it snowed in Denver yesterday. And this is big news for me because I live in Houston where I'm not kidding you and when he to when he's in Houston. It is 80 degrees today. It is hot and humid, and we would have loved to have been in Denver in the snow. So I feel like we're missing out a little bit on on that part of attending open ed. But we were also chatting a little bit about how wonderful it is that we are virtual. And that it's really created a space for more inclusion and a lot more people to participate and so we're grateful for that. And my funny thing happened this morning. A couple of us showed up in these red shirts. And then we, we had some quick wardrobe changes. Is there any my, my special guest or co is going to talk about that a little bit. Well, I think essentially we wanted to send a throw down challenge to the folks on the late show to show up and be in matching uniforms. So, you know, it's also I just think we should take a moment to appreciate that it's not even just all red. It is all the exact same tone. Yeah. Which I think is, which is very challenging to accomplish. So I think we get, I think we get major props for that. Yeah, so this is a challenge I know Emily is here so this is a challenge for the late show come as coordinated as this. All right. I have to say it's it's been a struggle for me. I've been working remotely for six months and I've been using that as an opportunity to wear all of my favorite t-shirts and you know I've been rocking the work mullet where I have my nice you know I've got a little bit of a presentable shirt and then I have my sweatpants on. But you know so it's been a little difficult like I I forgot like what do you what do you wear to to work anymore like what do professional clothes look like. So, yeah, I'm already out I'm gonna have to figure out something for tomorrow. Okay, well, I we would really love to hear from a kink shot. She has a lot to share with us today so. Well, I just want to talk quickly about like I just think that it's never too early to talk about advocacy, and talking about you know, things that you can do to better the open movement but like I always say to my friends that advocacy is a lifestyle and so I just wanted to touch on what that kind of looks like and feels like as a student so I mean when I first attended open ed, I like did not know about all of the open stuff that was going on I was just like here because this is an affordable option and students are always coming up to me being like I don't want to pay so much for textbooks and I was like, I agree. I can't disagree with you. I've been for student government and the role of VP academic it just literally made sense for me to care about open and the more I've learned about it the more I've been genuinely interested about how open can change a lot of the world. So I've been introduced to things like open access and open data and so now the work I do with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, which is a national lobby group for students in Canada is working with formerly the try to make Canadian research granting agencies on things like open access and trying to find ways that we can actually streamline the process for making manuscripts and making data more publicly available to people. For anyone that is Canadian on the call you'll know that Canada acts in a certain way and then Quebec doesn't share a lot of their data so that's been really interesting to deal with when it comes to just doing research on a variety of things and doing research on the cost of tuition, for example, those things are actually really difficult to find, because there isn't people pushing for centralized databases for data, or centralized areas for universities to publish so I found it interesting and I just wanted to know if anybody else had an interest in that and to just reach out and because I think that, you know, from the Canadian perspective, and I'm sure that Ethan Winnie and Amy have heard me say this a thousand times is we just don't have organizations like Spark or like OpenStacks or like any of the above that are, you know, a conglomerate that does open education work. Right now it's a bunch of provinces doing their own work, Ecampus Ontario or BC campus are doing incredible things, but being from Alberta, we had the Alberta funding program, the AB OER program that was funding for just three years and then as soon as things got really great and people were starting to publish work, the funding ran out. And then all of that work had just sort of, you know, been put on pause. So I gave a lot of respect for a lot of the open education work that happens in the States but trying to find a way in the like federal environment in Canada has been really really difficult and I'm just starting to think about what that can actually look like now. So I'm honestly just like love talking about advocacy, it is a lifestyle but I've just been finding it really difficult as a student to find the ways to like really connect it on a national scale and I've just being on the open at steering committee or attending open conferences about how it works in different states and the countries and I've just found that, you know, Canada could be so much better than it really is because there's always so many Canadians doing this work but there's no real way to connect them. So I've been really lucky to do this work federally, but also locally at the University of Alberta. And that's basically all I wanted to say was that I feel passionately about this but I'm also frustrated that there's nothing in Canada that's happening at this level, especially like now that we have digital learning becoming the number one thing a lot of people are talking about internet and broadband access, but on top of that we could also be talking a lot about the world of open and how helpful that could be for not only just universities but government agencies and, you know, all of the above. Well, I can't show what you're inspiring to so many of us. Um, I'm just curious. Do you feel that your, your work with open ed may have provided some direction for you in terms of what where where you think you're headed next or what you like would like to do when you're, I always say when you finish like finish and quotation marks. Do we ever build a lead school? Yeah, I mean, I absolutely think that open ed has been like one of the most influential things for me to actually understand like how vast the world of open is. And I've made such awesome connections here so if I'm ever confused or want best practices I often go back to the people that I met at the open ed conferences, just because it's been just an easy community to get to know and that's one of the first things I noticed was that the community is actually super nice, which I mean it shouldn't be shocking but like it kind of is shocking like I've never gone to a conference, met people and then actually genuinely kept saying that they're like genuinely kept talking to them. Um, and so it's been really great to have attended the conference and learn from a lot of people and I don't think I would, you know, have the concepts I would had it not been attending a lot of weird sessions at open ed. But last year I focused on not going to student sessions, not because I wasn't interested but because I was so curious about how we can frame this for librarians or how we can frame this for faculty members or senior administration to be able to use like their own language to them when I go and, you know, talk to them about these things so yeah. Wonderful. So there is a question in the chat. I'm not sure if you want to tackle it but if you want to. Can you discuss how you would interpret the different emphasis between open textbook work and we are versus we are more aligned with open courses. I think that the biggest differentiation for students is that they only connect it with textbooks because that's the number one problem they're trying to solve. So the problem is that textbooks are too expensive so the solution isn't a we are. But I think that the way that we sort of tried to tackle that is talking about different aspects of open that are a little bit outside of education so open data is one of those things where people are like oh there's actually more to this so it's kind of like we're showing them one world, showing them another and then reintroducing them to open courses, which has just been a lot more interesting and by open courses I just mean like courses that are run. Not free because I mean with accreditation and everything it becomes very complicated, but just with like free course materials and are running an entirely open online manner. So I think that the differentiation, like just has to happen because students are specifically connecting things with only one problem that they're seeing, because the connection of open courses hasn't necessarily been made to them because like we're just like hardwired to believe that you pay for a course as property or tuition and that's how you get a degree, right there's not this like conversation yet about how like money does not equal a degree to some extent so a lot more complicated of a problem but hopefully that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think there's definitely that default of thinking you know like growing up in public school system, at least in the United States, you use Pearson McGraw Hill these standard textbooks but they are free. So when you get to college your assumption is the only text I can get is from those kinds of textbooks those are the only ones that exist to me. So it really starts pretty young and then in college, you're like well this is just the norm like I have no idea. What is a free textbook even mean. Right. So, absolutely and I think I think we might hear a little bit more about that this afternoon in the January when we hear from our. We have a state policy representative and we have an US national representative and I think that that will be an interesting conversation right I think you're right right when we talk about an independent school district making a bulk purchase. That convert you know that that's part of the conversation right and how is that different from then okay now you're a student and you're on your own and you're responsible for buying your course material. Yeah, fantastic this is all like to chime in here. I'd like to chime in here on that topic. Because one of the things I was going to bring up is the issue that K 12 is not really represented at this conference. Very much, I searched through the list to see if I could find somebody else that was generally generally referenced to K 12 and really couldn't find anybody. And so I've been working in this area for many years and primarily in K 12. And I'll just add that textbooks in K 12 are not free. They're really not free at all they're very expensive. The difference is who pays for them. And, and for us to have really open thinking about open education. I would suggest that we open our framework to consider a broader, a broader network. And also to consider the future. So who will be the future students in higher ed using open textbooks, and who will be the future teachers in higher ed, assigning open textbooks. Well, they're the people that are currently in K 12. So if we want to grow this movement, the place to grow it is not with little niches in graduate programs here and there. It's with K 12. And it's a huge market, but what's different is, and when he pointed this out is the economics of it. We, we have to address state departments of education and school districts as opposed to the individual purchasing decisions of students. It's a little bigger lift. I can assure you it's when you try to talk to departments of education. It's a kind of a complicated conversation. On the other hand, it's, it's, it's where we need to be in the future. So I'll just throw that out there. By the way, I'll be presenting tomorrow a K 12 solution in open education, where we actually combine open content, open apps with open source learning management systems. So there is, there is a way to do this. And it also will get at some of those differences between open access and open educational resources. And the way the way to really get at those, from