Hello, OslaterSync here. If you've followed me on YouTube for a while, you'd be well within your rights to assume that big, washy, ambient reverbs, or maybe delays feeding back to infinity were my favourite kinds of effects. And while they're high up in the pecking order, my first and truest love will always be distortion. As far as the videos I've made for this channel go, I feel like I might have been neglecting my number one. So today I'd like to put this right and dedicate a whole video to distortion, clipping, saturation, and the like. Talk about what it is, what it does, its varied flavours, and how we can approach using it in the world of electronic music. As it's the world that I feel most inspired to work within, this video will mostly be spent exploring these ideas in the hardware realm, but they apply equally in the box and actually, to introduce some of these key ideas, it's going to be easier to start in software, so let's head over there now. I want to start by talking about a type of distortion, which I think is probably the easiest to visualise and conceptualise, which is pure digital clipping. And to that end, welcome to Pure Data or PD for short. It is a graphical modular DSP programming environment. You don't need to really worry too much about what's going on here in order to understand the clipping part of it, but if you are interested in checking out these programmes, I will put a link to them in the description of the video. In digital audio, all sound is represented by a sequence of numbers, and those numbers dictate the shapes of the waves that are recorded or played back, and therefore what we hear. We usually think about these numbers as going from a particular positive number up down to a particular negative number, but there is a minimum and maximum number that can be represented. And if you try to push a waveform beyond that minimum or maximum number, rather than going any higher, the numbers will clamp to the particular minimum and maximum, and that will shear off the top or the bottom of the waveform. So let's take a look at that. We've got a sine wave here, which you can see visualised here. We can also see down here we have a spectrum analyser, so we can see a single peak here, which is the fundamental frequency of this sine wave. This control here is going to allow me to add gain to this sine wave, which will essentially, to begin with, just make it louder.  And as long as I don't try and amplify this sine wave beyond the minimum or maximum that I have set for this system, it will just get louder. We'll just hear a louder sine wave. But as we push this towards the maximum, which I've just set to be one as it happens, so still a sine wave. And then eventually, if we push it a little bit louder, there we go. We've pushed it beyond the maximum loudness that this digital system is going to allow, and rather than it getting any bigger, instead, it started to shear off the top and the bottom of the waveform, which has essentially changed the shape of the wave. And as that wave shape changed, we could hear a change in the frequency content. There's no longer just a pure sine wave. There are upper, brighter harmonics being introduced. And if we push this gain higher and higher, pushing it further and further past the limit, we can hear that we're getting a complete change to our sound. And if we push it high enough, we see all of these new harmonics starting to get introduced. And eventually, we get a square wave, which I'll just turn down there. And we can see all of these additional harmonics here. We can see this sine wave because we've pushed it past the maximum value that we're allowed in our digital audio system. We now have a square wave. So in this case, clipping our sine wave is introducing more harmonics, more frequencies. It's making it a brighter sound, which is kind of like opening up a filter. It kind of has that vibe to it, even if that's not really what we're doing, rather than us having a filter which was taking away high end. Clipping it is introducing the high end. And in fact, if we just connect this up here to here, this is just a really simple envelope that I've created. So rather than having it on a slider, it's now going to be an envelope. And this is going to sound a little bit like us sort of opening up a filter quickly and let it decay, right? A similar sort of vibe. We're not cutting out frequencies. Instead, we are introducing frequencies at the top end. Of course, the nature of the clipping is going to be different depending on what our input is. So rather than this sine wave, let me just unplug that from the system and instead plug in this sawtooth. I'll just also turn it down a little bit because sawtooths are a little bit harsher on the ears. I'm also going to just quickly do that. Don't worry about that just for a second. And we can see here that we've got a sawtooth wave much richer in terms of its frequency content even than the square wave. But if we go to amplify it past that clipping point and start to shear off the tops and bottom, we again get a new waveform and a different sound. Now, the interesting thing when we've taken this more harmonically rich waveform and clipped off the top and bottom is that it's not really getting any brighter per se. Instead, the emphasis of the frequencies that are in there is changing as we go between a sawtooth and a square wave. So when we are clipping things, we're not always making them brighter necessarily, but we are changing the relative frequency amounts that are found within them. Now, just for your interest, one of the other things that we can do with clipping is rather than clipping things equally on the top and bottom, we can apply an offset to a wave so that it lives more within the top end. So closer to plus one or closer to negative one, which means that as we apply gain, only one side of the waveform gets clipped at first, which means we get a different shape and therefore a different sound. And check this out. What does this look like as we start to move this waveform that's being clipped up and down? Apply a little bit more gain. Hey, look. It's pulse width modulation. So one way to get a pulse width modulator all square wave is to start with a sawtooth wave, distort it, and then apply a DC offset to move it up and down, therefore clipping each side of the waveform differently, which is pretty interesting, I think. So when we clip really simple signals like a pure waveform, we are just changing the wave shape, which gives us a new sound. What's interesting is when we start to work with more complex sounds, so here I've just got four different sine waves or going at different frequencies, as we start to distort it, we start to become more aware of another aspect of distortion, which is that it is not just about a tonal change, it's a dynamic change as well. So as we push this towards clipping, we can start to hear almost like a rhythm. So what's happening here? Well, all of these oscillators are running at different frequencies, but there are going to be points within the cycles of each of these oscillators where they are reinforcing each other and pushing it harder above this clipping point, which starts to introduce rhythms based around the dynamics of our sounds within the sounds. So often when we start to apply clipping to signals, we start to hear interactions between sounds that were not necessarily obvious when we listen to them normally. And as we push this harder, you can hear this beating that lives within these frequency relationships that weren't necessarily obvious to begin with. And again, if we were to offset this signal, then we would get a different flavor. And actually, because of the complex interactions that have been created by the harmonics generated by the clipping, we almost start to hear notes which weren't there before. That note there isn't actually in our input. It's just being created because of the relationships between these frequencies and the way that they are being clipped. Again, nothing beyond clipping and offset is being used here. But we're finding new sounds within our sounds, even within the simplest form of distortion, just shearing off the top of a waveform, you can find these very complex relationships. Finally here, I've got a loop, some piano and some choir samples here, a far more complex signal than the oscillating, beating sine waves that we had before. And as we start to clip off the signal, again, with this more complex input, we start to hear more complex interactions from within the sound that the clipping is making clearer to us. We're getting tonal and dynamic changes, which is one of the things that is so magic about distortion. And again, we have our offset here that we can apply clipping one side more than the other, what we sometimes call asymmetrical clipping. We get different flavors and emphasis moving towards the mid-range. And we get granted very harsh sounds, or sounds that we hear as being harsh. But you are emphasizing all of those interesting interactions. And if we just take a simple filter, take out some of that harshness, but keep those interactions, I think there's a real fragile beauty that we start to uncover within our source that we might not have otherwise heard. You may have heard these sorts of sounds being used by the likes of Nine Inch Nails. That's where a lot of that interesting texture comes from in those sorts of tracks. Distortion, finding these new relationships within the sounds that you wouldn't otherwise hear. But hey, let's head over to some hardware, shall