Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. In this week's special topic in astronomy, we are going to look at the concept of albedo and what that means in terms of studying our planets. So what do we mean by albedo? Well, the albedo of an object is, by definition, the fraction of the incident light that an object reflects. So some objects would be very bright and would have a very high albedo. The maximum an albedo can be would be one, and that means it's reflecting all of the light that's incident on it. Of course, that would be ideal and that situation is not going to occur. But some objects do reflect a lot of light, bright snow, for example. Shortly after a snowfall will reflect a large percentage of the light, maybe 80% of the light striking it. Now an albedo of zero would mean that no light is reflected. And of course, that again is an ideal situation. Everything is going to reflect a little bit of light. So everything else is going to be in between those two values. So your lowest albedo would be zero and your highest would be a value of one. Now let's look at one example here and we see in our image the planet Saturn. And in the foreground we see the moon Titan. Now, Saturn and Titan are the same distance from the Sun. So they're receiving the same amount of sunlight. So if they were the exactly the same, made of the same materials, they would reflect the same amount of light and would look the same brightness. We can see here that Titan is much dimmer than Saturn. So even though it's receiving the same amount of light, it is not reflecting as much. So based just on the image we would say that the albedo of Titan here is much less than the albedo of Saturn behind it. And if we look at the actual values, we see that this is correct. Titan has an albedo of about 0.22 and Saturn has an albedo twice that of 0.5. So Saturn reflects more than twice the amount of light that Titan does, making it appear brighter even though they receive the same amount of light. Now let's look at a few other objects here and we can look at a nice image showing a few objects in the sky. And in fact, this is an image showing three different objects. We see in the middle here is the planet Venus. And up above that is the planet Mercury. And then down below we see the moon. Now you'll note that the moon is not very bright and that's because it's a crescent moon. Only that little portion is actually illuminated. Now, when we look at their albedos, what do we see? Well, Venus has one of the highest albedos reflecting nearly 70% of the light that strikes it. And that's why we often see Venus very prominently either in the evening sky after sunset or in the morning sky before sunrise because it does reflect a lot of light. It's going to look bright and it also is relatively close to Earth. However, Mercury can get relatively close to Earth as well. And not quite as close as Venus, but still is relatively close compared to the more distant planets. However, it looks a lot fainter because it reflects much less light. And in fact, even if you put Mercury and Venus at the same distance from the Sun and looked at them, Mercury only reflects one-fifth the light that Venus does. So Mercury would look five times fainter in the sky than Venus just because of the amount of light that is reflected. Now, of course, they also take into account the distance. If one something's further away, it's also going to look fainter. And then we can also do for comparison our moon, the second brightest object in the sky, but it does not reflect a lot of light. The moon is made of very dark rocks and reflects only about 12% of the light that strikes it. So if the moon were made of icier materials such as some of the outer moons of the outer planets, it would be much more reflective and would be even brighter in the night sky than it is. So it only reflects a very small portion of the light incident on it. So that's what the albedo is, is how much of the light that strikes an object that is actually reflected off to be seen. So again, concluding, we talked about the definition of albedo as a measure of the amount of light, the percent of the light reflected from an object. Some objects, Venus, reflect a high percentage of light and our moon reflects a low percentage of the light. So it depends on what the composition of those is. Venus has a lot of bright clouds, meaning it reflects a lot of light. Things like our moon have a lot of dark rocks which absorb a lot of light and reflect very little. So that concludes this special topic on albedo. We'll be back again next time for another special topic in astronomy. So until then, have a great day, everyone, and I will see you in class.


Good evening. Welcome. I am calling to order this meeting of the Arlington Select Board on Monday, December the 18th. I am Select Board Chair Eric Helmuth. Tonight's meeting is being conducted in a remote format consistent with provisions by the state legislature for remotely conducted public meetings. I will now confirm that all members present are all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. John Hurd. Yes. Len Diggins. Here. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Town Council Mike Cunningham. Yes. And select board administrator Ashley Maher. Yes. Thank you. Before we begin, please note that this meeting is being conducted entirely over zoom. It is being recorded in simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Both zoom observers and people watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials found on the town's website. Specifically, the select board agendas and minutes page. Finally, because this meeting is being held remotely, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. And we have an abbreviated agenda tonight. Give me a moment to get to that on my screen. We have the consent agenda items two through five. We have a reappointments. First to the, to the transportation advisory committee with the term to expire December 31st of 2027. That's to socks. Got Smith and Melissa. Third item number three, we have a request for a contractor and drain layer license from MTP communications incorporated from Bellingham. Specifically mark my bone. Item for proclamation acknowledging the 250th anniversary of the banal of monotony. This was requested by our economic development coordinator. And finally request for the monotony grill and tavern late night event on December 31st. By Billy Lyons. So do I have a motion on the consent agenda. That's a motion to approve. Move approval. And then if I could just make a comment. Yes, please. Yeah. Since we're all not rushing out to, to dinner. But the just relative to the reenactment. A lot of work that's gotten into this. There's a lot of planning that's ongoing. We're trying, you know, we've with the 2025 committee. We've been looking towards 2025, but we're really for all the communities that are involved 2024 is going to be a dry run. And so we are going to have a reenactment that's a lot more in depth than the usual reenactments that we have. So it really should be a site to see it's going to be the same type of reenactment that we're going to have in 2025. Yeah, we're trying to incorporate some sort of a parade in there as well to make it, you know, event for people that enjoy the history of the town and for kids that enjoy. Parades. So it should be a really good event and I look forward to it and all the planning still in process, but I'm happy to see that on the agenda and there'll be more information to come relative to that. Thank you. Do I have a second that and I'll say that I like the logo, you know, especially the little untold, untold stories of monotony at the bottom makes me want to hear about them. And also I can't let this pass without saying, you know, how much I am happy that Melissa and Scott Smith or rejoining tactic been there. I know Scott's been there since the beginning and probably Melissa assume they're after if not at the beginning. Also, and they are such a valuable resource, you know, to the tack and then and to the town in general. And so, I think between them, we just probably 100 years of work on tack. Anyways, I'm once again happy to second. One comment, Mr. Chair. By all means, Mr. You wouldn't believe how much time and effort we spent in deciding that logo with a lot of options and a lot of input. And it was a multiple meeting, excursion to land on that but everyone was pretty excited about what we have there to represent the town so. I can't believe you having been through these processes. He's like, yeah, yeah, they're an effort. But no, that's well done. So thank you. Yeah. Well, I hardly second all the all those sentiments. And I'm glad Mr. Dickens that you seconded the motion because I was about to run out of select board members. But the logo is fantastic. Actually, I love that I got a magnet, I think, or a sticker with it. And I'm really excited about the work that you've done you and your colleagues have done the committee, Mr. And I really look forward to it's kind of excited about the celebration. So I think all that time you spent on it really is worth it because it's going to be the face of Wellington for for an awful lot of people. And yeah, to to Mr. Dickens point about Scott Melissa, I'm a big fan of the tech. And I think these individuals in particular contributed so much. So I'm delighted that they are, they're ready for more. So any further discussion. So on a motion by Mr. Hurd to approve the consent agenda and secondly by Mr. Diggins. Mr. Cunningham, would you please call the roll. Yes, Mr. Chair. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Three zero vote. Thank you very much. I will note that Tom manager Jim Feeney has joined the meeting. Welcome, sir. We have item six licenses and permits for approval we have license renewals, a whole list of them that are listed in materials on the agenda, available on the agenda's minutes portion of the website and and select board members packets. So if I have any emotions or discussion on those approvals for renewals. Mr. Diggins. Yeah, I'll make a motion to move the license permits. Do I have a second. You're muted, Mr. Second. And any discussion. I have a motion to approve the license renewals as listed in item six by Mr. Diggins and seconded by Mr. Hurd attorney Cunningham. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Three zero vote. Thank you very much. I'm moving along to correspondence received. We have the Fox library housing feasibility study from Claire Ricker, the director of planning and community development. We have a request for speed bumps and stop signs and apple in the street from Jeff Elias that 384 Appleton Street and a memo from the town manager about vacation buyback. Intertain motions and discussion. Mr. Hurd. I'll move received. And I'll give our new town manager. The same advice that I think I gave a few town managers past. And that it's certainly happy to see that the hard work that you put in that have created excess vacation days, but we all know how hard this job can be. And we certainly encourage you to take your vacation days. And that's, I think I've said that to at least one time manager before. I don't know if I ever said to Mr. Mr. Puler, but just food for thought. Thank you. Mr. Dickens. I'm going to add to that vacation stress me out. So sometimes it's like, it lessens more, you know, especially when I have to like come back me to like a lot of stuff. And some people say back, you know, one person that we met with recently said when, when, when, when you do what you enjoy, you know, you're not really working. And I certainly get the sense that Mr. Feeney is doing what he's doing, but he'll, he'll take care of himself. But I hear we're coming from Mr. Hurd, you know, and I'm just, I'm just giving you a hard time. And I also say that I'd like to see that we send that that second letter on the second number item number eight, you know, to Mr. Feeney, you know, and he can direct it from he can direct it, you know, to where he thinks it should go. And also, I just want to say on seven, I'm so happy to see that the study about the Fox library putting more affordable, the possibility, the feasibility of putting more housing on top of it every time I walk as Fox library. I just think we, we can do more here either. So I'm happy to see us at least beginning to think about doing more. And I'm kind of curious about that technical assistance that 15k plus me on top of the 77 in how that's going to be utilized. But I'll just save that for my conversation with Mr. Feeney, you know, some time later. So thank you. And happy second. I guess I was wondering if there's going to be a second to get into that and Mr. Heard, do you, you accept the friendly amendment on the referral to town manager for the, for the traffic item. Yes. All right. Any further discussion. Okay, so we have a motion to receive with a referral for item eight to the town manager by Mr. Heard and seconded by Mr. Diggins. Turning on him. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Three zero vote. Excellent. All right, and this brings us to new business in septic cases of emergency the board will neither deliberate nor act upon topics presented in new business. I will go first this evening I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the voters of Arlington for giving me the privilege of representing you on select board for the past almost three years. My term is up in April. And I'm very pleased to announce tonight that I intend to ask the voters for another three years by running for reelection. In the April town election. So I want to say all to my colleagues that I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you the same to my colleagues in the town staff. I think it is a terrific team. It has been a deeply rewarding experience at times and exhausting one, but I think that's exactly how it's supposed to be. And I'm certainly the voters agree with me. I'm certainly willing to go into the three years. And I will now move to Mr. Heard. Thank you. First, I am very happy to hear your announcement. We certainly have been a valuable asset to the board in the past three years and done a very good job and continue to do as chair. So that is a very good announcement for the time of Arlington. I want to just mention that we. It was last week, we had, we had hosted a regional meeting for the. The four municipalities that are part of the inter municipal agreement for the 2025 event at the senior center. It was very well attended that we actually had more people than we thought that we had, but there was a lot of work work was put in. By town staff or economic development coordinator Katie. You sigh and Angela. Azuzki is on the, the 2025 committee with me. And it was very well. It was a great representation of the town of Arlington. So that was a great event next event is going to be in February. With that, I, in following Mr. Helmeth announcement, you know, I've had a lot. I don't take the, you know, the decision. To run for reelection lightly, you know, I had a lot of conversations with family friends and just kind of looking at my own family situation.  But I think at the end of the day, what came for me is I still really have a passion for the town. My, we're going to be here for a long time. My kids are still quite young and going through the school system and using a lot of the town resources. I really enjoy the board that we have right now. I think we have a really good mix of. Different viewpoints, which really is effective in governing. And, you know, we don't always agree and that's fine, but we do so. I think I said this, but when one time we agreed, we disagree agreeably. And I, I feel like I have more work to be done. It's been an amazing six years. I think we've accomplished a lot. I am at, you know, whether it's the 2025 or just event, you know, issues that are facing the town, such that are important to me, such as affordable housing and and whatnot.  And balance my work and my life and my commitment shouldn't again the voters determine that they want me for three more years. So I'm happy to announce that I too intend to pull papers once they do and seek reelection for another three year term on the board. Thank you. And I don't think this constitutes deliberation to see how happy I am. Mr. Heard to hear that news. You served the town. Well, you do it for the right reasons. And Arlington is lucky that you're going to keep doing it. I'll now turn to Mr. Diggins. Well, you know, I'm happy that we're in Zoom, because as you know, we're in the room. I have my mask on so you can't see me when I'm smiling, but I'm smiling and I'm so happy that both of you, you know, have decided to run again. And yeah, as Mr. Heard said, we're a mix. We're the first mix, but I think we get along well. And I think particularly so when we disagree and I find it easy to be agreeable, agreeably disagreeable because I kind of feel that chances are I'm going to change my mind. You know, if any of you are all disagree with me, so it's like I listen and it's like, okay, what am I not getting right here? You know, so that I can learn from that and go on. That's because I respect you all a lot and the colleagues who aren't here. And so it's one thing to look different and come from different backgrounds being that's the diversity in and of itself. But when someone really does think differently and have a different viewpoint and to be not only tolerant of that, but accepting of that, you know, it really makes a big difference being in. And that's, I feel that we have this in this group. And we're also, everyone works on the benefit of the residents so much, you know, and, and so I learned from you all respect that the OML tends to hem us in a bit. That's the only challenging in this job. And I think I tend to be a little more paranoid about that than others. And as I say to folks, it's not so much about I'm thinking outside the box is this maximizing the space inside the box. I mean, so, so I'm thrilled. I don't have anything to add other than happy holidays everyone and hope you have a good transition to the new year. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. I'll turn to the staff for new business. Let's start with board administrator Ashley mark. I think she's probably busy administering the meeting. So I will take that as a no new business and we'll turn to attorney kind of him any new business tonight, sir. Happy holidays to all and remind Mr. Diggins that attention and detail to the OML is a good thing. Never never apologize for that, sir. Mr. Feeney time manager. No new business. Happy holidays. I'll look forward to continuing our good work in 2024. Thank you. I will say Mr. Feeney that it remains a delight to all of us that you are serving the town and I think we all look forward to your first full year service even though we've known you for a long time. Thank you again for loving this town and for serving us so so capable. And with that, that's the end of the agenda. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All right, I'm in motion to adjourn by Mr. Hurd a second of Mr. Diggins attorney cutting him. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmut. Yes. We are adjourned. Good night. Happy holidays.