my opinion, is to apply the five hours to each of them. If you do that, you, you come up with a pretty clear sense of where each belong in their categories. So I think this, this would be a great topic, I think for the discord to, I don't see a channel on the K 12 like on for K 12 folks yet so I think this would be a good thing to put a channel about in the discord and we can try to pull together some of the folks that are in the K 12 space and who are here and talk about strategy for sure. Yeah, Ethan, it's really perfect that you're here today because I know that you also work in the K 12 space. And we have one minute left before we have to everybody to concurrent sessions but I'd also still really like to hear from you and your comments on having these very hard and difficult conversation. Well, I just wanted to share one quick resource for everybody. The, you know, we have a lot of sessions these days, sort of challenging hard topics in the open education space, the role of invisible labor, the, you know, challenges with building a, you know, inclusive community in the open education space and I think you know some of these conversations can be hard and can be challenging. And so I wanted to just share one quick resource that I turned to in in moments like that where I'm feeling particularly challenged or I know a hard conversation is coming. I just posted it in the chat. Just a few quick tips. It's particularly around like receiving critical feedback but I think the tenets of it are super applicable. Sort of regardless of whether it's feedback or just a hard session or something like that and I wanted to share that and encourage everybody to go take a look at it. Thanks and do you want to we're going to go over just a little bit do you want to tell everyone about your social event that you have planned for us this afternoon. It's really sad to be competing with D&D because I would also love to be there. But if anybody is familiar with this like super trending party game called among us. I'm going to try to coordinate a bunch of different servers this evening and everybody can, everybody can give it a shot if you are interested. So that'll be during the social hour tonight. Thank you all so much for being here. I can't believe how quickly our time went by and it's already time to say goodbye and send you off to the concurrent sessions. Don't forget that we do have a plenary today at 1pm central 2pm Eastern, and this will be with Harrison Keller who is the commissioner for the higher education, I'm sorry the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Sharon Lou who will be joining us from the Department of Education and so we will be talking a lot about policy. And after Maha and Mia's excellent plenary I know that the bar is very high so we're we're super excited to have you all in these sessions and to have all of you with us. And, oh, join us tomorrow because there's still so much more we have to talk about and I hope a lot of you will be able to make Dan session on K through 12. And we can talk about how to have more participation from that space and that perspective. So, have a great Wednesday and I will see you all at the late show with Emily Reagan and Hailey Bab.


Now that we have the structure of our course ready, we can begin adding content. Now that we have the structure of our course ready, we can begin adding content and customizing our course. First, turn editing on. We have the option to hide or delete blocks on the course page. To do so, navigate to the block you wish to hide or delete. Select the action drop down menu. And choose whether you wish to hide or delete the block. When hidden, the block will be grayed out when in edit mode. Let's turn editing off and view the course as a student in order to see what the student will see. Select switch role, student. We can see the block no longer appears for a student. Let's go back to our normal role and turn editing on. If you wish to delete a block, navigate to the action drop down menu. And select delete. Select yes. The block is now deleted. Before we begin adding resources to our course, let's first take a look at the default filters. We can find the default filters by navigating to the course administration menu and selecting filters. Filters apply to all text content within your learning management system such as user profiles, resources, pages, forum posts and more. Filters process the text contained within your site and automatically change formatting. They can change words, add links and embed media automatically. For example, the activity names auto linking filter. For example, the activity names auto linking filter will create links to an activity wherever the name of the activity is written in text within the same course page as the activity appears in. This makes it easy for students to access the activity being referenced. Filters are enabled at a site level and can be removed as needed at a course or activity level. Here are the standard filters that are applied as a default to our course. Should you wish to change any of the default filter settings, you can do so here. If you're happy with the default filter settings, you can leave them as they are. Let's return to our course page. Now that we've reviewed our blocks and filters, we're ready to start adding content. To add content to your course, select add an activity or resource. The activity chooser will provide you with a list of different activities and resources that you can use to build your course. For now, let's focus on the resources available to add. By selecting a resource, you are provided with a brief description on the right hand side of the activity chooser. Should you require any further information about the resource, select more help. By selecting more help, you're taken to the appropriate Moodle Doc page for that resource where you can find more information. To exit Moodle Docs, simply close the window. For our first resource, I'd like to add a file. Select file, then add. Enter the name of your file. Add a description of the file if you wish to do so. Select the file. Select choose. Give the file a name and select upload this file. There are additional settings you can customize should you wish to do so. For example, display allows you to choose whether or not you would like the file to open in a separate window or to be opened within the course page. Additionally, you may choose to force the student to download if at any point you're unsure of what a setting means. Simply hover your mouse over the question mark to access more information. To close the information, simply press the cross. I'd like this to be opened in a separate pop-up window, so I'll select in pop-up. There are further options to customize this file, however I'm quite happy with the default settings, so by going down to the bottom of the page, I can select save and return to course. You can see my file now appears on the course. Should I wish to change the name of the file, I can do so by using the pencil icon. Once you're happy with the new file name, select enter. Let's add another resource. Select add an activity or resource. I'm now going to add a folder. Scroll down to the bottom and select folder, then add. Give your folder a name and a description if you'd like to do so. You can then begin adding content to your folder. Select the add icon and navigate to the files you wish to add. Select choose, add as many files as you like. Again, you can choose how you would like your files to appear from the drop-down menu. I'm happy for mine to open in a separate page, so I'll leave that as the default setting. Once you're happy with the files that you have loaded into your folder, select save and return to course. Your folder now appears in your course. To make any changes to your folder, you can do so by selecting from the edit menu and edit settings. You can continue to add files to your folder or delete files as required. If you don't have any changes to make, simply scroll to the bottom of the page and select cancel. Let's add another resource. Select add an activity or resource. This time, I'd like to add a URL. Select URL and add. Name the URL. If you know the URL's address, you can type it in directly into the field. You can provide a description of your URL should you wish to do so. Under appearance, you can select whether or not you wish your URL to display in a new window, in a pop-up window, or embedded within the course. I'd like my URL to display in a new window, so I'll select new window. There are other settings you can use to customize your URL. However, in most instances, the default settings are suitable. Once you're happy with your settings, select save and return to course. The URL now appears within the course. And when selected, opens the website in a new window. Let's add another resource. Select add an activity or resource. This time, I'd like to add a page. Select add. Give your page a name and a description if you wish to do so. If you would like to display the description on the course page, select display description on course page. You can now add content to your page. To access more editing options, select show more buttons. You have the option to include hyperlinks, images, videos, and other documents. Once you have entered in your page content, select save and return to course. Your page now appears within the course. If you would like to change the order of the resources on your page, simply drag and drop them to your preferred location. Let's add another resource. Select add an activity or resource. This time, I'd like to use a label. Select add. Labels allow you to embed video or sound directly into your course page. They can also help you break up a long list of activities or resources within your course, or allow you to add short descriptions to the course page. I'd like to use this label to provide some further information about how to complete the course. Enter in the content of your label into the label text box. If you wish to make any changes to the formatting of your text, you can do so using the options available. For example, you might wish to bold some of your text. You also have the option to use bullets, insert hyperlinks, images, videos, and other resources. You can use the options available here as required. Once you're happy with your label text, scroll to the bottom of the page and select save and return to course. Your label now appears on the course page. Again, should you wish to change the order of any of the activities or resources within your page, you can do so using the arrow icons. You may also wish to change the appearance of the activities or resources on your page, which you can do so by selecting edit and move right. If you'd like to move it back, simply select move left. Let's add another resource. Select add an activity or resource. This time, let's add a book. Select add. The book resource allows you to add multi-page resources that are broken up by chapters or sub chapters. First, name your book. Add a description if you wish to do so. Under appearance, you can select how you wish your chapters to be formatted. Either no formatting, numbers, bullets, or indented. Also choose the style of navigation. Once you're happy with the settings you have made, select save and return to course. Your book now appears within the course. To add content to your book, select the book and begin adding your chapters. Enter your chapter title. Add any content you wish to your chapter. Once you're happy with the content you have added, select save changes. Your first chapter has been successfully added. You also have the option to import chapters for your books by selecting import chapter from the book administration options under the administration menu. Let's go back to our course page. A handy feature when creating courses is the recycle bin function. Should you delete an activity or resource, it will automatically be placed in the recycle bin. Let's take a look. Select yes to delete. The recycle bin appears under the course administration menu. The item I deleted appears within the recycle bin. To restore the item, simply select restore. The item has now been restored. If we navigate back to our course, we can see the item appearing on our course page.