we? The hard digital clipping we just heard affects the input signal in a precise, easy to predict way. The process is a purely linear mathematical one. When we move into the realm of analog distortion or digital distortion, which is modeling it, the relationship between the input signal and the distorted output becomes a lot more complex. Most distortion circuits are based around electrical components operating at the edge of or even beyond their intended parameters. This introduces all kinds of nonlinearities and quirks into their operation, which can be affected by the input signals, volume, frequency content, the impedance presented by the instrument plugged into the distortion, even the temperature. There are many different ways to build a distortion circuit and each of them introduces different kinds of nonlinearities. In some cases, simply switching out a single component in the circuit like a different transistor can vastly change the way that the circuit behaves. The world of distortion pedals then is like jelly beans, hundreds of different flavors because of the different circuit designs. Some of them are fairly similar but subtly different. Like you might prefer toffee flavor over caramel, but either will probably do if you're after that rich, soft, dark sugary taste. Then you have those huge contrasts like caramel and sour lemon, where you'll probably be craving one rather than the other. These three pedals here were kindly sent over by Empress FX in order to help me demonstrate what are probably, broadly speaking, the three major flavors of distortion pedal that you might come across. What I'm about to describe are broad generalizations and there's more of a Venn diagram than distinct separate entities. But represented here on the desk, we have a overdrive pedal. Overdrive pedals tend to be a lower gain or the lowest gain of the major types of distortion pedals. They are often designed to compliment the input signal rather than completely transform it if you'd like, a word that you see associated with some overdrive pedals is this idea of transparent, which is a badly defined word in terms of what we're talking about here, I guess. But that generally means is that you can kind of hear the original sound that's being plugged into it, usually a guitar bow in our case, it's going to be a synth, but with that sort of fur and grit around it. Moving up the chain of gain from overdrive pedals, we get to the generic distortion pedal, not this particular pedal, this particular generic has to be said. Distortion pedals tend to be higher gain than overdrive pedals. They tend to be more transformative of the sound, more of that waveform getting crushed and changed. That being said, distortion pedals are usually designed in such a way that the input and the output of the sound is a little bit more sculpted in the frequency domain, which means that it's, although very high gain, tends to be quite well behaved and controllable. Often a sound that you might associate with distortion pedals is that smoothing of the way for whether there's maybe lots of high-end energy in there, it's kind of in a smooth way compared to some other types of pedals, which brings me neatly onto the third broad flavor of pedals here, which is fuzz. Historically speaking, fuzz pedals actually came first. They tended to be designed around more simplistic circuits, although that's not always necessarily the case these days, but the way that they achieve their gain, which is usually even higher gain than the distortion pedals, was much more the misuse of the components, which led to more texture and unpredictability. Fuzzes tend to be the most unruly of all of the pedals, much more dependent on the input as to what they're going to do, so whether they can react fast to transients or not, there might be squashing and spluttering sounds that you associate with fuzz, much more textured, unpredictable, but that could be where a lot of the real character can be found when you are looking at distortion pedals. As I say, those are sort of generalizations, and as I was here talking about sort of textured sounds with the fuzz pedals, you may well find, as we might find here with the germ drive here, that actually the idea of textured sounds could be found in overdrives or distortions. So we're talking about a Venn diagram here, and there's often significant overlap in some of these ideas, but I tell you what, let's stop talking and actually hear them, shall we? So I've grabbed the main log here because I wanted something that was sort of a good basic sound for us to crush, and I've got patch here which is just a single triangle wave. You can hear there's a little bit of fluff on the main log's triangle wave, but otherwise that is a sort of clean sound as it were. The filter is wide open, the envelope is opening and closing instantly, and it's only one oscillator, so really basic sound. So let's see just on single notes what each of these devices, set as they currently are, are going to do to that sound. So let's start at the lowest gain here with the germ drive. We'll just turn that on. I've got the gain fairly low on this. And on those single notes, you can hear that the sort of basic sound of the synth is not being completely obliterated. Just a little bit of, I guess what you would call sort of fattening some of the top end is actually being rolled off there a little bit, and there's a little bit of warmth, fluff, sort of low end distortion happening there, which is very pleasant on those single notes, just to sort of create a more low-fi sound. So let's move up the gain here to the heavy here, which is our distortion, and we'll just use the heavy channel, which is the lower gain of the two channels, but still pretty high gain. I've got the gain set pretty low here. You can hear, even with that lower gain, a massively more transformed sound as opposed to the overdrive. And especially, I guess at the lowest and highest, that you can really hear those upper harmonics being introduced there. I'm intentionally not playing chords at the moment. We will get to chords, don't worry. I'm moving up once again to the fuzz here again. I've got the gain set fairly conservatively here. So let's have a listen. So just reminding, that's our original sound. So again, we're hearing much more transformation. It's sounding a lot more square wavy. You can also hear, especially on these lower notes, maybe if you go even lower, that there's kind of a texture to the sound which wasn't so obvious on the distortion. Cool. So that was just single notes, but as we saw when we were playing in pure data, when we provide distortion more complex inputs, so in our case, maybe chords, we get more complex interactions that might be more interesting. So let's give that a go, shall we? So what I'll do initially, I think is just build up like a major chord like that just to see how these different pedals affect more complex inputs. So here we go. Let's try the Germanian drive first. So we just have our little warming. Let's try that in different octave. That's lovely. That's our input. I love what that's doing to the sound. All of those interactions between the different frequencies are being emphasized and where there are little misfireings in the tuning of the synth, because it's VCO based, so there are slight tuning issues between each of the next part, what gives it its quality, its character. They're all being emphasized in a really lovely way. I think you're rewarded with more simple relationships as well. Like that fifth there just gains whole other world of sound. Anyway, let's try the same thing with our distortion. Things get very crunchy. Very crunchy indeed. Let's try simpler relationships again. These high notes are really popping. Hmm, interesting. Little bit crunchier. Little less able to be reeled in, I think. Let's try the fuzz. Same idea. That square wave sound immediately. Hmm. I really love the Germanian drive though. Let's try that with a little bit more gain. Shall we see what that does as we turn up the gain? It's got that kind of almost Hammond organ distortion thing going on there, which is really cool. All of those relationships between those notes. Just the little fluctuations in frequency and the way they're beating against each other. Lovely stuff. So something I was just doing there, which sounded pretty cool, was sweeping the gain control as almost like a tone control, a change of the timbre of the sound. But of course we can do that in our sense by modulating the amp envelope. So if we have the volume of our sound swoop in and then swoop out with the gain turned up high, it's going to be basically the same as us turning the gain knob up and down and getting that timbre will change. Let's set the gain a little bit higher here. Let's set kind of a paddy swoop to our sound here. Something like that will do. So the clean sound now sounds like this. Just a basic triangle pad sound. No modulation or anything on there. Only thing we're doing is sweeping the amp envelope. Now with the gain turned up higher on our pedal now, going to get a bit of noise because that's the nature of higher gain devices. Now we should hear that we get a timbre change, not just a volume change. That's a cool sound. Let's try that with a sore teeth wave instead, see what that sounds like. It really sounds like there's a filter on there, right? The way that those additional sounds that are being sort of faded in then affect the overall tonality as well. Almost like we're getting ghost notes that aren't even being played, fantastic