Well, it's finally warm enough to be Working outside and it's not raining for once which is nice because all next week. It's supposed to rain, so I am making hay literally while the Sun shines camera is riding in a Wagonful of hay or I guess not technically hay. I'm taking a little liberties there. It's grass clippings Or more than clippings. It's long bits of glass grass that I cut with the side in the front yard and now I'm Taking them back to the compost and you're riding along so welcome to food McGatin So this week I am working To get as much done as I can before it starts raining at least outside and once it rains I'll be working just primarily in the greenhouse but Here we have What will break down to be probably less than one wheel bell full of compost And I need about two dozen wheelbarrows full of compost each year, so Even though it looks like a lot right now this breaks down Into a disappointingly small amount So this week on food McGatin, you'll see me mowing the lawn planting out corn making beds weeding and Generally just being as busy as I possibly can be Until it starts raining again, so that's gonna be the name of the game. I think for the next month I have to do a little maintenance on my side and It's something called peening P-e-e-n. You've probably heard of a ball peen hammer. That's what you do with a ball peen hammer. You peen things It just basically means hitting cold metal hammering cold metal to change the shape and This blade is really thin and when I hit something that's Woody stem or something that's a little bit tougher than it should It can bend and deform just a normal wear and tear it can crack and get micro fissures along the cutting surface And gets out of alignment yadda yadda yadda, so once every oh Once every eight or so hours of use I will peen it And I will beat That sharp edge back into shape So here for example, you can see How the edge is kind of beaten up. It's got nicks and it's uneven So I I'm gonna try and fix that and all I'm using here is a Narrow anvil and a broad Hammer I could use this narrow side and a broad anvil that takes more skill. This is a lot easier This doesn't actually make it too much sharper For that I have to use my My stone here. It's got rough sides and then smoother sides a lot sharper So this is a this is a 55 centimeter of Falkie blade from Italy and It's very different than an American style scythe So this is more of an American style scythe and you can see how the blade and how it connects to the wood are straight This is different than my Italian side Which I'll show you in a minute and basically the bend comes from the wood and so when you're cutting The blade lies flat on the ground, but it's because the wood has to bend for that to happen, right? This blade is also a lot heavier. This whole thing actually weighs probably twice as much as what I use and so you can see The blade sits flat on the ground at the handle straight Whereas to make this blade sit flat on the ground the handle has to bend This wood also like I said weighs significantly less which for my money is nice because if you're doing this all day then having a light scythe Is is much nicer all this side material at least my my modern stuff from one side revolution I'll link to their website right now, but look at one side revolution calm. They have all kinds of videos and Basically any scythe or scything accessory you could you could hope to have Botan Anderson the guy who runs that Also gets workshops and things about teaching people how to use a scythe properly and that's where I learned I'm not an expert on using a scythe, but I do like that. It's quiet. It doesn't require a lot of gas Nothing like that. It's relaxing quiet again just It's a more enjoyable way for me to mow the lawn I try and keep what I have to mow to a minimum and we're gonna reuse this as you'll see in a little bit I mean, I can have a little guy on my back and do this and it's Not that hard and it's Friendly to the environment. It's just great. I enjoy it Now I'm not an expert on this or anything else But most people think the side goes like this and you cut things by going across the blade But that's not really how it goes Really what it is it's going along the blade So this I you know it does cut things, but it's just not the right way to do it It's just it's not efficient way to do it It doesn't move things and it the blade isn't designed to do that. It's a thin blade. So you want to do is slide And barely move forward only a couple inches each time, but it slices The front picks up the vegetation then it gets sliced on the beard or the back This line is called a windrow So a couple of weeks ago I built this compost hutch and I have a pallet up here on top But I'm gonna put some shingles on it and these shingles are recycled cedar shingles that I tore off the house They're kind of rotted. I don't really care. It's not a big deal of water gets through if there's some drips I just don't want my compost pile to be constantly rained on So, you know, these will eventually just go right into the compost, which is nice And for those of you that know how to install cedar shingles, this is not the correct way. I'm not overlapping them properly I'm not spacing them properly.   Yeah, I know I'm doing it wrong. I don't care And now I just have to add some shingles to the front and now through the magic of editing It's done. So now what I'm gonna do is just add a lot of my carbon here The freshly cut grass Into my hutch and to balance it out. I went ahead and got chicken droppings. I'm just gonna do Couple shovel pulls of ammonia holding chicken poo and a whole bunch more grass and vegetation And To get this to heat up I need to give it enough oxygen. So I got to be out here every couple of days Pulling all this out. That's why I leave the front off. I don't have a front to my compost bins I can just pull it right out and then do this again. I lift and separate Toss it in Last time I did this it was already warm. Oh Yeah, it's pretty hot. I would say Easily a hundred degrees but I want to get it up to 160. I really want to get this cooking and burn it up the Seeds and the bad microbes in here. I want to get it as hot as I possibly can This might be something I do in the winter in the greenhouse to add a little extra heat. It's an idea. I'm touring with I Try and make everything go in a circle So my lawn clippings become compost my chicken poo becomes compost That all helps me grow more food for the chickens and ourselves which There's one big cycle Couple weeks ago on the blog I published an excerpt from one of my favorite series. That's the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett and in it They have a compost pile that becomes Alive and tries to eat people and I publish that Under the headline of compost goals. You can find that at lowtechinstitute.org and have a read of that yourself Looks like it's overflowing now But give it two or three weeks It'll have settled down to half this size in three months It'll be a quarter and by one year from now. I'll be lucky if it's a whole wheelbarrow full So this summer I was hoping to do a study But we didn't get funding and then this whole crisis happened anyway, so that's fine Basically what I wanted to look at was something called polycropping and polycropping is the opposite of monocropping monocropping is when you plant an entire field full of corn beans squash, whatever and Many native and even permaculture and modern planting Ideas it's not that some plants are complementary and when you plant them together They help one another and the oldest polycrop that we know of More or less is corn beans and squash the so-called three sisters that were really common across North America before contact and Corn beans and squash were grown in such a way that the corn would grow up Making a trellis for the beans to crawl up them and the squash would spread out and suppress weeds And the beans would provide nitrogen to the soil So they were a symbiotic system helping one another Now my study wants to look at how that affects yield And so what I've done is I've split these two equally sized areas. This one's a trapezoid This one's a triangle, but they're the same area and what I'm doing is I'm planting corn beans and squash alone on this side and I'm planting the same amount of corn beans and squash together on this side They'll both get the same amount of compost those same get the same amount of growing area They'll get the same everything except these will be grown together as a polycrop These will be grown independently as three separate monocrops at the end of the season I should be able to count up and weigh the different amounts of food grown on each of them to see if there's an actual Difference between what's grown in polycrop over here and what's grown in monocrop over here So what I've done is I have hod up 12 inch mounds every three feet for corn here that each have received five kernels of corn and two quarts of compost and that will get dumped in here and Then I will thin them down to three corn plants per mound on this side. I've grown I have 18 inch mounds at four foot spacing they get a gallon of compost and they're going to get both corn and Beans at the same amount that we do over here, but these are going to be separate and these are going to be combined So today I am busy Howing up these mounds. It's a lot more work than some other planting Which is what I prefer but in terms of doing this study. This is probably the best way to do it The corn field is planted Both the Polycrop and the monocrop The oats are beginning to come up as are the weeds But there are oats the turnips are sprouting nicely. I Need to weed between the rows The beans have been a little slow to germinate and something got in and started eating my delicious peas So I had to find the short in the fence and fix it and now I have to reweed and trellis all the peas Once a day, I pull the plastic cover off of this box of Straw with my psyllium which you can see growing through in the white and I give it a spritz of water Hopefully before long we'll see pinning which is basically little incipient mushrooms Growing right out of the my psyllium. We don't have anything yet But once that starts happening it'll fruit for a couple of weeks And I'll be able to flush it again, and it'll fruit for another couple weeks and maybe even a third time So we'll see how many pounds Of oyster mushrooms we get out of this cube of straw which then gets composted full circle All right now we got lettuce Now you might be thinking hey This looks like a lot more work to plant lettuce than I do I just till my garden and then plant Lettuce seeds and Then I just send them to the distance in space. I want you seem like you have to do a couple extra steps here And that's absolutely true. This is more work There is a inverse proportion between efficiency and Production the the more time you put in the more Product you can get out of it often up to a point. Obviously there's diminishing