Hello everyone, Britt here and today we are in my little testing area. If you feel like you've ran out of decorating ideas in Minecraft, well then the wallpaper mod is going to be perfect for you. This showcase has cute and fun decorative wallpapers for Minecraft. In the wallpaper mod there are 16 different craftable wallpapers that you can use to decorate your house with. No more looking at those ugly dirt or wooden walls ever again. The wallpapers are quite easy to craft. For any of the 16 you only need two sheets of paper and two different dies. If you're wanting to remove the wallpaper you need a wallpaper scraper which I will show you how to make. It is crafted with a piece of paper and iron ingot and a stick and it takes your wallpaper right off the wall and back into your inventory. So let's jump right into our different wallpaper designs. First off we're going to look at the ancient wallpaper. You need two pieces of paper, dandelion yellow and cocoa beans. You get 12 pieces of wallpaper and it's best that you start at the bottom left because it will make a design as you go up.  That's I don't know what that is. It's weird. All right are you ready for this awesome sound? If you right click it makes the most pleasing sound ever. Next up we have just blue wallpaper, two pieces of paper, light blue die and dandelion yellow. I keep forgetting that it goes up. So it's four high so if you build your houses you better have four high. But look how nice this is. It's really pretty. I really like this one. Next up we have forest wallpaper. You have rose red and cocoa beans. We do actually have to put these in a specific order so I hope that I was showing them all in the right order. This one is really cool. If you're building like a fairy garden or a fairy house or something that's like mystical I feel like this would be perfect for that. Next up we have cityscape. This one is purple die and dandelion yellow. And this is pretty much exactly what you would expect it to look like. This is a beautiful city. So you can actually use this for like a window, a faux window. Pretend like you're up in a skyscraper or something. That would be really cool. Okay moving on we have the harvest wallpaper. This one uses lapis lazuli and magenta die. This one to me is very regal. It looks like it could be curtains for like a theater or something. I don't know if people make theaters and minecraft I would assume but fancy stuff, fancy stuff. Next up we have the lattice wallpaper. This one is a really cool one.  Look at that. This one's really awesome. I feel like you could use this pretty much anywhere. This could be used in like a study or outside in a garden area or even just in your bedroom or something. I like it. I like this one a lot. The next one is the library paper.  This one is, you guessed it, it's books. Lots of books so if you're making a library shelf instead of actually needing to put books on a bookshelf you can just have a giant bookshelf on your wall. Next up we have the lovely wallpaper. This is very girly.  This could be used in like a girls room or a boy who likes pink in hearts. We don't discriminate here so yeah it's very cutesy. It's not my style but you know I like the flowers on it. Next up is a really cool one that I actually do really like. This is the lunar horizon. It uses cyan and light blue die. This one is so cool. I feel like this is what I would use like every time in my bedroom wallpaper. I would probably wallpaper my whole entire house of this in this if I could. The next one is the manor wallpaper and this is a very cute one too. This one can be used all over your house.  Look how cute this one is. I love it.  Next up we have the mushroom mural. This might look familiar to you guys.  Let's see if you know what this is.  Next up we have the princess wallpaper.  This one I'm not a huge fan of but it is pretty. It's like a curtain tied back with the big bow and like wreaths behind it. It is very princessy. I feel like you could put one on either side of an entrance and make it look like curtains are hanging. Next up we have the tropical vista. This one is lapis lazuli and cyan die. Oh so paradise. It's really awesome. It's like the ocean in the sky. Yeah I could just kick back and pretend like I'm on the beach except I'm not on the beach at all. Next up we have the sky wallpaper which is lapis lazuli and bone meal. This one's kind of like the other one. The tropical one except for the clouds are on the bottom and the sky is just on top so this one's kind of like you're in an airplane flying high up in the clouds. You see it? Can you envision it? It's awesome huh? Next up we have an awesome one for Halloween or if you just want to scare people and have a spooky haunted house. It's this spooky wallpaper. It's orange and purple die. So spooky. Actually it's really cute. Little pumpkin heads. Oh and last but not least we have the sweets wallpaper. This one is rose red and cocoa beans. This one is super cute. Wait that's not sweets. I did it wrong. All right so that was a perfect example of if you put them the wrong way then it messes up. So there you go. Cocoa beans on top, rose red on the bottom. That creates the sweets wallpaper. If not you get the one that we had already done. So how yummy is this wallpaper? Oh and the floating one. It's so oh just I want to just take bite out of it. This will be super fun in like a candyland castle world or if you just like torturing yourself with late night sweet cravings. Drill. Okay everyone that is it for today's Minecraft wallpaper mod review. I hope that you did enjoy it and now you get all kinds of extras that you can add to your walls in your Minecraft world and it's super exciting and awesome. If you enjoyed this mod review please leave a thumbs up and come visit my channel where I do tons of Minecraft stuff. It is Brits games and you can find me in the links in the description below. If you'd like to download the mod you can also find that link down in the description box as well. Thank you guys for watching. Stay creative and I will see you next week. Goodbye. This isn't Glee. Who are you? How did you enter my castle? Well we were just wondering if you happen to know anything about the snow in town. Oh that yeah that was me. Impulse is produced by the Freedom Network. Ever wanted to earn revenue from your videos? Freedom offers a great partnership program which includes access to hundreds of thousands of audio tracks, sponsorships with great partners and most importantly a no lock-in contract. You can leave at any time for any reason. We accept everyone both big and small. For more information click here or visit the link in the video description.


What's up, Magnusites? Alright, so the new pictures for the rebooted Robocop suit have leaked. I just took a look at him and I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's bad, but he's more reminiscent of Christian Bale's Batman suit in the Dark Knight Rises or the second one, you know what I mean, rather than Robocop. The helmet looks kind of cool to me, you know what I'm saying, the mouth is open again, but the rest of the whole suit is black, and one of his hands is exposed, okay, the rest of the other one is a robotic hand.  I think that, you know, it's probably the reason why one of them is exposed, but I am amped about Robocop being released again rebooted, you know what I'm saying, that needs a reboot. The first one was an instant classic, because one of my favorite movies of all time. So I'm gonna put the link in here, tell me what y'all think of the new Robocop suit, and I'll see y'all next time. I'd buy that for a dollar.