sound. And remind it, this is what we're actually playing. Let's try that with the fuzz, that gain. Almost like this, almost like guitar feedback. The way that those notes fight against each other. Let's try some really high notes, see how that sounds like, some really low notes. And again, just as a reminder, that's our input. And it's all about the sounds being smushed together into one cohesive whole, while at the same time the smallest changes making kind of bigger differences as well. A great example of small changes making big differences. On the min-log, we have our shape control. It's actually a wave folder on the triangle wave. And if we modulate that, that's our input. These paddy patches that we've been playing with on the min-log are of course fun, but a classic way of using distortion with synths of course is to smash up a bass line. So we could take this sort of pseudo 303 friend here and we could engage one of our distortion pedals and get something a lot more fun and interesting. And what's really great about distorting these sorts of bass lines is that we still have this idea of the small changes making big differences kind of thing. So as we adjust our filter settings and our filter envelope settings, it has a much bigger impact, which is all fun. But that's more fun. That's just that without the distortion. That's where the fuzz, see the fuzz is introducing so many additional harmonics. Oh, that's cool. That's the input. Mad, right? Almost not audible, but with all that gain, almost sounds like there's a pitch change, like there might be a feedback inside the fuzz circuit that's being tweaked by, wow, that's our input. Almost like a kick drum pitch envelope. Yeah, that resonance is really messing with it. So cool. Overdrive is a bit a lot more well-behaved. Still adding loads of vibe. Again, almost inaudible without the distortion, but it's absolutely part of the synthesis process here. So let's try some distortion with a drum machine. So I've got the drum boot impact here, which does have its own distortion circuit built in. That's only one flavor of distortion. And as we've seen, there are multiple flavors to be had. So this is the sound that I've got going on here, just a beat that sounds like this. All I've tried to do here is create a beat, which has a combination of space, but also stuff which is overlapping as well, because that's where we'll be able to hear what the distortion is actually doing. So let's try the germ drive, first of all, with a low gain. Just, it is just immediately better, right? We give it a bit of distortion, bit more texture to the low end. And essentially, we're doing compression to the drums, which is something that you would tend to do with a drum machine anyway, so you would compress it to get a bit more punch to it. We're kind of getting that for free because of the distortion. Dynamics a bit squashed, but you still got the thwack of the kick there nicely. Give it more gain. Yeah, as we start to increase that gain, first thing that I noticed straight away is that the kick drum has got more of a tone to it now. We're hearing the note, if you like, of the kick a bit more. Because of those upper harmonics being emphasized, we've got more of the note information to grab hold of. The things are getting a lot more squashed now as well, and I think what's really interesting is if you listen to how the hi-hats and the kick and the snare are interacting with each other and fighting for space in a really cool way. Like that. Kick snare again there. That snare sound at the end there is actually the same as the snare in the middle, right? But the way that the kick and the snare are fighting for space within distortion makes that second snare, the one at the end, that one there sound completely different to the first one. Much more spitty, because that low-end energy from the kick is still there distorting things when it's happening. Let's try a different pedal. Let's try the heavy now, the distortion. Here you can hear what I was talking about right at the start when we introduced the pedals. The distortion pedals tend to filter the input and the output a bit more than say, fuzzers or overdrives to constrain and control what's going on. Everything here is a little more mid-focused. Had the highs turned down a little bit there, but. The overdrive is more sort of full range. A lot more mid-focused with the distortion here. Still really cool things going on. Little toms in there now sound really, really cool. Whereas they're a little bit lost in the drive sound or even with the overdrive. Like that second low tom at the end there you can barely hear with the overdrive, but with the, this might be a really cool sound to mix in with the overall sound. The nice thing on the heavy, and we'll talk about this a bit more in a minute when we look at samples, but we also have this weight control which is a sort of pre-emphasis of the low end. So it's not an EQ at the end, it's an EQ going into the pedal and it means that the low end is going to sort of have more effect on the distortion. So we turn it up, check out what happens. We get more low end, but the way that that low end is distorting. So cool. Those low sounds, those low toms and the kicks are completely in control of the whole vibe of the beat now. As we push that up even more. By emphasising those lows going in, and of course we do this with a filter before the distortion, which we'll do it with the samples in a minute. The kicks take precedence over everything else. Completely transforming it. That pre-emphasis of the lows, so cool. Yes. Wow. Let's leave the fuzz a go as well. I think I've got the gain cranked here. You can hear that the pedal barely hanging onto the sound. Like everything almost sounds like a compressor is opening up after the kick. It's only once that kick has died down that there's even any space for the sound to come through. And those toms are really electronic now. If we don't crank it as hard we can get similar ideas to what we have with the other pedals but Really transformative, completely changing dynamics of the sound, not just the tone. Because distortion is dynamic and tonal. Great stuff. Now, a lot of the cool artefacts that we're getting there is because we're running the entire sound into the distortion and each of those individual sounds are then affecting each other sort of within the distortion. But in a lot of cases, that might not be what you want. Maybe what we were getting with the kick drum is really, really cool but we don't want it completely stepping over the hi-hats or maybe the real low-end weight that we were getting with the heavy is taking away from the snap of the snare or something like that. Well, if we have a development well, if we have a device or if we're just working in a multi-track environment where we are able to distort different parts of the sound differently we can get very different results to distorting it altogether. So here I've got a setup, excuse all the wires everywhere where I have currently got this beat as before and the output is just going into the fuzz here. So we've got this vibe going on here. So everything is going through here. So everything is interacting with each other but perhaps it is that we don't want maybe the kick and the snare to be affected by the other sounds or to affect the other sets. So what I've got around the back here is some cable setup so that I can send the kick through the overdrive and the snare through the heavy here. So let me just plug those in. So now I have it set up with the kick going through here, the snare going through here and everything else, the main outputs going through here. So if we hit play we basically get our original sound as it were but now we can distort the different bits individually so they're not all stepping on each other. So if you want to get that crunchy snare you can get it. If we want to get that big distorted kick and if we want to bring in that other distortion on everything else but now each of the I guess the two main elements of the beat are not stepping over the others. So that's with things done separately and that's with everything distorted together. Now we can mix and match how those all work and we can affect them separately and we get more flexibility by distorting things separately. The flip side of that is that we potentially lose some of that character of the things interacting with each other so it's kind of what are you trying to do with your distortion at a particular time. And we can take a similar idea with the individual outs and apply it to melodic synth patches as well. For example on the distortion here although these sort of individual notes sounded really great when we play them individually perhaps when we layer them up into a chord things were a bit much but of course in a multi-tracked environment in our door or even to tape if that's your thing we can take this sound and break up into its individual parts and layer them instead so we could take and layer them up. So just a little change of scene here over to the module. Let's talk about another way to use distortion which I think is really interesting. So I have here a mono loop being played back. So this is just the clean mono loop unprocessed and what I want to talk about here is using multiple distortions to create stereo images from a mono source. So I've got Terci Marina here from Noise Engineering which is three distortion circuits in one tiny little module. It's a great module. And what I've done is I've taken this mono loop and I've patched it into