returns at some point but You know these nine plants came from nine seeds. I'm thinning them out now, right? So I get more plants per seed packet But I spend more time so it's a trade-off Cheat packets are or worse see cheap I'll probably have way more seeds than I need next year and maybe I won't do this, but It's just a different way to do it It's less energetically efficient. I have to do more work, but I get pretty good results at least so far We'll see how that goes throughout the season. You'll get to see that as We go along That time for more peas So next to my fava beans, I'm gonna grow cucumbers, so they'll grow up and over as the fava beans Peter out, so Cucumbers will take over after the fava beans are done. Okay, so essentially remember I have cardboard smothering all the weeds and so I Could either put a lot of compost on top of this which I don't have or I can poke through a small spot So that the roots of the cucumber plant can dig down into my nice soil And I can use that existing fertility. I Can plop down some growing mix there and then in each hole I'll put two seeds and then I Will thin it to one if both emerge. I'll pick the best-looking one and snip the other And so then I'll do this for all of them and then I'll give them a bit of a drink and Hopefully then we'll have this trellis full of cucumbers in not too long. Now I get to make Similar planting of beets so they'll grow in a clump I'm going to take advantage of having lots of mustard seeds, and I'm just going to disturb all of the All of the weeds that are growing here already so that they die And I'm just going to top seed it with a whole bunch of mustard seeds and just rake them in not even in rows Not even anything like that and just let hundreds of them come up Mustard and I'll pick those out between what are going to be rows, and I'll leave the the rows to grow bigger Peas I do plant them directly this way I pull a six inch wide trench and then I drop them in and these are Langston's progress number nine shell peas I probably have enough for two more rows, and that'll be the last of my peas for the spring Hopefully it doesn't get too hot too quickly and these have time to bear fruit. Well, not quite fruit, but you know what? I mean and gray out the nice thing is It's not going to stress the plants out and they'll have a day to establish themselves before They really get Hit with Sun I'm gonna put these tomatoes as deep as I can Because their stems will send out roots. So right now this one's roots are only That long what if I bury it up to there? It doubles the effective root depth These are German Johnson tomatoes. It's a beef steak style Tomato So I'm planting them by the house Because these will be something we'll be slicing and eating On a more regular basis then say the paste tomatoes, which will wait until they're fully ripened a Whole bunch of them all at once to harvest Now tomato cages are not really my favorite way to Keep tomatoes And I'll show you my other trellises when I get those going But I had them and they're here. So I'll use them Week in the books and Boy, I got tired just watching all this videos again It was a really productive week, which is nice because next week it's gonna rain and so stick around for that We'll be working the greenhouse and doing some other projects that we can do inside and really this is important Please do share us. Please reach out send this video out to friends family Anybody share on your social media anything like that. It's it's really helpful for us to get the word out about this and To talk to more people reach more people about the the project we've been carrying out So feel free to reach out send me an email scott at low tech Institute.org or just leave a comment below in the video And I'll try and respond. Maybe if you have a question or something like that. I can respond to it in the video I'm happy to do that Don't forget to check out our blog low tech Institute org Subscribe all those things, you know the drill by now Please do that and stay safe out there. Take care of yourselves


We've talked about not on here before, but on the newsletter before when Loom launched in July. It's a social media platform where it's only for independent artists, there's no major label fellows on there, no independent labels on there, it's purely just for independent artists marketing their music and it's only in the US right now but it's a good way to discover local acts and smaller artists and support them and they're now launching their own sort of like virtual gifting currency in January, in this month coming, so you'll be able to actually tip artists using this currency called notes where you can pay to help them support, launch their next EP or get this demo made to a proper track, not just a great way to engage with artists and support them in their careers. And what I love about this one is obviously the money that the artist stands to make because if we look at the revenue sharing model of a Spotify, those types of distribution platforms, now not only do you have to make that go through that entire split situation, but a lot of artists don't even realize that it's not directly based on your streams, right?  So that's one point, but then also all streams aren't even created equal. What you see get promoted is the average, right, a payout, but free Spotify listeners, their streams aren't the same as paid Spotify listeners, it's not equal or worth the same and there's all these other nuances which I'm not completely privy to of how they determine what a user's particularly stream. My stream might not be worth your stream, right? So I don't you don't get paid so your fan base might not even be the most profitable fan base. Yeah, I mean, I encourage I see plenty of artists who talk about their numbers and they even probe up their their actual streams in terms of not their streams, the payout that they got from Spotify. As a matter of fact, I know a few I'm gonna hit them up and ask them to do this. I want them to calculate their payout based on the average of what the payout is promoted as and see how close they are. All right. And that'll be where we start to get artists to understand what the payout is. But I know I kind of went to that was more of an aside, but that's why the tipping feature is so valuable because if you look at TikTok, right, that's the beauty of TikTok. We're now seeing China's influence because tipping badges in-app purchases like that was that's so native and so profitable over there. When we look at look at just all of these platforms in China, like so many of their social platforms, killing it. That's not ingrained in American culture as of now and TikTok is bringing that in a very real way where that's a norm and that makes it so much easier though for a social media platform because we always looked at a standpoint as the only way we're going to monetize for the most part has been through advertisement. This allows you to scale far bigger and to become profitable faster without even having to worry about the whole advertisement thing, which brings in more corporate influence, which is why most of our apps get like up there big and then, okay, now you start to see this monetization thing that starts to kill these. You're able to have a better user experience longer at least, right? It maybe extends the lifespan of a good quality experience because of different ways to monetize. So that's going to be interesting to see. Good thing about Lume as well is that at the moment it's free to use if you're an eyesore or you're a user and also unlimited uploads as well to the platforms. There's much music on there as you want and obviously only launched in July. I remember we talked about when it first came along, we thought is it going to be another one of those platforms, you know, flashing the pan gets a bit of funding but it doesn't really do anything. But a few of your artists have used on the network have a name as well. So I think we have some very decent results. People on Twitter have seen a lot, been following the accounts for Lume and the feedback. It seems very positive in overalls. So I think you might be sticking around for a while. Yeah, I mean, there's still early on, right? There's a lot of market share to grab, but every artist and brand man network that's really got a chance to use it. They're only on iOS as a reminder to people. Everyone that's got a chance to use it so far has had a pretty positive experience and they actually go back to some of the things that we've talked about earlier. Not only are they doing the tipping feature that they just released, but they're a social interactive space, right? So you have that chance to engage with fans where Spotify started and they shifted away from and now they created a space where these people can capitalize, right? And they were supposed to be music discovery and they kind of and they didn't do well enough. So TikTok is kind of fulfilling that void and Lume. It seems they're they're building into a space where we can truly handle this social interaction. But of course, Rezo is kind of trying to do the same thing, but there's at least a joint acknowledgement that social is an aspect of music. And they're so closely ingrained is they they shouldn't have to be separate. At the very least between Lume and Rezo, you might see this whole idea of Lume stays within its philosophy where Lume becomes this place. And I spoke to people at Lume. I'm Andrea, I believe that was the one who said that Lume is kind of positioning themselves as they care about artists who are just starting out, right, those indie artists and truly sticking to that, where they don't even necessarily need you to be on there forever. They don't necessarily want Drake to be on the platform. That's what I was the impression I got as well. Yeah, right. So but you can become like be a part of becoming Drake on the platform. And you might go really start to do a bit of dealings and things like that in another way. Some of that, you know, you watch and see as more people get on the platform, how what they continue to see to read and how they involve. But the fact that they're staying within that particular philosophy, which is so different than we want to have the big music and deal with the labels in that particular aspect will will force them to innovate in a way that other other companies don't. So I'm really rooting rooting for Lume and interested to watch what they create and if for no reason at all, but a business experience. Yeah, if you're in the US and you've got an iPhone, definitely download it and start using it like 100 percent. So the only launch in July has already got 30,000 artists on there and over 50,000 tracks and they have said they're going to launch, you know, more worldwide in the coming in this coming year. And also hopefully, you know, I launched an Android as well. So it shouldn't be a matter of time before they continue to grow. It's just slowly rolling things out, but definitely check it out. Yep.