So I'm going to, you know, overall the theme of this session is supposed to be about how various post-conflict processes.  But I want to ask a slightly different question. I want to look instead not at the purely post-conflict, but how do you try to address some of these concerns about violence or armed groups in the midst of sort of uncertain conflict situations? So most of the time we don't have a formal peace agreement. We have these situations where we're operating in a nebulous world of neither war nor peace. And in these environments, there tend to be a range of non-state or sub-state actors with a range of different affiliations and legal statuses that can sometimes be valuable allies in countering sources of violence, but also can themselves present a number of risks to political processes, to surrounding civilians, or of conflict resurgence themselves. And we are equally, if not even more interested in how you, if you can do anything to try and put constraints on those potential risks or that violence in the moment. And that's particularly the case when international actors are directly supporting or cooperating with these different armed groups. So to answer this, I tried to look to actual state practice. So I looked at what the U.S. and other NATO or coalition partners did when they were working with or partnering with some of these different non-state or sub-state armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. For example, what measures or mechanisms did they use to try to prevent the risk that they would commit human rights abuses or war crimes, that they would pass weapons or other material onto other insurgent groups, or that they would engage in other incriminality or exacerbate other political or conflict risks. And how is the treatment of these different groups or efforts to control them linked to other security sector or disarmament processes, for example. Now for this, I'm pulling from a series of different studies rather than presenting to you one paper. It's something I've been working on over the last few years. I'm not gonna get into all of these different groups. I'm just gonna pull a couple of examples from U.S. practice just for the sake of time. But I just wanted to give you a sense of some of the different groups that I'm talking about and some of the time periods that they're operating in. Now, first example. I was in Afghanistan for several years, but I was there in 2009, which was the height of the counterinsurgency strategy. And a big idea at the time was the idea of mobilizing local tribal forces and counterinsurgents. So U.S. special forces started fanning out across the country and sort of identifying tribes or leaders that would be willing to kind of stand with them and rise up against the Taliban. But back in Kabul, this idea was instantly controversial. Critics argued that it would have rolled back the last decade of state building and disarmament initiatives, that it would empower warlords, and that it would unleash unruly militias on the population. So there was a large deliberation about this, which I won't get into you. The end result was to go ahead with the forward, the program, sorry, which was known as the Afghan local police, but to do so with a range of different checks and controls. So there was supposed to be this intense selection period at the onset to check if a particular site would be prone to conflict risks or warlord entrapment or things like that. And then each of the tribal and community forces was supposed to be vetted and monitored through this multi-layered system by community or tribal elders, by the U.S. forces themselves, by the Afghan government. There was a code of conduct and a training, which included sessions on human rights law. There were specifically set out restrictions, for example, not to go beyond their home village or to engage in detention operations. And there were also supposed to be sanctioned so that they would be cut off if they committed human rights abuses or potentially prosecuted or subject to disciplinary action. Because as a conduct of being authorized, they were brought under the Afghan government, a sort of quasi security sector state-building initiative that'd be put under the Ministry of Interior. Now, there's varying degrees to which these checks or controls were actually implemented over time. I'll get to that a little bit in the conclusion. But just to have this sort of sense of the different controls, I wanna flash to another example. Flash forward a few years. After June 2014, ISIL takes a third of Iraqi territory. There's this massive effort to go back in and to retake some of it. But a lot of the Iraqi army had collapsed. And so an initial idea that the U.S. had was to go in and again mobilize tribal communities to support the anti-ISIL efforts or at least to hold the territory retaken afterwards. So the idea had a little bit of flavors of the sort of Sons of Iraq or Sahwa period, if any of you worked with that. But it also borrowed a lot of the checks and controls that I just mentioned from the Afghan local police. So again, they had this initial vetting for all of the different tribal forces that come in, vetted against insurgent links, against affiliation with Iran or other Iranian linked militias, and also for human rights record. They got a sort of big box training that was provided not only by U.S. forces but also some other coalition forces who were part of it, including also things on human rights law or the correct way to behave in addition to tactical.  So there were forces that committed detainee abuses or that used child soldiers in their cut from the program. And then also similar to the Afghan, there's an attempt to institutionalize them within the state to make it more sustainable. So the idea first was to have them be an Iraqi National Guard. And failing that, they're brought initially under this Iraqi three star general and later integrated into a slightly more problematic part of the state, the popular mobilization force. But I'll leave that for if anyone wants to get into it in questions and answers. Now with both of these examples, of course, the efforts are happening in the context of a larger stabilization or state building initiative and with forces that could nominally be linked to the state could be considered as part of a wider security sector reform strategy. What about in a more hostile environment and with purely non-state armed groups where you have far less to work with in terms of options for control? For that, I turn to Syria. There's so many different initiatives that happen in Syria. I'm not gonna barely skim over all of them. I just put this slide up so you could get a sense of how they change a little bit during the different time period. I'm happy to get into more Syria dynamics. But suffice it to say that the US supported a lot of the different Syrian armed groups from both non-lethal assistance and CIA lethal support to the parts of the Free Syrian Army in the early stages to a much more concerted overt effort once anti-ISO became the sort of dominant theme within Syria, so to lots of different militia forces in the Northeast and also a little bit around al-Taf but also the Syria democratic forces. And with all of these different groups, you saw a lot of the same sort of mechanisms of constraints and controls that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, where you had forces on the ground and present. And the funny thing is in many ways, you saw much more stringent legal checks and mechanisms with the Syrian groups, despite it arguably being an area that had the least prospects for control. So with the non-lethal assistance to the Free Syrian Army, you had State Department officials spending countless hours doing double and triple vetting of them, pooling through information, trying to figure out if red lines had been crossed and if forces should be cut. Once funded, then you have the Free Syrian Army commanders who received the CIA lethal support and they would report monthly to these intelligence hubs in Jordan and Turkey. They'd appear before the sort of murder board and answer questions, not only about operations, but about whether so-and-so was engaged in smuggling or a particular missile strike that had gone awry and hit a civilian camp. So you had that sort of constant engagement and then groups were cut off or limited from assistance where there was evidence of red lines crossed, affiliating with the wrong group, war crimes or other different incidents. Constraints were also high with the subsequent train and equip programs which are the various anti-ISIL programs. So with the first one that Congress funded in 2014, they went through what one lawyer described as sort of the gold standard of IHL training. I just put this on there because if any of you are lawyers, maybe you'll find it interesting, but these are excerpts of the actual oath they made these Syrian forces pledge to before sending them back into the field with limited support. And they're a little sort of like mini IHL oaths which is just remarkable to look at. You also had sort of similar things going on with the Syrian democratic forces, not these sort of oaths, but checks in terms of vetting, restraints and monitoring on weapons, cut-offs, complaints raised, various things like that. So what are the potential policy and research implications at looking at practices like this? I think there's a couple of different important questions you can look at from trying to sort of regulate these issues in the midst of ongoing hostilities. And I'll take these in sort of reverse order just to make sure you're paying attention and not just reading the slide. So some of this I've used, I'm a lawyer by training initially and so some of it I've used for legal work. If there are other lawyers out there, these are really interesting examples of what state practice looks like in terms of due diligence obligations with regard to international humanitarian law. In my sort of policy I had, I often look at them in terms of what they say about theories of proxy relationships or proxy warfare. There's a lot of ways that sort of the principal agent dynamics that come up a lot in those proxy discussions play out. There's also a lot of ways that they don't really anticipate when these controls crop up and how they're used. And so I think it offers an important way to nuance those sort of theories and how we think about these sub-state relationships and what happens when you intervene in hyper-dynamics. And then perhaps more interesting for our questions that we're thinking about in this conference is what are the effects in terms of first stalling violence? How should policymakers that want to try and enact some of these standards actually respond? The results of the different studies that I looked at, they weren't overwhelmingly winning. It would be hard to say that you saw clear evidence of changes of behavior. For sure there were undoubtedly some bad apples who were prevented from having US funding. Some weapons were prevented from going astray. But the overall impression, even from those who were very dedicated in implementing these was that it's very hard to affect changes of behavior in these environments from these sort of technical checks. So from screening, from a bunch of names in a database in DC or a one day human rights training when there's no follow through and things like that. So that's an important caution is just the sort of limited effects to them. There were also significant costs to doing this in terms of the time and manpower involved, but almost even more significant in terms of the way it affected political decision making and choices. So in several of the cases, the focus on identifying forces that met this exact criteria or even just having this sort of due diligence process or checks sort of substituted or distracted from maybe a more important and deeper reflection on the larger political choices that would have had a more direct bearing on conflict drivers or some of the risks of these groups. And maybe that's something we can build on a little bit more in the final discussion. And then I just wanted to also note because it connects to a lot of some of the other discussions I've heard in other panels, I think there's also a way you could pull from some of these practices for larger learning about state building and peace building more broadly and particularly the stream that focuses on sort of bottom up state building. So this stream of examples, but particularly the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have a lot in common with the sort of bottom up or community based mobilization that you would see not only in the security sector, but say engagement and trying to use tribal dispute mechanisms in the justice sector, say informal justice or other community based or development initiatives. And they shared a lot of the similar drawbacks in that they were time intensive, slow to grow, difficult to scale, focusing here, because that's the theme of this panel on the institutional legalization, the idea that you could sort of just link them to the state and get dividends both ways. You get more of a state institution and control over them, but then you get all of these other sources coming up. Last sentence on this, I would just shorten that to say that, the idea of linking them to the state is only as good as the institutions themselves. So where you're doing this in areas that are already wrought by problematic institutions, linking to them states can cause more issues than it solves. And I can get into more of that in questions. So thank you very much.