one of the inputs of Terci which mounts across the ones below it and I've taken the output from two different distortion circuits into the left and right output of my system here. So if we turn down the mono original here and now here the same sample, mono sample being processed in stereo by both sides of Terci here and you can hear here that it's gained this really quite wide stereo image and I think there's probably some phase stuff happening in here but because the two distortions are grabbing on to the front-ended notes or pushing up the back end of the reverb in different ways and there are different frequencies that have been emphasised within the distortion we get this quite interesting wide stereo image from our mono source. You can hear the reverb is lingering in the left-hand side and the front-end of the notes are getting squashed a lot more on the right-hand side. The right-hand side is a lot more about the front-end of the note and the left-hand side has become more about the tail of the note and it's a really interesting way to up the stereo width on a mono source. I promise you this is still a purely mono source and it'd be interesting to see if we just put the mono back down the middle as well that would be interesting. So a mono source which we have very much turned into something a lot more stereo I think that's a really interesting way to approach making use of multiple distortions and just while we're here in modular land I've just patched this patch up and it's based around just the triangle wave being sequenced here it's just a straight triangle wave and I've molted that into a bunch of low-pass gates and those low-pass gates are going into different channels of terse here and with that we can take that one sequence because each of the different distortion circuits are going to shake the wave differently by pinging into each of them as a low-pass gate so we can get a stereo sort of multi-part baseline going on here so we've got that one there and that one there and we've got this kind of multi-part thing it sounds like there are kind of three different sounds going on here but they're all just the same sound being distorted differently and then if we add in, you know, we can get somewhere right just off a single triangle wave being distorted three different ways so one thing that's always really interesting to distort is samples samples especially loops like this one already have a lot of those complex interactions built into them for the distortion to take hold of and find all of those interesting clashes for it to emphasise and pull out those new sort of ideas what I want to talk about in particular here rather than the samples per se is the power of pre-filtering your input in order to fine-tune what you're getting from your distortion so I'll use the jam drive because I think honestly it's my favourite and one thing we can hear pretty immediately there is that the low notes, those low frequencies which carry more energy are distorting more and kind of obscuring the other parts of the sound case in point just there to the detriment of the sample I think so one thing we would probably think about in the case of this sample if we wanted to have the crunch but maybe a bit more clarity is to take out some of the bottom end before it gets the distortion pre-filter what we're doing here so let's try that on the diggitact here we can come over to the filter page and we can take out some of those low end and although those low notes are blooming a little bit into the distortion everything is a lot more controlled just by taking out some of those low frequencies here we're able to get the character of the distortion without those low notes completely obscuring the other parts of our sample and we can use this idea to emphasise other parts of the sound to make them distort more as well we can bring down some of the high end here as well and maybe emphasise some of these instead perhaps that's something we want to make a feature of instead and how those twingly highs aren't going in there so much so perhaps if we were working with the furs instead which naturally emphasises a lot of those high end harmonics more we might want to focus more on the mid-range we might find when we come over to the distortion here which pre-shapes its input a bit more although it's blowing out the bottom end a bit it's not as blown out as it was with the overdrive which is a more full range input so the distortion as we've discussed tends to pre-shape the input to take out some of those low frequencies so that we don't get that massive blow out on the low end so much even without any filtering going on on the dig attack here still some emphasise at the low end and nowhere near as much as there was on the overdrive here but certainly a different flavour of distortion and with the gain low, yeah, just a little bit of crunch so pre-filtering your sounds to make the best of them for your particular distortion device is something that's definitely worth considering as Furnace messing around with dirt pedals is there are definitely some things to bear in mind as you explore this universe of gain the first thing I'd like to mention is that most of these pedals are designed for use with instrument level inputs guitar pickups generate a voltage in the low hundreds of millivolts electronic instruments like synths tend to operate at line level which will usually be up around one volt what this hotter signal means in practice is if you want to get the full range of gain from a dirt pedal you'll probably have to turn down the synth or, as I did with the individual outputs on the drumbrutes run attenuators before the dirt pedals uro rack levels are even hotter and while you're probably unlikely to damage a pedal with these levels I'd definitely play it safe and run an attenuator before the pedal or get a dedicated pedal interface tangentially related to this some classic fuzz circuits are designed with a load impedance presented by a guitar pickup expected on the input so they may misbehave with something like a synth plugged in usually this means sounding very compressed lacking variation across the gain range and a bit congested or gated which might be your thing but it doesn't limit the usefulness of it circuits based around the fuzz face design for example will often behave this way next up most, if not almost all distortion pedals are mono devices this might not matter to you depending on the synth you're using it certainly wasn't an issue for us today on the mini log and the drumbrute but if you want to have uniform distortion across a stereo source especially relevant on drum machines with panning I think then your options are pretty slim the only two I can think of off the top of my head is the operation overlord from Electro-Harmonix and if you count them at the electron analog heat and also the palm but those two do represent a pretty large jump in price you can always work around this with running each side of a stereo source back out through your audio interface after tracking or indeed just using two distortion pedals but if you're looking for stereo dirt in a live rig options are slim on the ground I for one would warmly welcome a stereo version of the GermDrive Empress if you're listening please in your rack we definitely have a few more options especially if we factor in VCA's that will overdrive the ruiner Versio from Noise Engineering and the neat little guillotine from Ritual Atronics come to mind but I'm sure Modular Grid will point you towards a bunch of other options the other problem for us synth types is wow there are a lot of distortion pedals out there I wasn't joking with the Jelly Bean analogy there are hundreds upon hundreds of options out there and frankly not that many of them have good demos for electronic instruments available online hopefully this will change over time it's worth checking out guitar demos at least to get a feel for the game range or any special tonal features of course many of these issues go away if you're working in the box where gain staging stereo plugins and an easy way to trial sounds exists and there are a huge range of distortion plugins out there just as there are pedals there are also many plugins out there which seek to emulate specific real world pedals so this might be a great way to get a feel for what works for you before shelling out on the hardware units I hope you enjoyed this little exploration of dirt and electronic instruments and maybe it inspired you to go and experiment with distortion in your own music as always if you enjoyed the video a like is massively appreciated and make sure you're subscribed to the channel so you don't miss out on any upcoming synth fun until next time take care bye bye