I'm moving on to sports. Let's begin with the Olympic Games where Yuto Horigome of Japan has become the first Olympic gold medalist in skateboarding. Horigome recovered his composure with high-scoring tricks and the final rounds to defeat other contestants including American favorite Nija Hustin who finished seventh.


I've spent the first half of my life as a physicist, I have a PhD in physics. Physics is a hard science, an exact science. It utilizes a monovolent language known as mathematics, communicable universally and not open to ambiguity and misinterpretation. Granted, there's a metaphysical layer that develops like some kind of cancer over physics, but the practitioners of actual physics, experimental physics, theoretical physics, the practitioners are very, very much grounded and down to earth. And then the second half of my life, starting 26 years ago, I had been introduced to psychology. I now teach psychology and neuroscience because of my medical background. And I am flabbergasted by the hubris of this field, bordering on corn artistry. This field is such a scam that it defies belief. I'm going to discuss today antidepressants and I'm going to discuss today the diagnostic and statistical manual. These are two manifestations, two expressions of the malaise, not to say the cancer that had overtaken the field of psychology and its affiliate psychiatry. Psychology is a crisis owing to the pernicious influences of celebrity and money. There are very worrying trends in psychology and neuroscience and psychiatry. Scientists are claiming expertise when and where they have none. Even online, you have people with PhDs, including PhDs in psychology, who are way outside their field of expertise if they have any at all. People who talk with confidence and authority about subjects they know nothing about. Psychology is a huge field that you have a PhD in psychology, doesn't automatically qualify you to be an expert on narcissism or depression or borderline. And yet numerous scientists are claiming expertise when and where they have none. Scientists are massaging the results of experiments. That's a very fancy and subtle way and delicate way, politically correct way of saying, they're lying. They're lying about experiments, the protocols of the experiment, the progress of the experiment and the outcomes of the experiments. And this had created something called the replication crisis. We are unable to replicate the results of well over 80 percent, that's eight zero percent of all experiments in psychology and the number is not much better in other fields of science. And then you have people who make unfounded claims based on flimsy or non-existent evidence. Laman, but also shockingly, people with academic degrees, working scientists, alleged or ostensible scholars, they abuse their authority and propagate nonsense, half baked truths and inflated statements, which have very little to do with their state of knowledge. Sapolsky in his wonderful book, which by the way I'm reading right now, I hope the camera catches it, it's titled behave and I'm reading it right now, Robert Sapolsky. Great, absolutely great. Sapolsky calls these type of people molecular biology fundamentalists. They are grandiose, they are grossly misleading. Whenever I read a text put out, promulgated by these people, I cringe. Yes, they have, they have, you know, academic degrees in science and academic degrees in biology and molecular biology and psychiatry and so on, but they are way, way over the ethical boundary of science in many of the claims they make. I have been subjected to rabid, and there's no other word, rabid attacks by molecular biology fundamentalists after I've put out a video about psychedelics and another video about neuroplasticity. There are some problems, there are some problems in trying to medicalize the human mind and the human condition. Correlation is not causation. If you find two things that happen simultaneously, it doesn't mean they cause each other and if they do cause each other, you can't be quite sure which of them causes the other.  This is so ridiculous, it's beyond, I mean, I don't even understand why I have to defend this thesis that molecules and genes cannot explain an all pervasive condition with thousands of cognitive emotional parameters. So for example, changing temporarily one's ability to empathize with people, that's not like curing narcissism. Alcohol does this. And then there are contradictory results. For every experiment and study published, I can show you another two which contradict the results of the first. Not enough is known.  We know close to nothing. Most of the processes in the human body and in the human mind are triggered by the environment, nurture, not nature. We will be discussing serotonin shortly, see what I mean. There are replicability issues which I've mentioned. We can't replicate most of these experiments and there are inflated, ill-founded claims. And today I want to focus on two things, antidepressants and the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, whose latest iteration, the text revision of the fifth edition, we published a few weeks ago. Before we go to antidepressants, I would like you to, I would ask you to watch the video on my channel titled, Is Depression Healthy? It's a video presentation I gave in the second webinar on depression management in May 2021. Is depression healthy? Why do so many people claim that antidepressants have helped them, have salvaged them, have rescued them from a state of darkness and depression? Why do so many people claim that the antidepressants are efficacious, that they work? I don't know. And this is something, this is a sentence no neuroscientists would ever say. I can't remember the last time I read a neuroscientist say, I don't know. But I don't know. I can guess though, I think it's a placebo effect. I think it's mind over matter. When you take an antidepressant medication, you are told that it should be able to help you. And this claim is backed by decades of science. You succumb to authority. You say, well, they can't all be wrong. So this medication helps you because your mind takes over your body and makes the depression ameliorate or mitigate. It doesn't mean it's the effect of the medication. The placebo effect is a major, major, major problem in experiments in psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience. Major problem. We can't disentangle the placebo effect from other effects, real in nature. And so what we do, we create experiments where there's a control group. The control group is given the placebo and the test group is given the real thing. Then we try to see what are the effects. The dirty secret is that in the vast majority of experiments, the placebo group shows much higher improvement than the real group. That's the dirty secret. Placebo effects are much stronger than molecular effects, than pharmaceutical effects, than psychopharmacological effects. In other words, medications sometimes work, but the placebo effect is stronger, as any yogi in India would tell you. Okay, what about serotonin? What about serotonin? Hundreds of millions of people consume every day medication known as SSRI, serotonin reuptake inhibition medication. And so SSRIs are a class of antidepressants, and people consume this medication, because allegedly there's a linkage between serotonin and depression. And if you regulate the level of serotonin in the brain, you ought to get rid of depression or at the very least suppress it to levels which render the person, render the patient, functional. We do know that serotonin modulates aggression and antisocial behavior. We also know that serotonin is linked to suicidality, and that is natural, because depression is a form of self-directed aggression, and suicidal ideation is very common in major or extreme depression. So the linkage is there. Serotonin has something to do with all this. Mind you, studies have shown that for serotonin to encourage or for the modulation fluctuations in serotonin to encourage aggression and antisocial behavior, there must be a background of abuse in early childhood. In the absence of abuse in early childhood, serotonin has zero, look at this, zero impact on anything whatsoever. So it seems that the environment, especially in early childhood, preconditions serotonin to operate in highly specific pathways and ways. And so no one is disputing the fact that serotonin plays some role. It is produced in the brain for good reason. It's a neurotransmitter. Mind you, it's produced also in the gut, in the intestines, but okay, it's produced in the brain to some extent. So it must play a role somewhere. In the early 1990s, a guy by the name of Bregan, B-R-E-G-G-I-N, suggested that there were problems with the methodology in the research of SSRI antidepressants, antidepressants that modulate serotonin in the brain. In 1994, he published a book called Talking Back to Prozac. Bregan warned that Prozac was causing violence, suicide and mania. Of course, he was immediately demonized, castigated by the pharmaceutical industry. But he persisted. Bregan persisted. And I'm no fan of Bregan, by the way. He's a conspiracy theorist and not my favorite guy to use a British understatement. Yet on this issue, he had been 100% right. So he continued, he plowed on, he persisted in the face of enormous adversity and a huge personal cost. And he wrote many subsequent books about SSRIs and newer classes of antidepressants. And finally, in 2005, that's 11 years later, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, introduced black box warnings on SSRI antidepressants. Black box warnings are warnings about side effects. And the black box warnings on SSRIs say that there is an association between the use of SSRI antidepressants, suicidal behavior in children and also in young adults. So now it's an established fact. Bregan had been right all along. Over the years, additional general warnings were added to the black box warning. And the warnings confirmed many of the adverse effects first publicized by Bregan in Toxic Psychiatry, another book of his. There are specific mentions by the FDA of drug-induced hostility, irritability, mania.  