The following is a presentation of TFNN. The Morning Markets Kickoff. With your host, Tommy O'Brien. Good morning, folks. We had a few technical difficulties there, kicking off the week with the office getting blown off by a little bit of a power surge. Not having to do with Hurricane... What's the name? I should know by now. Is it Ida?  Idalia, right? Not having to do with that. Not on our shores yet. It is coming for the Gulf Coast. Probably Tuesday night. Wednesday may be a bit of an issue here in Florida. But nonetheless, a little bit of a power surge. I think we're back on the air. Do we have my chart? Yeah, I think they got my chart up there. They got everything. We're rocking. We're rolling. Perfect. I see it. We're back live. Thanks to my producer, Al, for getting us back in action. And let's kick it off. We got the S&Ps right now. We are up by 22 points, folks. Let me jump around. Recalibrate my charts there. Back to the S&Ps. So we are above Friday action, 44.36 right now in the S&Ps. That's positive by about half a percent. NASDAQ 100. We're positive by 7 tenths percent right now as we're jumping around. And give me one second as I'm pulling up some of these settings, folks, as well. There we go. Brighten things up a little bit. I was looking a little dark there. NASDAQ 100 up by 7 tenths percent above Friday as well. We get the Dow right now. Above Friday action, up 159 points. That's about half a percent. The Russell up by half a percent as well. So you get the S&P, the Dow, and the Russell all up by half a percent. You have the NASDAQ 100 right now, up by about 7 tenths percent. Bitcoin trading at 26,000 right now. Crude above $80. And look at the spike action on crude, right? Wednesday we spiked to $77 and changed. Thursday $77 and changed. Friday you had to spike down to almost $78. This morning we're sitting right at $78. $79.95 for the price of crude. Gold contract up by about $4 at 1943 this morning. Folks, if you're thinking about gold, now is a perfect time to go check out the Gold Report. My dad, Tom O'Brien, he's got a webinar coming up on Wednesday from four till 5 p.m. eastern time on the gold market. He's got a new issue that's being published right now as we speak. I think it might be out right now. It's not. It's coming out momentarily. A new issue with the Gold Report coming out right now. Great time to check it out. Tom hasn't done a Gold Report subscriber webinar in a few years at least. You're already a Gold Report subscriber. You're going to gain access. No problem. That was a quick segment, folks, because of those technical difficulties. We'll be right back. We'll go over some of the markets. It's job Friday already coming up this week. Coming into Labor Day weekend. Lots to talk about. We'll be right back. Sign up for Rocket Equities & Options Report today with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. For all the details and to start your subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. TFNN, educating investors. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci Sequence. This mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market. To stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of, sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com. When you subscribe, you'll get a weekly report from Veteran Day Trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to, and you can trust Larry's analysis. After all, he's got 45 years' experience as a day trader. Larry will also provide daily charts, videos, and data on the key markets that he's tracking. Expect notifications from Larry on Market Movement you need to act on at any time. First-time subscribers also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. Subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today. TFNN.com, educating investors. Steve Rhodes started his trading career as a student almost 20 years ago, and the student has now become the master. Steve won the prestigious Timer of the Year award in 2018 and barely missed that mark again in 2019, finishing at number two for the year, an amazing accomplishment. Steve Rhodes is committed to sharing his techniques and knowledge with anyone who wants to learn, and he shares his vast amount of trading knowledge every day in his Mastering Probability newsletter. Steve's award-winning newsletter, Mastering Probability, is delivered every trading day with updates throughout the afternoon. Sign up for Steve's Market newsletter, Mastering Probability, and you'll receive access to seven of Steve's educational webinars absolutely free. At TFNN, all our newsletters come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Visit TFNN.com and try Mastering Probability 30 days risk-free today. TFNN, educating investors. TFNN has launched the Tiger's Den. Hosted at Discord, TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years, with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours, the Tiger's Den. Available to all tigers and tigers for just $1 for the year. There's no cash or added costs when you join our community of traders. Sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders. Just visit the front page of TFNN.com. Back folks, we have the gold contract right now, up by $4, and as I was mentioning there folks, Gold Report Subscriber Webinar. That was the quickest first segment I've ever had, because we had a little technical difficulty snuck up on me there, but folks, check it out. He's got a new issue out this morning. If you're going to sign up for it today, it's the day to do it, because you get the new issue of the Gold Report issued this morning. You gain access to the Subscriber Webinar coming up on Wednesday. Now, if you're already subscribed to the Gold Report, you'll see in the note out there for the issue that's published this morning. You gain free access. I've got an email about the Gold Report Subscriber Webinar saying, hey, I'm already a Gold Report Subscriber. Yes, you gain free access. That's what it's for. This webinar is for Gold Report Subscribers. Period. The way to get in is go check out the Gold Report. The best deal about it folks, it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you get the Gold Report for a month, you gain access to the archive, the webinar, the live webinar. It will be archived as well in there if you can't attend live on Wednesday night. And what's going on here, as I say this, we're completely, because things are sneaking up on us. We'll see where we go for that webinar in terms of that hurricane, man. But no matter what, the webinar is happening, folks. Even if it gets rescheduled, sign up. You're not going to miss it, okay? The webinar is coming. We'll see what Wednesday looks like. And let's tease that into the storm. Why not? Armand-Z posting in the den. He's beat me. You beat me. Z, I had this one ready. I had it queued up. You beat me in the den. Some great analysis, as usual, in the den. And there's your update. As of 7 a.m. this morning, Idalia, and it's coming for the Gulf Coast, man. Tampa looks to be right on the bottom portion of that cone. Hopefully we dodge it. Hopefully everyone dodges it. But boy, it's coming. It looks like it's going to roll up to a category three, potentially, as it hits land. Right now, you're talking about maximum sustained winds of 65 miles an hour. But folks, it's not going to hit Florida for like 48 hours. There's a lot of water out there in the Gulf. And as we all know, things can really accelerate when it sits in that Gulf water. So we'll see where we go. I was stocking up a little bit this weekend if you're around Florida. Folks, I've said it before. All right? This is a finance program, right? It's the morning market kickoff. But sometimes I just like sharing good information that people need to be reminded of. Make sure you go get some water if you're in Florida. Okay? If you have the ability, if you have the funds, there's no reason why you shouldn't have water stored into your house all the time. Okay? We learn this stuff during the pandemic a bit during hurricane season. Don't get caught up in the public's rush where you walk in and everybody's bought all the water out there and you're buying, you know, eight ounce bottles of water to try and get anything that's left on the shelf.  Go stock up on some food if you need to. Go make sure you got some batteries out there, right? If you got a generator, make sure you got some gas. Stock up on the gas. Because as we know, this thing goes quick and once it starts accelerating, everything's gone. Yeah, I can wait until the very last second because that's what everybody says. And if you wait until the last second, it's all gone. But nonetheless, there's the storm. So the cone is coming and it's a wide cone right now. I mean, look at that. Look at that cone. Look how big it is. Think about how many people it varies in terms of where that may hit. But what happens is, man, we got two to three days that are still out from when this thing is going to land. I guess two days would be a fair assessment of when this thing is going to land on the coast. And 48 hours is a long time in terms of how much that can wiggle, 150, sometimes 200 miles from where they're thinking it could be. But nonetheless, it is coming for Florida. And so we'll see. No schools canceled just yet, but we will see. But check out the Gold Report, folks, new issue published today. All right, back to the markets. What do we got going on? Where are we going to kick off? We got a few things. We got ECB. We got auto workers. We have China in the press as well. And let's kick things off with the growth stocks. Why not? I was listening to a take this weekend about NVIDIA from one analyst. I think it was on Bloomberg. Might have even been Bloomberg last night, Bloomberg Asia, Daybreak Asia. Might have been. Might have just been a weekend, Bloomberg. Sometimes I'm driving around. I love listening to music, but I like listening to good analysis. I'll pull up Bloomberg Radio. And they were talking about the