Hey everyone welcome back to another counter side video so today's video we are going to discuss Rosaria and her review and also a possible build for her but before that if you want an updated counter side videos please hit the subscribe button down below. Okay so we have here Rosaria and her banner just dropped today by the way guys I was able to summon for her on the fifth pull and I wasn't I was actually very happy that I was not going to spend a lot of employment contracts for her so as you see I have 33 remaining and I won't spend anymore for her because I'm going to wait for the other banners to drop let us see how she is in terms of management she's somewhere here I was actually able to level her up a bit so she's actually new and no gears yet but more or less we will be going to the collection and be discussing her stats and her profile so let's look for that okay so we have here Rosaria and she is actually an SSR so she's a counter fallen hawk Rosario Lefreet so she's also a ranger air type because she floats around or she flies around with her chair with her sitting on it and her attack is all around so that means she can attack both air and ground units and so more or less Rosario Lefreet is an all-around ranger attacker delivering powerful AOE attacks from the air so again if you really want a ssr a ranger who is actually all on attacks dps she is actually it she is she's very efficient in dealing a lot of attacks especially from range let's go to her stats and take a look at her stats okay so for stats more or less she has a decent h combat power with 10,323 her hp by the way is below average at 21,568 her attack is actually high kind of very high in terms of in terms of all count sorry in terms of all units in this game so at 6,755 her defense is actually low at 111 her crit is actually also high at 961 her hit is below average at 644 and her evasion is also low at 335 we're going to take a look at her skills so for her basic attack so valid hits it's one so creates a small flame and inflicts damage on the target in front stomps on approaching air units knocking them backward with AOE damage so again standard levels two three four and five it's just a plus five so total of plus 20 if you get to level her up her basic attack at level five next is her passive skill called owner of the throne so this one is very good because it permanently increases her attack by 1.5% with each skill up to 15% okay and also for each level from 2 to 5 it adds to her hp a total of 20% which actually you know is good because again her hp is actually below average so she needs a bump in terms of survivability for this one and also for number five for level five immunity to all damage for five seconds upon deployment which is actually good because she will be um she will be immune to damage as soon as she pops out and as soon as you need immediate impact she will be there to survive for at least more or less a die immunity for four seconds next is her special skill destructive light so it's a 20 second cooldown skill and valid hits are three fires blazing beam at enemies in front causing hits done and AOE damage so for this special skill levels three four and five it's an additional damage which is a total of 25% and for level five a redeployment reset special skills called special skills uh cooldown sorry also causes hits to targets in special skill mode okay this is actually good number one because once she dies and you and you and you redeploy her she gets um to reset the skill her special skill and causes hits done to targets in special skill mode so when this damage damages the this special skill it deals hits done as well which is actually pretty cool and the last is her ultimate skill which is punishing edge it's it has a 55 second cooldown valid hits again is three rises from her throne and summons a fire resort swings it once inflicts AOE damage on enemies in front and levitates them okay level two to five is actually a damage increase which is a total of 25% and level five ultimate cooldown minus 15 seconds when redeployed so again when she dies and you redeploy her then her ultimate skill cooldown is going to be only at 40 seconds so again kit is very good she is probably your ultimate ranger perhaps in the game right now especially for the southeast asian server and i want to level her up to show her to show you guys what she can do in pvp but before that let's go to her recommended gear okay so for her recommended gear um probably i would go with critical damage resistance also if you could put in her um anti ranger would be good as well and anti sniper because again she is prone to those who can get um air units or can can shoot at air units because again she's the only air unit out there but she she is also very good and she is immune to ground attack only units so because they can they can't reach her from above so again critical damage resistance could be it but what i would recommend based on her kit is actually attack speed so you have here um this one um attack speed so this is four so this is actually i think going to be better for her so that she could inflict as much damage as she can she already has a modifier for hp which will somehow um you know somehow help her in terms of hp because again um for her second skill there there's an increase in hp also she has already high attack so no need to increase that and high crit rate as well again the others which defense um for go with that um hit rate below average and evasion is low because again she's a striker i'm sorry she's a ranger but again if you really want to maximize her i would suggest first is attack speed second would be critical damage resistance and or anti ranger and anti sniper so that is it and that is my recommendations for her gear okay my final thoughts with rosaria is um again i can't pronounce her her family name it's lefreet or lefride i'm not sure but seriously my thoughts on her is um it's it's a welcome site that we have a flying a flying ranger um immune immune to ground attacks only uh ground attack only units and she is she she can actually i think survive in this meta because so far we haven't we don't have that much of um i think all this the the the the meta right now is on the ground and not so much in the air so again i think she would be a good addition to your pvp team she's not bad for pve as well but again she will shine in pvp which only she she only cost four so again she is a value for what she brings and if you need a ranger actually i need a ranger really with um with with good range and good damage i want to pair with kyle womb currently i don't i don't have that many good rangers but i think i will have to build her up and uh give her the chance to be my top ranger or my second top ranger or second to the top ranger so more or less i like her kit damage all the way and she's a no fuss girl she will really reign in the pain once she's in the the battlefield and she will reign the pain for your opponents on the other side anyway guys for those who stuck to the end of this video um please consider subscribing because this helps my channel a lot also don't forget to click the bell icon so that you don't miss an episode of countryside and guys take care but before that please put down a comment if you have the comments on this video below take care stay safe this is the warden and i'm out of here


MGM Studio, it's the Mike Gravel show presented by Seat Geek with the head coach, I'm Mike Keith, glad to have you with us as we start tracking towards Monday night football, which is next Monday in Miami, bit of an odd week preparing or a little different schedule? Well, yeah, I mean, you're probably just a little different schedule, but I mean, it'll allow us an opportunity to rest up and to get an extra day and, you know, we need all the time and a meeting that we can get and the ability to show our guys reps and plays and formations and motions and all the things that they're going to do on the night. The Titans make a roster move today, waving linebacker, Monty Rice. Mike, is there a Titans player on the current active roster or even the practice squad who has a chance to sort of jump into Monty Rice's space? Well, you know, we've had Otis with us, Otis Rice has been with us through training camp and has been active a little bit and then been on the practice squad working and really working hard, developing and so, you know, I think probably the first opportunity would go to him and then we'll see where things go from there. Alright, so as you wrap up the game on Sunday, final thoughts about the loss to the coach?  It certainly wasn't hard to find Mike Vrable's six pack though. A lot of really good plays from this ball game for the Titans. Let's start with the touchdown right off the bat. It's Derrick Hinton. Yeah, just a great opportunity there for us to get into the drive and you could see right there at the beginning of that play, you know, Chris Moore coming in and sealing the support player, you see Jalen and Peter getting into it. So now when Derrick has, you know, has to come back and we want him to cut back and you can see that he doesn't have to lose ground and Derrick can not break stride and keep rolling. So to me, that's, you know, how we used to run the football around here and everybody doing our part and then Derrick, you know, beating that last guy to the end zone. Derrick missed the fourth quarter of the ball game put into, or put in checked for a concussion is the proper way to say it. What I was trying to say is he was not put into concussion protocol. Is he still tracking? Yeah, everything seems great and doing well. And we'll see again how he's feeling in the morning and move on from there. Good stuff. Unusual play next. Will Leviss has a problem and then causes a problem for someone else. Yeah, I don't want to see the quarterback, you know, his arm get hit as we're going to throw, but, you know, I appreciate our willingness to go play to the recovery of the football. As Blackman was starting to get up, he lost control of the football and then our will is there to recover it and, you know, a huge play. And again, I think that just goes to the competitiveness and the effort and he wasn't alone. There were other players that were doing that on offense and defense and finishing to the recovery of the football and then letting the officials sort it