In 2006, the FDA expanded the warnings to include adults taking Tuxil, which is associated with a higher risk of suicidal behavior compared to a placebo. Okay, sometimes you have to consume medication and all medication has side effects. There is not a single medicine or drug on earth without side effects. It's a price you pay for healing yourself, for curing yourself. We take antibiotics and they have an effect on the intestinal flora, on the microbiome. Everything has an effect on something. And so we consume antidepressants in order to reduce potentially life-threatening condition, which is major depression with suicidal ideation. And we pay a price for this. Isn't it? Isn't this the truth? The answer is no. Antidepressants, especially the serotonin class SSRIs have nothing whatsoever to do with depression. I repeat this. Serotonin has nothing whatsoever to do with depression. It's a scam. It's a scam. It's a multi-decade scam by the pharmaceutical industry. They knew that there is no substantiation for the claim that serotonin is associated with depression directly or indirectly. They knew it. They knew it. The academic community knew it. And yet we were all collectively lying to laymen, consumers, and patients throughout this for decades. I'm going to read to you an article published in New Scientist on the 20th of July, 2022. That's yesterday, 20th of July 2022, the latest word. I'm going to read to you the whole article. I don't usually do this, but I think it's so important that I can't miss a single aorta in a single word. Now the article in New Scientist is based on an academic scholarly article published in Molecular Psychiatry. And I'm going to place a link to this article in the description field. So I'm going to read to you an article in New Scientist which popularizes an academic scholarly article in Molecular Psychiatry published only recently. And so here goes 20th of July 2022. That's yesterday. And the headline of the article in New Scientist, which is a science journal. The headline is No Link. You heard that? No link between depression and serotonin finds major analysis. The text of the article follows. A review of 17 previous studies finds no evidence for a link between depression and low serotonin levels, which SSRI antidepressants focus on, though not everyone is convinced by the findings. There may be, and the article continues, there may be no link between serotonin levels and depression according to an analysis of 17 studies. This raises questions about antidepressants that focus on this brain signaling molecule, say the authors of the analysis. Not everyone is convinced by the findings though. Of course not. Many, many, many scholars and scientists are on the payroll of the pharmaceutical industry. Why would they ever be convinced? They've invested their entire careers and they've made a hell of a lot of money in junkets and perks of the pharmaceutical industry. People have been bribed and that's the original problem that I've mentioned. Celebrity and money have corrupted psychology to the point that it's no longer trustworthy. But okay, let's return to the article. The serotonin hypothesis which dates from the 1960s says that a chemical imbalance in the brain, including low levels of serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxy-3-ptamin, or 5-HT, leads to depression. So I repeat, there's a hypothesis from the 1960s which says that there's a chemical imbalance in the brain, low levels of serotonin, also known as 5-HT, and this leads to depression. And I'm continuing to read from the article. We now think various biological, psychological, and environmental factors play a role. But the most popular antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs, increase the availability of serotonin in the brain. They actually prevent the reabsorption of serotonin. It cannot be absorbed by the tissues and it remains in the brain. The article continues. Now, Joanna Montcrieff, M-O-N-C-R-I-E-F-F, Joanna Montcrieff, at University College London, and her colleagues have done an umbrella analysis of 17 systematic reviews and studies which together included hundreds of thousands of people with and without depression. By the way, it's by far the largest study ever undertaken, including by the pharmaceutical companies. I'm continuing from the article. It is difficult to directly measure real-time serotonin levels in the brain. So the 17 studies looked at depression and proxies for serotonin. So they didn't study serotonin in the brain. That's extremely difficult to do. It's possible, but very difficult and a bit invasive and so on. So instead what they did, they looked at depression and other proxies for serotonin, alleged impacts of serotonin, low or high. And so the article says they looked at proxies for serotonin, such as the molecules in cerebral fluid that serotonin breaks down into, the levels of serotonin receptors and how active they are, or whether there are more genes for serotonin transporters which remove serotonin in people with depression. So they tried to find everything on the serotonin pathway, the receptors of serotonin, the byproducts of serotonin when it's metabolized or used, et cetera, et cetera. And these were proxies for the levels of serotonin in the brain of depressed people and non-depressed people. Got it? Shoshanim. We continue. Moncriv's team says the article found that there was no evidence that low serotonin activity or amounts caused depression. This is such a shocking sentence that I'm going to read it to you again. Moncriv's team in this largest study ever found that there was no evidence, read my lips, no evidence, that low serotonin activity or low serotonin amounts caused depression. Which is the hypothesis on which SSRI antidepressants are based? They are selling you SSRI antidepressants because they insist that serotonin levels cause depression. Serotonin activity causes depression and they're lying to you. It's not true and they have known that it's not true. Exactly like the tobacco industry.   This is one of the greatest scandals in my view in human medical history. I'm continuing to read from the article by Sarah Wilde, by the way. The implication of our paper is that we do not know what SSRI antidepressants are doing, says Moncriv. One possibility is that they are working through a placebo effect, she says. No kidding. However, Johan Lundberg at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, by the way, as far as I remember, I may be mistaken, a beneficiary of the pharmaceutical industry through collaboration agreements and so on. Never mind. Johan Lundberg says, a limitation of the analysis is that he didn't distinguish between people who had ongoing depression and those who have episodes of depression, who is state at the time they were assessed, could affect the functioning of their serotonin system. Really? Then why do doctors prescribe SSRI antidepressants even for episodic depression, not only for major depression? Doctors dole out antidepressants like candy. Whenever someone presents with stress or anxiety, they diagnose depression, they over-diagnose depression, and they dole out the candy of antidepressants, of course with very nice commissions in the background. So this distinction between major depression, ongoing depression and episodic depression is nonsense because the practice is to prescribe antidepressants in all cases of depression. Lundberg, the aforementioned Lundberg continues, it is key to separately analyze data from studies that examine the same patients when ill and when in remission, to have optimal conditions to examine the hypothesis, he says, and he is right, had the practice been different, but the practice belies and defies what he says. Montreef says the review was dependent on the studies that had already been done, none of which highlighted any difference between people who were experiencing symptoms of depression or had a history of it. It must be recognized that 5-HT is likely only one contributor to depression, says Paul Albert at the University of Ottawa in Canada. Given the large placebo effect, given the large placebo effect in treatment of depression, it is likely that the contribution of other systems, including dopamine that is implicated in the placebo effect, may be greater than that of serotonin, 5-HT. Really? Then why do you prescribe serotonin-based antidepressants? If the role of dopamine is greater, if the placebo effect is greater, why do you prescribe very, very dangerous substances to people?  