valuation in the video right now, OK, in terms of how difficult it is going to be if you go out five to grow into those multiples of that company. The price action after their earnings should tell you that, OK, because they crushed it out of the park. I've never seen the type of earnings that they delivered the last two quarters, right? If you back it up 90 days ago, my goodness, and yes, you had quite an acceleration, but for them to be under where you were trading at, coming into that earnings event where at 4.62 this morning, we're up a bit, even the market's saying, hey, man, you know, everything is priced into this equity. You take a look at it longer term, OK, you just went from 100 to 500 in less than a year, 100 to 500 in less than a year. I saw an interesting statistic recently this weekend that the company Palm, I don't even know, Palm Pilot, right? Is it even around anymore? No, probably not. The company Palm in the year 2000, OK, in the year 2000, a little Conan reference for all those that are in the know. The company Palm in the year 2000, and I haven't checked this out. Somebody tell me if I'm wrong, please. I don't even know Palm if it's still trades. I don't know. We're 23 years later, but in the year 2000, the company Palm was worth more than Apple, NVIDIA and Amazon combined. Did you hear that? Yeah, a company that we don't even know exists anymore was worth more than Apple, NVIDIA and Amazon combined. It's amazing how the world can change in 20 years, 23 to be exact, but nonetheless, multiples going to be a problem as we go forward, man. Now, here's what I'll say. When NVIDIA was at 342 at the end of 2021, folks, there was a lot of discussion. I remember hearing it rightfully so. If you were looking to short some of these big growth stocks, man, NVIDIA was one of the best ones you could have shorted. The multiples were just bonkers. You traded from 346 down to 108. And I'm not talking about shorting the GameStop type meme stocks, because we all know that they were going back to nothing eventually. We have Bed Bath and Beyond basically worthless right now as they're going through their bankruptcy or deal in court. But it was a multiple issue, and it might be a multiple issue again, man, as you get an exhaustion top above 500, we're at 460 right now, so be careful in this, and that's what they're putting out here. U.S. growth stocks trade is crowded and overvalued, said RBC. Large cap growth trade looks problematic is one way to put it out there. NASDAQ 100, up 37% in 2023, above average valuations, that would put it lightly, man. I'd say we should it's remarkable we're not even higher, right? I mean, look where we are on this chart. Yeah, you've been below it for many times, but many areas in this chart were above it. The scary part is that you're going back from 2002 to 2008 is where you were above it, and also when you were above it during kind of the post-COVID bubble that we saw many of these equities get into. Growth stocks dominance on the earnings revision front is fading while flows to funds focused on this group of equities has turned negative, so there's a few red herrings in there, you got to look out for. They have a price target for the S&P of $4250, so you're looking for a little bit of a pullback there, about a 3.5% downside is what you're looking for. Nonetheless, you're going to see that and pay attention to it. Why not? We'll jump to Bed Bath and Beyond since I was talking about it. Shareholders left holding worthless stock as bankruptcy hearing approaches. Without recovery, the company's $152 million market cap essentially boils down to nothing for shareholders. So be careful placing those bets, folks, because sometimes it's just all going to run out to nothing. Yeah, let's talk a little bit. We'll tease this one as we come into the break here. You see what we got up here, folks? You see what the ads there serving me? You see the ads there serving me? You know why they're serving me those ads? Because Halloween's coming, man, and we're getting Tommy some dinosaur costumes. Check it out. We got, what's this one? Is that pterodactyl? It might be. I think that's astegosaurus. Yeah. Some shoes as well. But look at this, man. I got ads everywhere, man. Pretty remarkable how the internet works, right? We're checking out dinosaur costumes. Tommy. There you go. Got a little sidetrack for me. Think of these top two right here. It's funny. They know everything, man. Those are the top two that are in the running for Tommy. We got two months until Halloween. Stay tuned, folks. We'll come back. We'll talk some student loans. We'll talk some market. We'll be right back. With rising inflation, rocketing interest rates, a volatile dollar, an uncertain market, there's an asset that all traders flock back to, gold. However, these are regular times also mean a regular gold market, which presents its own unique challenges. This brings up the question, what moves the gold market? This is a question I'll be answering in my next live webinar. On August 30th, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., I'll be hosting a live free webinar for all those who subscribe to my newsletter, The Gold Report. The Gold Report has been in publication for over two decades, and I've seen just about every market gold has been traded in. This experience lends me great insight when trading gold and other mining equities, and now that insight can be ours. On August 30th, I will deep dive into gold, bonds, and the dollar. Where they are now, how they affect each other, and what to look for when looking to set up a trade. Additionally, I will provide a comprehensive breakdown of the XAU, HUI, and GDX, as well as cover individual gold equities and answer questions live on the air. Please subscribe to The Gold Report today so you don't miss this rare moment gold. TFNN Educating Investors. 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TFNN Educating Investors $80 Go contract up about $2 at $19.41 We jump over to the dollar index this morning. $104.11 We jump over to yields in focus of course with Chairman Powell, Jackson Hole on Friday, a little bit of volatility this morning. We have yield slightly elevated price slightly lower rates you're talking about a 10-year it was 4.2 when I came on the program it's probably no it's sitting at about 4.2 so 4.2% the yield on the 10-year you go longer picture man that could be the story right now it is the story right you're going from 117 down to about 109 and change chopping around near the lows of last October for that 10-year. All right speaking of interest rates in yield how about student loans emerging from a deep freeze and borrowers are confused never a good deal when you have this type of confusion going on it's going to add to the hardships that people are in in terms of they're not even aware of kind of what is going on right now you had many of these loans we transferred who was servicing them during the time yeah so here's how they explain it right at the kickoff borrowers will start owing interest as a Friday okay and that is because that's September 1st right no I guess that just kicks in that's September 4th yes not September 1st wait no that's September 1st I had to calibrate yes it's September 1st on Friday I think the payments start in October but you probably owe an interest in September which is a long time coming as in it's been off for three years new payment schedules by email everybody misses emails these days right especially people who might not be akin to actively perusing their emails for such important financial data I mean folks many of us if you're watching this program you're probably highly in tune with the news of the day things going on you're probably aware of this there are many people that fortunately for them don't have to dive into the for their daily job or they're just daily happenings or maybe they're retired right you don't have to be as glued to what's occurring in the market like we are if you're watching this program if you're in the Tigers then it seems like it's kind of common knowledge not common knowledge to many people for a very reasonable reason not just because they're you know ignorant or not able to keep up they focus on different areas of life okay so you got four and ten borrowers loans transferred to a new servicer during the pause that began in March of 2020 it's about half of student loans out there transferred right new payment schedules by email servicers they've never heard of this is going to be a problem folks alright how big of a problem is the only deal out there now this is the journal they kind of cherry pick something here in terms of you know there's many borrowers that aren't in this situation but they have a woman a 75 year old former non-profit employee I mean this is like a stereotypical she's got 14 grand left she's been paying for 20 20 years is that grad school yeah graduate school loans paying them for 20 years this is what you want to avoid folks you don't want to get graduate school loans when you're 50 or 55 and you got 15 grand left after paying them for 20 years hadn't paid for three years called the servicer right forgiveness options payment declines but getting through to a human is difficult you think it's a problem yeah the whole country right now what do we got 27 million people or something like that's the number it's going to be very difficult for everybody to reach a person to get through to somebody you got new services and all this starts next month man and it's going to be a hamper on disposable income to say the least they're talking about loan services as I mentioned here um yeah and as they say there's going to be some backlogs to put it lightly man and this is going to weigh on the economy I'm sure the Fed is wondering that and we'll see where that goes all right back to a little discussion of water temperatures in focus with Hurricane Adalia bearing down on Florida's Gulf Coast uh heating waters force changing industries that depend on the ocean now this is a