out. Guys respond to that when your quarterback plays that way. I think so. You know, I mean, I hope that we can all play that way. All right. Let's take a look at a deep pass. Will Leviss to D'Andre Hopkins. Yep. It's all going to start with a pocket and it wasn't the best pocket, but what you see there is a quarterback willing to turn around and stare the rusher in the face and deliver a good layered football right here to D'Andre in a seam and we're able to punch it in shortly thereafter. You know, 27-yard game took it down to the 5th Derrick Henry doing the honors right after that. Then let's take a look at some good red zone defense from the Titans to Nico Autry. You know, it was going to be a huge challenge and we played well. We stopped the run on early downs and then, you know, I thought the ability to get guys covered up in the end zone and as he started to extend the play, you know, guys start to uncover, but you could see we cage him in there and Jeffery does a great job of coming around, forcing him back into Nico, Arden and Harold did a great job of collapsing a pocket. Just a great example of team defense and getting a coverage sack and not only a coverage sack, but a turnover and then there's Elijah to recover it. Let's take a look at the two-point play for the Colts that ends up being two points for the Titans. Two big points and again, you defend every blade of grass and, you know, we've done that numerous times in the past years and, you know, the quarterback was under pressure and, you know, made a mistake or, you know, threw it blind and tip the running back, tipped it and right into hook and again, where guys are finishing and those are huge two points. Hundred yards. First time the Titans have done that since that rule change came into being. It's happened only a handful of times in the NFL. Which rule change were that at the two-point? Oh, I thought you meant that it couldn't be longer than 100. Did they add the distance in the end zone? They do add the distance in the end zone. I thought it used to just be 99 was the longest play. Did they change that too? There wasn't time. The 109 yards was the longest play on a fumble return by Ed Reid. There you go. That's the record. They ain't getting any more than that. They're not getting any further than that. I'm going to choke. All right, Gardner met you. You're going to get sacked right here. I do know that's going to happen. Yep. And again, here's another goal line sack and the stand on third down and, you know, the pressure and the coverage are trying to bunch us up and pick us. And, you know, I thought the players were prepared.  They put a lot into it and, you know, in all three phases and, you know, but certainly being able to defend the people down there and the way that we do gives us a lot of hope. And then Will Levis taking the Titans down the field late in the fourth quarter, he finds DeAndre Hopkins. Yeah, I'm curious to see that the view we have on this, but there's good arm angle. But, you know, you see the route craft here from Hop and they're working a combination coverage and you'll see it. So Hop starts up and, you know, they pass it off. And so he kind of looks at the outside guy and then, you know, breaks away. So, you know, both teams scored on this same play.  Going to go to the Vrables straighter next. But first, I want you to meet some of our Tennessee Titans. Mr. Football winners from earlier today, the award ceremony held in a luncheon at Neeson Stadium. Very special day. There were 10 of them. Let's meet three of them as we go to break on the Mike Vrables show presented by Seat Geek. Dawson White, quarterback safety. Isaiah Groves, running back. Rodriguez Jackson, prior receiver. From the Bet MGM Studio, the Mike Vrables show presented by Seat Geek. Time to go to the Vrables straighter. All right. Hey, some creative stuff you guys have been doing. Did some of it on Sunday? This was a pretty play. Yeah.  You know, we want to make it sound. We want to make sure that it's it's building off of things that we've done and trying to show looks. And, you know, I think that there's a place for some of these plays and we've been able to hit some of them and some of them we haven't. But they've been able to get us some explosive gains and we have to try to continue to do that to move the football. And, you know, this is just out of a 21 personnel package here.  Normally, Nick will come in here and crack, OK, and the full back will lead here. We get the puller around. And sometimes that'll be Derek or Tajé, whatever is going on there. And as we progress through, you know, being able to throw it back here behind the line of scrimmage backwards, pass allows them will now to extend and throw the pass. And it's not there. Throw it away. We've also hit hop right early in the season.  You can see he eats up these two players. And now we get Nick Westbrook, a Kine out the back door for a twenty eight yard game. And it's just about marrying plays, marrying run plays.  Or they kind of check in and you'll see this from the end zone. You know, our ability to to try to manipulate these ends down here and slow them down from chasing. So now if they see the quarterback boot, always at a boot, are they going to throw it back to him? You know, what are they going to do and being able to slow them down a little bit? As you see, you know, here next time we boot out of here, we're probably going to get him, you know, to kind of check back and now we'll get a cutback line. So as you start to build things, you know, he's looking, obviously reading top down, don't think it's going to be hot. But then being able to build just somebody coming into his vision, not knowing how much long you're going to have to hold on to the football. When you run 42 times and run effectively, they're going to bite on this look to give you these opportunities. Yeah, you're going to get, you know, I mean, you're going to get backers here that are flying where Nick had gone in there earlier and maybe cracked one of these guys. Now you're getting them flying and then Nick can can get out the backdoor. Good stuff. We've got the we've got a lot more coming up. We've got good stuff. We've got good stuff. Maybe I'll learn how to talk on this edition of the Bike Vrable Show. Let's meet some more of our Mr. Football winners from earlier today. And Kieshaan Tottenham, quarterback Kelvin Perkins, Southland High School quarterback Bo Carter, athlete. Committed to the University of Tennessee. When we interviewed the Titans director of sports performance, Frank Perrino, earlier this season, he made constant reference to Lauren. Now, the staff here knew he was talking about, but most outside of Ascension St. Thomas Sports Park wouldn't automatically know. So in tonight's epic Western spotlight, we introduce you to Lauren, who is very important every day to the lives of the Tennessee Titans. Lauren Silvio is in her second season as the Titans nutrition coordinator. She quickly built respect around the Titans with her knowledge, her background, her ability and her professionalism. But she also occupies an important role to today's football players. These guys understand that nutrition is a major part of their preparation. I would say nutrition is a huge role. You know, one thing is I'm here as a resource for them. I can't, you know, have them do everything like I can tell them what to do and I can educate them on what to do. But they have to actually take that knowledge and use it themselves. Lauren Silvio earned her undergraduate degree at Alabama and a master's degree at LSU. After three years of internships, she was hired full time at LSU before handling nutrition at Auburn for six years. The Titans hired her prior to the 2022 season. The team quickly learned that multitasking may be her most impressive skill. A normal day sees Lauren Silvio never stop. I'll go in and work on anything I need to from like a meal plan standpoint or maybe talk with the chefs in the kitchen about what menus we're doing during the season. They'll come out for a snack prior to practice because we practice right in the middle of the day. And so it's kind of an interesting scheduling situation with food, making sure they're eating the right things before they go out to practice and then coming back in from practice and having another kind of lunch situation. So you want to make sure that you're telling them what to eat. It's not going to hurt their stomach before they go out and run, making sure that there are things they're going to have enough energy to go out there because sometimes they worry that if they eat too much in the mornings, they're not going to feel good at practice. But there's kind of that balance and helping each guy understand what they need to be doing from that standpoint. And then after practice, we'll come back in and have lunch. I'll be in there if they have any questions about stuff, what to put on their plate. During this past off season, she came up with a plan for every player. They talk goals, nutrition, staying consistent with the plan, et cetera. And Lauren Silvio is a constant presence. She isn't just in her office or in the cafeteria. She's at practice in meeting rooms on the sidelines during games on road trips. You name it. Yeah, it's a huge relationship building to be present at all times and in different spaces.  