Based on flimsy, non-existent, contradicted and counter-indicated science, it's beyond infuriating, it's criminal. The pharmaceutical industry should be subjected to the same treatment the tobacco industry had received. Nothing short of that, probably much more. Antidepressants are an effective recommended treatment for depression that can also be prescribed for a range of physical and mental health conditions. A spokesman for the Royal College of Psychiatrists told the Science Media Centre in the UK, referring to treatment guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, nice, in England. Antidepressants, this spokesman says, will vary in effectiveness for different people, and the reasons for this are complex. We would not, complex as if he knows the reasons. We would not recommend for anyone to stop taking the antidepressants based on this review, of course not, God forbid, what will happen to the bottom line. And we encourage anyone with concerns about their medication to contact the family doctor, who presumably is more educated about antidepressants than this elite team of scholars. Okay, the journal references molecular psychiatry and I will be posting a link to the article in the description. Depression is a very complex topic. Like narcissism, it is a systemic phenomenon. It affects every field of functioning, every cognitive function, every emotion. It affects everything. And it cannot be reduced to a molecule or a neurotransmitter or an area of the brain that's utter, unmitigated, counterfactual nonsense propagated and perpetrated by grandiose narcissists who happen to have some training in neuroscience or molecular biology or psychopharmacology. So narcissists are everywhere. And they're not loaded to make counterfactual claims if it furthers their career and lines their pockets. Depression is complex also because the mind has checks and balances against depression. For example, there's something called hedonic adaptation. Humans have a remarkable ability to get used to or get accustomed to changes in life. And so there could be a spurt, it could be an eruption of elation and euphoria and joy, a boost of happiness, but you will go back to baseline after a while. Similarly, you can get stressed and anxious and depressed.  You have hit rock bottom, negative changes, but eventually you become used to these changes and you feel as happy as you have ever felt. It's called the baseline. Dr. Sonia Lubomirski is a professor of psychology at the University of California Riverside. She studies happiness and she says with most negative changes we are able to get used to them and revert back to a previous happiness baseline. Dr. Lubomirski should suggest to keep the company of others and to be grateful for what we have. She does not suggest antidepressants.  It's real, depression is real. First hand, this is first hand experience. Depression is very real, it can put you down, it makes you think of the alternative to life very often. But is it merely molecular? Can it be reduced to chemistry? Can it be tackled with appeal? Even on the face of it, this is utter nonsense. I again recommend to you to adopt a more holistic view of the human complex machinery. This machinery is not amenable to reduction, cannot be dismantled and put together like some spoiled brat would do with his toys. We need to see the individual from all aspects.  But there's also the environment, there's also personal history, there's also psychology, there's also other people, object relations, there's so many other considerations. And when you talk today to neuroscientists and psychiatrists, they poo poo and dismiss the enormous wealth of observations of generations of psychologists and psychiatrists that came before them because now they have appeal. Now they know everything there is to know about the brain and now they can manipulate this machinery with confidence and ease. This is not true. To say this is criminal and yet numerous scholars are saying exactly this. They find a gene and it's a warrior gene. They find a chemical and it's the magic chemical like oxytocin. They find a mechanism or a process in the brain and it can negate depression like the serotonin reuptake process or the dopaminergic pathway. They call it fancy names and they think by doing so they have captured the essence of what's going on. We are centuries, if not millennia, from understanding the brain, from knowing the first thing about the brain. We are discovering new shocking things by the year. Sapolsky, this guy, this wonderful book, has made a list of what we used to know about the brain only six or seven years ago. You would be shocked close to nothing.  The human brain is infinitely more complex than the universe and I know because I deal with both. I'm an astrophysicist. That's my field in physics and on the other hand I deal with the brain. I teach neuroscience and I can tell you the universe is a child's play compared to the most rudimentary aspects of the brain. Brain is amazing. If I had to put a number on it, I think we know one millionth, one millionth of what is the brain and what it does and know and not exaggerate. Okay, the serotonin conundrum, not to say scam, is an example of how the pharmacy, how psychology and psychiatry and neuroscience have been compromised by money. Money comes from the government and money comes from pharmaceutical industries. There is no other source of money. These are the two sources. The government naturally, as it should be, is biased towards public policy, health policies and so on. They have their own agenda, governments, and they are not at the cutting edge of science. The pharmaceutical industry is about profits on the bottom line. They want to sell drugs. They are drug pushers. They're drug pushers and they want all of us to be junkies. It's extremely as simple as that. See what happened during the pandemic. So these are the two sources of money and they corrupt the science. An excellent example of this is the diagnostic and statistical manual. I would ask you to watch my video titled Future of Personality Disorders, ICD Revolutionary, DSM Craven, Future of Personality Disorders, ICD Revolutionary, DSM Craven. The diagnostic statistical manual is 70 years old. That's 70. The first edition or first draft, in a way, was published in 1952. The classification model in the DSM, the taxonomic model in the DSM, has been the same since 1952. And from its very inception, already in the early 60s, there has been harsh criticism of this classification model of this taxonomy, as inadequate. Many scholars and many practitioners have written extensively of how the way the DSM is organized is counterproductive and doesn't afford patients the best service. The DSM has been originally considered as a list of lists. It was dictated literally by the insurance industry, because the insurance industry wanted to homogenize mental illness and to reduce it to paragraphs and clauses and numbers, so that doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists, and psychotherapists could make insurance claims based on an agreed-upon manual, manual that is shared with the insurance industry. Of course, the interest of the insurance industry is to minimize payouts, and the interest of psychologists or alleged interests of psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists is to help people, to cure them, to heal them, or at the very least to allow them to cope better with adversity. These are incompatible goals. And from its very, very first day, the DSM reflects this dichotomy, this abyss between money and help. Help costs money. Help costs money. And those who dole out the money would like to minimize the help. So the DSM adopted a categorical model. The DSM states that personality disorders are qualitatively distinct clinical syndromes. But this is by no means widely accepted. I, for example, strongly contest this ridiculous claim. I don't think personality disorders are clinical entities, and they are definitely not qualitatively distinct clinical syndromes. That's, that's wishful thinking. That's pathological fantasy. And that's a bit of grandiosity. The professionals cannot even agree on what constitutes normal and how to distinguish normal from this ordered and abnormal. The DSM does not provide a clear threshold or a critical mass beyond which a subject should be considered mentally ill. How can you have a clinical entity with no boundaries, with no clear thresholds, you know? The DSM's diagnostic criteria are what we call polythetic. In other words, it is sufficient to satisfy only a subset of the criteria in order to diagnose a personality disorder. For example, to diagnose narcissistic personality disorder, you need to meet five of the nine criteria. You need to satisfy five of the nine diagnostic criteria. And so people diagnosed with the same personality disorder may share only one criterion. For example, I can satisfy criteria one to five. You can satisfy criteria five to nine. We will both be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, but the only thing common to both of us would be criteria in five.  