long read I'm going to post this in the den right now you have an ability you check it out from the journal I'm not going to be able to go through all of it but interesting stuff man of course they're talking about areas whether it's Maine's lobster man right they're talking about kelp farmers you got to be able to be agile folks and if boy if you are a fisherman fish a woman wherever you are there's a lot going on in the globe right now in terms of where certain fish are spending their time because the temperatures are changing the Mediterranean sea reached a record of 87 degrees in July what does that do that attracts different fish than normally come in you got jellyfish and lionfish threatens the coral reefs we got a big problem with the coral reef down in Florida right now in terms of the temperatures there there and really what I wanted to get to is just one chart in here but the summer surface temps between July and September and the Gulf have risen four times the global ocean average since 1982 the entire region is warming more rapidly than 97 percent of the ocean surface because of overall climate warming and shifts in local currents folks this is the journal okay this is not some liberal rag this is the wall street journal okay now climate change gets political which is a bummer check out this chart average sea surface temperature departure from historic norms for the previous 30 days here's the US it's just hot everywhere man but look at the heat that they have in the northeast there's New York okay so you're really going above the northeast there to Canada alright but looking in the Pacific this is what they were talking about the Pacific Northwest Oregon where they talk about it was up here yeah as I mentioned there's almost too much to go through here too quickly which is why I put it up there yeah salmon's a big problem as you're talking about Duffy so lobsters in Maine 388 million lobster catch has moved 162 miles northward and nearly 70 feet deeper over the past 50 years think about that right so the lobsters are on the move man they're moving north and they're moving deep if you're going fishing form the Maine lobster catch has fallen 26% since a record catch of 132 million pounds in 2016 now you'll say that's only 2016 7 years ago man and time flies and things change and there's always going to be variants folks there's always going to be variants remember that okay so you're always going to be cherry picking if you want to any statistic because there's always going to be variants but this is what has me most worried about the hurricane season this year because we got warm waters and it seems like the articles just keep popping up man so check that out if you can they go over a bunch of different stuff in there but it matters folks and it's mattering for the fishing it's mattering for people changing what they're doing in terms of maybe you used to be a lobster fisherman and now you're producing kelp and again I would have pulled that up it's somewhere in this article it's a great article just kind of talking about what's going on I was looking for that kelp one but nonetheless check that out in the tiger's den if you get a chance alright we talked student loans we talked about the waters yeah so I mean look at this right look at these articles folks okay this is from the journal this morning we're talking about home insurance it's all related okay this is all related to a certain degree I don't advise you on forgoing home insurance home owners insurance folks you know you can make the case if you have the type of cash available you can self insure but many people who are making these decisions do not have the ability to self insure and they're just straight gambling stay tuned folks we'll come back we'll talk about this we're going to talk a little bit about the jobs number that we have coming on Friday stay tuned folks positive markets to kick it off we'll be right back you might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market you're going to need a crystal ball after all it's impossible to predict the future right like any endeavor in life before you decide it's impossible get some advice from the experts you might find that it's not so impossible after all for daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices selective stocks and commodities subscribe to the opening call newsletter at tfnn.com the opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman wave the Chapman wave up down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices get the opening call newsletter by Basil Chapman and your inbox every day first time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up tfnn.com educating investors with rising inflation rocketing interest rates of all to dollar an uncertain market there's an asset that all traders flock back to gold however these are regular times also mean a regular gold market which presents its own unique challenges this brings up the question what moves the gold market this is a question I'll be answering in my next live webinar on August 30 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. I'll be hosting a live free webinar for all those who subscribe to my newsletter the gold report the gold report has been in publication for over two decades and I've seen just about every market gold has been traded in this experience lends me great insight when trading gold and other mining equities and now that insight can be ours on August 30th I will deep dive into gold bonds in the dollar where they are now how they affect each other and what to look for when looking to set up a trade additionally I will provide a comprehensive breakdown of the XAU, HUI and GDX as well as cover individual gold equities and answer questions live on the air subscribe to the gold report today so you don't miss this rare moment gold tfnn educating investors will the S&P 500 continue to climb for bold trades on U.S. large cap stocks in either direction trade SPXL SPUU or SPXS directions daily S&P 500 bull and bear leveraged ETFs direction leveraged ETFs an investor should carefully consider a funds investment objective risks charges and expenses before investing a funds prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other information about direction shares to obtain a funds prospectus and summary prospectus call<PHONE_NUMBER> or visit direction investments.com a funds prospectus and summary prospectus should be read carefully before investing an investment in the funds is subject to risk including the possible loss of principal the funds are designed to be utilized only by sophisticated investors such as traders and active investors distributor for side fund services LLC this program is brought to you by Vista Gold traded on the NYSE American and TSX under the symbol VGZ come back folks we got markets in positive territory S&Ps up by 24 points right now we just spiked to a high let's put it back to all one minute so you can see that acceleration right out of the gate at 930 you drive from 44 34 we almost make it up to 44 48 and we've given up basically the gains we had in the last 12 minutes as the market was open how about the Dow catching a bit up by about three quarters percent right now 34,000 636 that's a minute let's put it back to a 10 minute chart you see the Dow making it right back up to Thursday's high S&P right now well off those highs still that would bring us up to 4480 when you talk about where we were Thursday night you look at the Nasdaq 100 you're talking about 15,400 so you see the divergence there right in terms of how high we were coming in after the Nvidia earnings you spiked to 15,400 before the whole market gives it up meanwhile you get the Dow actually back to the highs and you got the Russell back to the highs as well Russell catches a bit up by 1.2 percent right now pretty remarkable all right back to some of what they're talking about for home insurance here now they talk about here that some people who have the ability to financially withstand the loss are self-insuring and that's one thing okay what they get into here though folks is people who are not able to all right you have people you know if you don't have a mortgage that's where you can really get away with not having insurance because you got a mortgage they're going to make you have insurance to make sure that you don't lose a house you don't even own right but then they have people in here that's the last part I wanted to bring up here 12 percent of homeowners in the US don't purchase homeowners insurance and about half of them have annual household income of less than $40,000 okay and there's a lot that goes into this so be careful if you're making decisions like this now here's what I will say as well though recently Friday come out of my house middle of the day I was going to run a quick errand and I got a flat tire bought my vehicle almost five years ago now April of 2019 can't believe I have to go back that's almost five years ago that's almost five years ago yeah April of 2019 and I don't think I've used tire insurance yet and I did get tire insurance at the time okay and I bought my contract because I was going to use it this time and over five years the cost of that tire insurance and these are expensive tires they run flat tires they run like 350 375 a pop right they run flat tires so you get a flat you can go about 50 miles at 50 miles per hour less but nonetheless that tire insurance cost me $1,740 over five years I think I've used it that's the first time I used it that saved me 350 bucks so I got a whole host and I said to myself you know what I think I might self-insure my tires going forward that's a much different deal than home insurance folks I've said it before if you're having trouble with home insurance at least do some due diligence and if you're in Florida get yourself a citizen's quote because you'd be shocked sometimes at the differences but this is playing out all over the country man in Florida it's of course dramatic to say the least