If you're not in the meal room, if you're not at practice helping them, that's something that's really important to build those relationships and trust because nutrition can be a thing that people don't really want to talk about. It may be more fitting to call Lauren Silvio the Titans nutrition coach. Her trust and respect among Titans players seems to be growing by the day. As long as we can continue to emphasize nutrition, I think that's the most important thing. And I have great support from Coach Frable and Frank in the weight room and the athletic training staff as well. So being able to have all of those people kind of supporting nutrition and being able to help the guys is the ultimate goal. And I think that the more that I'm here, the more that we can implement new things and educate more and kind of find where we want to increase the nutrition's role. Lauren Silvio, important to this football team. Yeah, absolutely. She does a fantastic job. I love her energy, love her spirit. I love the fact that, you know, during practice, she's out there hustling and helping Todd and his staff and coordinates the meals and plans the meals. And, you know, we get these rookies and a lot of them don't have the same type of nutrition that the SEC schools or Big Ten schools or bigger schools had. And, you know, she teaches them how to go shopping and cook and make meals at home in the off season or during the season at night when maybe they're not here at work. So just a great role. And again, no job is too small for Lauren. And we appreciate what she does. Her first role is making sure that the players are healthy internally and that, you know, they're trying to eat the right things and have the right supplements and then anything else that she can do, she does. Kids Ask Coach Frable is up next. But before we go to break, let's meet our four other Mr. Football winners from earlier today. Jalen Mosley, wide receiver safety, Jackson Christian High School. I'm Mario Jefferson, wide receiver, University of Alabama. Cruz Law, linebacker, University of North Carolina. Owen Taylor, kicker punter. The Mike Rabel Show continues presented by Seat Geek. We are here in the Bet MGM studio and it's time for kids. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. Let's get to Jalissa. Let's go. Kids Ask Coach Rabel. Coach Rabel, my name is Jalissa. I'm 11 and my question is, is it difficult coaching all of those players at once? No, no, it's not difficult. You know what I mean? I think that it sometimes it is. I think that that's a fantastic question to be able to say. Is it difficult to coach all those players at once? And everybody's got a different personality. We've got different positions. We've got players from from different parts of the country. They're from different backgrounds. And I think that's what makes it amazing and also challenging at the same time is is that you're trying to build a team and you've got players that have been with you for a while. You've got some that are new. You've got some that, you know, just came here this past week or a couple of weeks ago and you're trying to combine all that and figure all that out. So it is challenging. It's rewarding. But at times it can, you know, be difficult and and trying to do all that and maintain that type of structure and culture that we want to build when we're not having success. And I know that that's why we're here. We're here to win. But it's amazingly rewarding. And I know that those are going to come sooner. Jalissa, that was a really good question. Is it OK if I say that? Yes, you can chime in. It was a really good question. Is it OK if I throw it a break now? Absolutely. All right. Back with Mike Vrable's Nissan Keys to Success. That's next on the Mike Vrable Show presented by Seatkey. Time for the Nissan Keys to Success on the Mike Vrable Show. Titans don't play until next Monday night at Miami. And so let's start with momentum and field position. How do special teams potentially create that? Yeah, by covering kicks, by protecting our punters.  That's that's not acceptable. We know that we're going to make our kicks.  But that's how you send messages and you go down there and you rally around the guy, make a tackle. If you do what Tage does here and get us out past the 35 yard line. This is all part of it. And it's a great drive starter, there's great field position on the 36 yard line for us to go down there and score a touchdown. You hope to have a punter tomorrow? Yeah, yeah, we'll have a punter tomorrow. We just need to make sure we got one by Monday night. That's it. All right, fair enough. Defense has to be great with eyes and assignments. Why is that? Well, it's just everything before the snap. There's so many formations and motions that they're, you know, coming from every which way. And everybody has an assignment, right? Any defensive linemen, linebackers, everybody has to adjust to somebody. You know, this team will run the football. They have multiple run schemes, very, very effective at it. They average over five yards of carry, you know, and we know how explosive they can be down the field. Yeah, the crazy stat about the Miami Dolphins is they average 285 passing, but 143 rushing. I don't think most people would expect that. Yeah, I mean, they've been up in games, right? And so they've been able to run the football and, you know, they get a lot of split safety with as much passing and, you know, they've hit some runs. I got the third one. You're going to have to score points and you're going to have to drive the football.  And, you know, you look at Philadelphia, they had the ball for 37 minutes and Miami had it for 23.  We have to be able to try to possess the football. Thanks for caring me tonight. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. Thanks.  Now we made it through. Next Monday night, 7.15, Titans at Miami. Next Tuesday night, the Mike Vrable Show. Thanks for joining us. Good night, everybody.


I'm Deborah Borchard and this is your Marijuana Money Minute. This week, Verano Holdings announced that they were buying and merging with Alternative Medical Enterprises, or ALT-MED, to create the largest privately owned cannabis company. The value of the transaction was not disclosed, but you may recall that earlier this year Harvest Health was going to buy Verano in a deal that was valued at $850 million dollars at the time. It was a huge week for earnings, with numbers coming from some of the biggest players in the industry. We're going to break it down into winners, losers, and meh category. The winners are Green Thumb Industries, or GTI. They had another tremendous quarter, with revenue increasing 131% to $157.1 million dollars. The revenue growth was driven primarily by the increased scale in the company's consumer packaged goods and retail businesses. Canopy Growth reported net revenue of $135 million dollars for the second fiscal 2021 quarter. That caused the stock to jump. It was a 77% increase over last year's quarter revenue of $76 million dollars. Still, they delivered a net loss of $96 million dollars versus last year's net income of $242 million dollars. No generation released their third quarter earnings. Revenues rose 153% to $55 million dollars. That was way better than last year's $21.8 million dollars for the same time period. Harvest Health and Recreation said that their revenue rose 86% in the third quarter to $61.6 million dollars. This was also a sequential increase of 11%. Acreage Holdings reported their third quarter revenue rose 42% to $31 million dollars. That was also a 17% increase sequentially. Now in the so-so category, our cannabis reported a slight increase in their total and net revenue. They hit $67.8 million dollars, but then they announced a $125 million dollar offering that was not well received by shareholders who are very concerned about the company's cash burn. Tilbury reported that their total revenue for the third quarter was flat at $51 million It was up 2% sequentially and their net losses did fall to $2.3 million dollars. Charlotte's Web reported that their revenue rose to $25.2 million dollars, but that was only a tiny bit better than the $25.1 million last year. Their net losses also increased to $6.6 million dollars over last year's net loss of $1.39 million dollars. In the not so great category, Canopy Rivers acknowledged taking a $112 million dollar hit for their farmhouse investment and their total loss for the quarter was $87 million dollars. Organograms shares plunged this week on an announcement that they were doing a public offering of units for $60 million dollars. And finally in psychedelic news, Saibon began trading this week and Compass reported their earnings. Now they don't really have revenues, but they did say they have enough cash to get them through to 2023. And that's it for this week. I'm Deborah Bortart with the Green Market Report.


Benelander's actor Ben Kruger has just passed away. Ben Kruger has passed away. The news of his dissolution was made known by KYKNET publicist Suzan Kaita in the early hours of this morning. The star popularly known for his role on Benelander's has just passed away at the age of 64. I can confirm actor Ben Kruger has passed away. We are waiting for a statement to be approved and will send it out soon. She said. The actor was known for his character Oki Perera, aka Umoki, on the KYKNET soapy. Over the years fans also got to see Ben in action as Sakshpa's Waidenhode in the SABC2 drama series Zero Tolerance and as Neve Gert in Seven Delon. He also played the role of James Gregory in the movie Mandela and a Clerk, which released in 1997. Ben's passion and love for film making went all the way back to his days in the Navy when he worked in the TV training studios. This is a developing story.