This diagnostic heterogeneity, what we call the variance, the great variance, is unacceptable and defies the scientific method. It's non-scientific. The five diagnostic axes employed by the DSM to capture the way clinical syndromes such as anxiety, mood, and eating disorders, general medical conditions, psychosocial and environmental problems, chronic childhood and developmental problems, and functional issues interact with personality disorders. They're all organized in the form of lists. The DSM's laundry lists obscure rather than clarify the interactions between the various axes. As a result, the differential diagnosis that are supposed to help us to distinguish one personality disorder from all the others, the differential diagnosis are exceedingly vague and open to interpretation, arbitrary interpretation. The personality disorders are insufficiently demarcated and this is a very unfortunate state of affairs. It leads to excessive comorbidity, diagnosing multiple personality disorders in the same subject. And so psychopaths, for example, people with extreme anti-social personality disorder are often also diagnosed as narcissists, people with narcissistic personality disorder, and borderlines, borderline personality disorder. Not all psychopaths are narcissists, but some of them are diagnosed also with narcissism. And narcissism and psychopathy are contradictions. It's a contradiction. Narcissism and borderline, the contradiction. The psychopath doesn't need anyone. The narcissist relies on other people for self-regulation. The borderline has too many emotions. She's overwhelmed by emotions. She's dysregulated. The psychopath has no emotions. The narcissist has no access to positive emotions. And yet, sometimes, all three are diagnosed in the same person because the definitions are very vague and ambiguous and equivocal. And the reason is the categorical attitude, the lists, the bullet points. The DSM also fails to distinguish between personality, personality traits, personality style, character, temperament, Theodore Millen's work, Lynn Sperry's work. Full-fledged personality disorders are none of the above. The DSM doesn't accommodate personality disorders induced by circumstances, for example, reactive personality disorders. Millman proposed acquired situational narcissism, late onset narcissism. There's no hint of this in the DSM. The DSM doesn't efficaciously cope with personality disorders as a result of medical conditions, such as brain injuries, metabolic conditions, or protracted poisoning. The DSM had to resort to classifying some personality disorders and other mental health disorders as NOS not otherwise specified. It's a catch-all. Meaningless, unhelpful and dangerously vague diagnostic category. Everyone knew all this. Everyone realized the DSM was fatally flawed, fatally flawed. One of the reasons for this dismal taxonomy is the depth, how little research we have. Nothing is rigorously documented. Clinical experience is rarely as rigorously documented as, for example, in physics or even in biology. Various disorders, various treatment modalities, the whole thing is anecdotal. And so many, many personality disorders are actually culture bound. They reflect social and contemporary biases, values and prejudices rather than authentic and invariable psychological constructs and entities. Even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Steering Committee. Even the committee itself has been distancing itself from the DSM. I'm going to repeat this mind-boggling sentence. Even the people who offered, who composed, who put together the DSM have been trying to put distance between themselves and the DSM, because they considered the DSM flawed, problematic, partial and in many cases wrong and unhelpful. So we read, for example, in the text revision of DSM-4, which was published 22 years ago, we read what the committee has to say. They distance themselves from the categorical model. They hint at the emergence of an alternative, the dimensional approach. They say, and that's 22 years ago, they said, an alternative to the categorical approach is a dimensional perspective, that personality disorders represent maladaptive variants of personality traits that merge imperceptibly into normality and into one another. Much later in 2009, again in New Scientist, there was an article, Psychiatry's Civil War, December 2009. And there was this paragraph in the article. One aim of the work groups compiling the DSM-5 is to cut through this chaos. They are streamlining diagnosis by removing various subtypes of schizophrenia, for example, and they intend to address the confusion created by the fact that many people with one condition meet criteria for other disorders as well. The DSM-5 task force is expected to propose a series of dimensions to be considered with a patient's main diagnosis. So as well as deciding whether someone has, for example, bipolar disorder, doctors would determine whether they are suffering from problems such as anxiety and sleeping disturbances and assess them on a simple scale of severity. Diagnostic and statistical manual committee for Edition 5 promised to tackle these neglected issues. They actually came with a manifesto and they said we're going to tackle the longitudinal course of the disorders and their temporal stability from early childhood onwards, the genetic and biological underpinnings of personality disorders, the development of personality psychopathology during childhood and its emergence in adolescence, the interactions between physical health and disease and personality disorders, the effectiveness of various treatments, talk therapies, as well as psychopharmacology. They chickened out in the last minute. In 2013, the fifth edition was published and with the exception of an appendix with alternative models at the very, very end of this hefty 1,000 page tome, with this single exception, it was a carbon copy of the DSM-4. Okay, so we waited another nine years from 2013 to 2022 and there's been a text revision published a few weeks ago and it is minor changes aside. It's a carbon copy of the DSM-5, which is a carbon copy of the DSM-4. The insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry prevailed on the committee to not change a word or not change any meaningful word. The committee had not transitioned from the categorical model to the dimensional model. The committee had not resolved the comorbidity problem. The new DSM doesn't tackle well differential diagnosis. It is still polythetic. All the problems are still there. Adversely impacting treatment, that's the key problem. People are suffering because of this god-awful mess. They're suffering. They're misdiagnosed. They're given wrong medication. They deteriorate. Lives are ruined. This is not just a text. It dictates and determines treatment, not to mention expenditure. And so not revising the DSM according to current knowledge, or actually not so current, not revising the DSM according to what we have known for the past 70 years, that is 70 years, not taking into account all this, ignoring all this, just to cater to the bottom lines of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is, ladies and gentlemen, criminal. The DSM-5 is a crime scene and should be cordoned off. It's very heartbreaking and very disappointing because a lot of progress has been made outside North America, outside the United States. The international classification of disorders, the 11th edition, is a masterpiece, state of the art, delineation, depiction and capture of the human condition and psychopathology. The DSM could have done better a long time ago, had the committee not been in hawk to special interests. It's very reminiscent of the gun lobby. We need to take on the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry, the medical insurance industry. They are corrupting science. They're damaging people. They're hurting and harming people. Sometimes, very often actually, to the point of suicide, this is untenable. This is criminal. They are lying through the teeth about the effects of medication. They're pretending to have science when they have none, and they're preventing real science from emerging in critical texts like the DSM just because it is inconvenient and would reduce profits. This is where we are at. This is where we are now, psychology and psychiatry. Corrupted on the one hand by money and on the other hand by the insatiable wish to be noticed. Scholars and scientists prostitute themselves online and in the mainstream media and everywhere just to gain 15 minutes of fame. And on the other hand, there is no lobby for real science. There's no lobby for true reform because a lot of money is sloshing around. There's only one constituency who suffer. You, the patient.