but yes all over the country but a sad deal when you start seeing people that can't afford it deciding not to cover their house I mean you have one person in here that tells the story one gentleman lived in his home for 25 years he's estimated he saved $50,000 over that time folks that can be one bad storm rips through like that nonetheless these stories popping up everywhere alright let's talk a little bit of auto workers right now we talked about this before and here's all I'll say keep an open mind folks I've talked about it before you're going to see these things the knee jerk reactions going to be oh come on 32 hours what are they going to do why can't we have a 32 hour work week and I'm not saying we should but why can't we I would love to see some really great arguments and debates from both sides about how they think forcing everybody to subscribe to the 40 hour work week versus the 32 where did the 40 hour 5 day work week come from I'm on the soapbox a little bit right but it's important to question the norms as you go through life folks okay and I don't know I mean maybe that would dramatically decrease GDP growth all that stuff let's hear those arguments okay I don't think it would I don't but that's my perception but we've come to accept the 5 day work week when there's no reason why a 4 day work week wouldn't have been akin to the same deal you'd still make the case that you work more than you rest you work 4 days you rest 3 days you work 4 days you rest 3 days where did it become you work 5 days you rest 2 days right why is that the article that defines whether you're aggressive or you're lazy right so just keep that stuff in mind when you hear this stuff coming out man these car makers they've made tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars recently and now their workers are going for it we're seeing a shift here in terms of what's happening and folks you need livable wages okay this unemployment rate we have these days it is based off the fact that many people make a non livable wage very easy to have a low unemployment rate when you have a non livable wage that is defined by that because many workers are employed with non livable wages going forward but boy this one's going to be a brawl the news was out was it Friday right but I think they were talking about let's see yeah it was Friday when this thing spiked to 1158 we're back to 1205 for Ford but I think that news came out when they had that they may be spiking striking excuse me not spiking as early as September 15th yeah alright let's jump around to see how some of the fang stocks are doing just give me one second here folks okay Amazon shares down 80 cents right now we're trading at 132.45 you got Apple shares right now in the positive but pulling back on the open as well we jump around to some of the banks bank of America this morning up by about nine tens percent J.P. Morgan up by about three quarters percent right now we jump over to city city down about seven tenths percent wells Fargo shares catching a bid up by about 1.3 percent we jump over to the dollar index right now DXY sitting in 104.80 right now in the dollar and let's keep our eye on yields as well yields backing off a bid in price and what are we talking about right now 4.21 we got a lot going on in this market man as we commit to Labor Day weekend and jobs numbers on Friday as well alright let's see what else we got pulled up there we talked about the auto workers a bit yeah let's talk a little bit of yields I mean it's amazing how many of these stories focus on the same things right where are yields going right now where are yields going most importantly we commit to jobs numbers on Friday which define everything but you're talking about a repricing to a certain this is not how the debt is supposed to work you are supposed to issue debt in bad economic times and pay off that debt in good economic times that is the most worrying fact of everything going on right now that's not what's happening at all we have 3.5 percent unemployment stocks are through the roof AI is taking over and we have deficits running at record levels so the yields are paying attention man and I bet they are going to be paying attention as we go forward this has got to change and 4.2 percent doesn't seem like that bad of a deal considering how we come to a cliff every so often about paying our bills all right folks one more segment S&Ps up by 26 don't forget about my dad's gold report check it out new issue out this morning on the front page of TFNN you can sign up 30 day money back guarantee go get it done we'll be right back with rising inflation rocketing interest rates of all to dollar an uncertain market there's an asset that all traders flock back to gold however these are regular times also mean a regular gold market which presents its own unique challenges this brings up the question what moves the gold market this is a question I'll be answering in my next live webinar on August 30th from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. I'll be hosting a live free webinar for all those who subscribe to my newsletter the gold report the gold report has been in publication for over two decades and I've seen just about every market gold has been traded in this experience lends me great insight when trading gold and other mining equities and now that inside can be ours on August 30th I will deep dive into gold bonds in the dollar where they are now how they affect each other and what to look for when looking to set up a trade additionally I will provide a comprehensive breakdown of the XAU HUI and GDX as well as cover individual what gold equities and answer questions live on the air subscribe to the gold report today so you don't miss this rare moment gold TFNN educating investors you might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market you're going to need a crystal ball after all it's impossible to predict the future right like any endeavor in life before you decide it's impossible get some advice from the experts you might find that it's not so impossible after all for daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices selective stocks and commodities subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com the opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman creator of the technology methodology known as the Chapman Wave the Chapman Wave up down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices get the opening call newsletter by Basil Chapman in your inbox every day first time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up TFNN.com educating investors in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence this mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market to stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com when you subscribe you'll get a weekly report from veteran day trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to and you can trust Larry's analysis after all he's got 45 years experience as a day trader Larry will also provide daily charts videos and data on the key markets that he's tracking expect notifications from Larry on market movement you need to act on at any time first time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today TFNN.com educating investors don't forget you can listen to TFNN live on your mobile device 24 hours per day go to TFNN.com then hit watch Tiger TV that's TFNN.com then hit watch Tiger TV welcome back folks we get the markets hanging out pretty much where we kicked off the program you got a little bit of a pullback in the Nasdaq 100 we're sitting now up about 4 tenths percent you have the Dow catching a little bit of a bid right now up by about 8 tenths percent and the Russell really catching a bit as we're up 1.2 percent right now you jump over to that gold contract folks as I mentioned don't forget about the gold report subscriber webinar Wednesday folks new issue out today check it out if you've never checked out the gold report man great time to do it my dad's jazzed about it hasn't done a webinar in some time and even if we have some storm problems alright we're gonna get that webinar going around Wednesday we'll see Wednesday night as the storm looks a little rough but don't delay sign up we got a new issue out for the gold report today and he is primed and ready and we'll see where gold goes you take a little bit longer term picture that gold contract well off the highs of what 2086-2085 was the high back in May was sitting in 1945 you've been chopping around at this area folks for basically three years right let's back it up even further than that pretty remarkable you come up to the highs we had in 2011 that's basically where we've been chopping around for a three-year period we'll see where we go from there to say the least alright let's check around to some of the other stocks some of the airlines you got American up a bit up 1% this morning Delta Airlines up a bit up 1% this morning we jump to the cruise companies Carnival up by about four tenths percent right now Norwegian up by about nine tenths percent right now we check in on some of the Magnificent 7 NVIDIA gives it up a bit as well man okay be careful getting into NVIDIA at these prices folks we're $70 off of the highs that we saw coming into the day after their earnings event we're solid $50 off where this thing was when it just opened okay and we are $40 off where this thing was hours after the open in terms of the stop the pain yeah Tesla shares giving it up on the open we're flat now after being up to $305 alright folks stay tuned we got our man Basil Chapman he is coming up next with the Tiger Technicians Hour we got our man Steve Rhodes we got Fast Market from the Schwab Network our man Larry Pezzavento is feeling good his voice is back he's going to be live my dad Tom O'Brien live to from three to four folks stay safe out there have a great Monday we'll see you tomorrow morning stay tuned for Basil and remember that Gold Report front page TFN have a great one folks