You want to stop sending poor young men from our country to get shot at by even poor or young men in another country?    You want to stop inflation which erodes savings and keeps people working longer into their life because they can't afford to retire?  You want to stop over-policing of impoverished areas from the war on drugs?  You want to end the welfare state because it works more like a trap of poverty than a social safety net?  You want to stop corporate welfare and expansionary monetary policy which causes economic crises, making millions of working-class people unemployed, homeless and left without health care?  I could go on for the whole video with that, but I think you get the point. One of the most disastrous effects of public education has been to give everybody this absurd idea that free-market economic ideals help the rich at the expense of the poor.  We hear all the time about how if it wasn't for the government our lives would be run by monopolies even more abusive than the state, so we have to accept its decisions as the lesser of two evils. Well, here is a single statement that should shatter that view. The government is THE monopoly. What a level of unadulterated double-think it requires to acknowledge that monopolies are bad for everyone, but especially the poor, and so we need an arch monopoly called government, but we're just going to cross our fingers and hope that it just decides to be good and help the poor. All you need to do is just get the right people in. But anyone with a shred of common sense knows you won't attract altruists into a monopoly, or at least you will absolutely never be able to attract enough kind-hearted altruistic people to come even close to outnumbering the unscrupulous psychopathic vultures who climb to the top of monopolies to take advantage of the unprecedented power at its disposal. Western liberal democracies have tried many things to curb the abuse of state power and inject it with false altruism, which claims the moral high ground by confiscating wealth by the barrel of a gun, taking the lion's share for itself and sprinkling crumbs on the poor while giving favours to the rich because they pay the most tax revenue. They have a total incentive to look after the rich and not you. But all attempts of these measures have been in vain. We've had absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, absolute republics, constitutional republics, and now democratic republics with supranational governing bodies, but the story has always been the same. More than anything else, we are told that democracy is freedom, when in practice democracy does nothing to stop the problem. Whereas a king had his whole lifetime to exploit his citizens, confiscate their wealth and land, wage war with them as chess pieces, and protect their special interest cronies, well now a democracy has only one election cycle to do it in, so it needs to speed up the process. So despite us being bestowed the gift of democracy, we're now still in wars for 20 years at a time. Terrorism is constantly rising as a result. Your rights to privacy, speech, and self-defense get beaten to a pulp, economic crashes become increasingly severe, unemployment climbs and wages fall. And so I ask you how you can possibly defend these things and claim that you are in fact a kind-hearted representative of the poor. In this narrative of government versus markets that we're constantly given, which side wages war? Ah yes, the government. Is war good for the poor? Only if you count death, physical dismemberment, and psychological trauma as good. Who performs no-knock raids that kill innocent people in the night over victimless crimes? Yep, that one's government too. Who in 2020 shut down the market, unemploying millions, crashing the economy harder than the Great Depression, while stocks of blue-chip mega-corporations reach record levels amidst trillions of dollars in bailouts at the expense of the working taxpayer? Well, the market didn't do that to itself, did it? The truth of the matter is that free market economic proposals help the poor substantially greater than any other economic class, of course including the rich. And it's just due to the simple comprehension that markets create wealth through the free exchange of goods and services to the mutual benefits of all parties involved. Governments cannot create wealth, they just take it and blow it on bombs and pedophilic sex trafficking rings. So allow me to end this rant portion and explain to you how you've been lied to for your whole life about how government economic intervention helps the poor. Number one, the minimum wage. Anybody who has done high school level economics can tell you that price controls are bad. If loaves of bread are selling in supermarkets for £1 and then the government says it's illegal to sell bread for more than 50p, you're going to have an enormous shortage of bread as the supply cannot possibly meet the demand. Simple stuff. It applies to labour as well. It's no coincidence that when cities like New York massively increase the minimum wage, one of two things happen. Everything gets more expensive or lots of people lose their jobs. When everything becomes more expensive, those bigger numbers in your bank account aren't actually worth more than you had before because you can't buy any more things so you're no better off.  Isn't working for something better than not working at all? This doesn't just apply to relatively high minimum wages. The existence of a minimum wage at all means that anybody whose work isn't possibly deemed valuable enough to meet it has only two options, welfare or crime. Again, how are they better off for sitting around wasting their life away on the scraps of welfare or on the streets, instead of working for a low wage, developing their skills, becoming more competitive, earning promotions and pay rises as they go. Number two, central banking. Among all the boogeymen of the private sector that exist, the banks are the most deserving of this status. But do you know what the Federal Reserve is, or the Bank of England? They are banks which are given a monopoly by the government to exclusively print and issue currency as legal tender. So, again, if banks are bad and monopolies are bad, how is a forced monopoly bank supposed to be good? In their task of deliberately creating inflation, these central banks give money to retail banks at a rate of interest that is extraordinarily far below the interest rate that would be seen if they didn't have a monopoly over money issuance. What does this mean? It means that at an inflation rate of 3% per year, your money becomes worth 3% less every year, because the supply of money is constantly being increased. This increase is achieved by these low interest rates, which literally means the government is giving the banks free money to splurge up the wall on risky investments, like subprime mortgages which created the global financial crisis of 2008, while your salary and savings are rotted away every year. Tell me how the government is at all an altruistic, caring, kind nanny to the poor when they are conducting this grotesque and enormous Ponzi scheme, which is literally taking wealth from the poor to give to the rich. 3. Bureaucracy and Subsidy Why does healthcare in both the United States and United Kingdom every year become more expensive and of lower quality, despite the billions the governments pump into them as either subsidies or through nationalised industries? The very fact that the government does that, presenting points on healthcare between the UK and the US is very difficult as they are totally different. In the UK, healthcare is nationalised under the NHS, but we're told that in America, healthcare is privatised. Interesting. Just look at this chart for a moment. Do you notice something peculiar there? Yeah, the US government actually spends more tax money per person on healthcare than the UK does. So when this is the case, it's inevitable to see a booming rise in administrators compared to physicians, as now healthcare companies have absolutely no incentives to keep costs down.  So couple this bureaucratic nightmare with government enforced IP and patent laws for drugs, which allow pharmaceutical companies to become monopolies over medicine, which makes drug prices soar, and you have absolutely no case to say that the problem with American healthcare is a lack of government intervention. The fact that there is technically more government interference in what is supposed to be a private market than a nationalised one is absolutely insane. Now all you need to do is take this example and carefully note the principles behind the points I made, point it at every industry like steel production, car manufacturing, animal agriculture, or any other industry that governments see fit to heavily involve themselves in, and you will find an identical or close to picture every single time. Because it all boils down to one simple fact, the market creates, the government takes. The market is good for the poor, the government is bad for them.  And even after all of these amazing benefits that capitalism and its markets have brought to the poorest of society, they are still secondary to the fact that free markets make free people. The actual justification of the existence of a free market is because it is the most moral, ethical, and right way for humans to live and organise society. It's because of this that the benefits emerge. The greatness of markets is their fundamentally moral position, and its outstanding track record is the result of this, not the cause.  We do this out of a love of freedom, and as it so happens, freedom is good for everyone, the poor include it. Take it easy.


Welcome to the rundown. Just in time for the PRT, you can now download the official Navy PFA app on your phone. The app offers a PFA calculator function so you can calculate your anticipated overall PRT score by inputting your age, gender, and anticipated scores in the curl ups, push ups, and specific cardio categories. It also has BCA information available to provide a quick reference for height to weight standards as well as nutrition resources such as menus, meal planning, and information on supplements. The app includes demo videos for measuring body composition, height and weight screening, and proper techniques for curl ups and push ups. And for all the command fitness leaders out there, you can find links to CFL, administrative duties, and responsibilities, and links to PFA nav admins. Check it out in the Navy AppLocker, www.applocker.navy.mil. May is National Mental Health Month, the purpose of which is to raise awareness about mental illnesses, the realities of living with mental illnesses, and to teach strategies for achieving and maintaining mental health wellness. If you feel like you need help or someone to talk to, please reach out. You are not alone. For more information dealing with mental health, visit MilitaryOneSource.com. If you're dealing with mental health issues, the Military Crisis Line offers free and confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can be reached at 1-800-273-8255, or by texting 838-255. And lastly, congratulations to all the new Master Chiefs across the fleet. That's all for this week. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, at USNPeople. For any questions, or to sign up for our monthly newsletter, send us a message at usnpeople.fct at navy.mil. To the Chief of Naval Personnel, I'm MCT Tadler Preston. Thanks for watching.


The World Bank's pandemic fund is designed to provide financial assistance to countries facing public health crises caused by infectious diseases. The fund is intended to supplement existing resources and fill gaps in preparedness and response capacity. It is hoped that the fund will help countries better prepare for and respond to future outbreaks. However, critics argue that the fund does not go far enough in providing adequate response funding. Additionally, the fund does not appear to be linked to any specific health security framework or instrument, leaving open the possibility of uncoordinated responses. To ensure effective and efficient response to future outbreaks, the pandemic fund should be supplemented with dedicated response funding and link to health security frameworks and instruments. This article was authored by Matthew Arboyce, Erin M. Sorrell, and Claire J. Stanley.