Well, 2019 was marked by some severe natural disasters and the worst of all them was probably waging wildfires in Brazil and Russia. Only in summer alone they wiped out completely around four million hectares of forest there and as a Russian-born citizen for me that was a really tragic news so I started researching into the topic and how it came to this. I found out that the wildfires could have actually been prevented if not for the mistreatment of authorities. Just look at these statements. Amazon is bigger than Europe. How would you put out wildfires on such a big territory? Or here is a quote from a congressman and a governor from Russia. Wildfires are natural, we've never put them out so why starting? Well, these statements at least I had a feeling they're completely logically wrong and this was a moment of realization, huge realization for me. I understood at that point that our daily life and our society as a whole is influenced hugely by political decisions based on flawed logic. So this is how I got interested on the term logical fallacies and now let me explain to you what they are in a really simple manner. First of all, logical fallacies, imagine you're in the discussion. Typically there is you and your opponent and you're trying to make a claim B. You just say B is right and your opponent says no. So you disagree? What would you typically try to do? First, the first way to persuade the opponent is to try to bring as many arguments as possible to prove your claim and this arrow in the middle by the way is called logical connection or inference. So in logic science. And the whole structure is actually called logical form and it reads like this. If A is true then B is true as well. But what are logical fallacies then? Well, a logical fallacy occurs when you start messing around with all of that structure. A first type could be if you just provide a wrong argument. Another type of a fallacy could be that the argument itself is correct but you draw different or flawed conclusions from it. Another type is when you completely replace the topic of the discussion and you start deviating. It is very important to mention that logical fallacies can occur unintentionally as well as on purpose. So some people they just don't realize that their reasoning is flawed. But some people, especially eager to prove their point, they do them on purpose and they don't stop there. Actually they move on and they start involving other elements of the discussion to prove their point. For example, they can attack your personality, they can use ambiguous language and they can even play with the emotions or feelings of the audience to gain their attention. Well, in total there are more of 150 different fallacies, at least on Wikipedia. We don't need to go through all of them. Let's focus on quite a few today. I will bring a couple of examples for every of these type of logical fallacies. So without further ado, let's start. The first example would be a loaded question. So loaded question by definition is a question which contains a very questionable assumption in it. So sometimes it's depicted as a question mark with a bomb. And why a bomb? Because this question is basically acts as a bomb in the discussion. So it's thrown at you and whatever you say, you cannot prove your point. You will always be wrong. Let's try to bring a specific example here. So suppose we're talking about abortion and abortion is a really, really controversial topic in the society. Some people are opponents to it and imagine that I'm a typical opponent.  So do you understand, I'm saying to my opponent, do you understand that by supporting abortions, you're supporting killing people? Well, this whole logical connection is basically valid as long as abortion definitely is in fact killing people. But is it though? This is a good question. So you can see that the problem and the bomb lies exactly in that assumption. And it rests on another assumption that a fetus which is being aborted is a real human being, which is not scientifically proven yet. And some people may disagree with that. So that makes all of this structure flawed. Let's continue with a different example. Now we're exploring another type of logical paralysis where the logical conclusion itself is wrong. And the first one would be false cause. I'm sure you've heard this definition quite a lot. Correlation is not the same as causality. So correlation is when two things, two events happen at the same time. Causality means on the other hand and furthermore that one of these events is causing the other. And this is not always the same thing. So this is how it works. Imagine we're talking about some pharmaceuticals. And I'm a pharmaceutical lobbyist, let's say in Congress. I'm trying to back up a new law which would generate new medicine. And I'm arguing the following manner. Have you known that the recent scientific studies actually found out that people with higher levels of HDL cholesterol, which is by the way a good type of cholesterol, normally tend to have heart attacks less frequently. So less often. Well, probably. I'm therefore I'm arguing that we need to produce medicine with HDL cholesterol to decrease the risk of heart attacks in people. This is actually not quite true, even though it may seem so at the first side. Because there are other scientific research which shows that there is a third factor, sports activity, which influences both of the factors, both cholesterol and the reduced risk of heart attacks. So those two are actually not causing one another. Let's move on to a different example of flood inference. And it's called cherry picking. This is a very interesting one. And I would say the most disguised, the most sophisticated. So it's when a person tries to find a data pattern to fit their claim. And it is called cherry picking because that's what we normally do. If we want to pick a berry from a bush, we typically take the best looking one or the most fruitful one and we leave the others. And that's what is happening in reality. So suppose we're talking in that case about climate change. And I'm trying to make a point that climate change is not human cost, but rather, volcanoes are known to emit around 200 million tons of CO2 per year. So obviously, volcanoes are causing global warming, right, which is not completely true either. Because here, it is exactly this one cherry taken from the whole data panel. If you look at the wider data set, it actually occurs that 24 billion tons of CO2 is caused by human activity. So you need to take a look on the whole scope of data in order to make such claims. Let's move on. Another type of example in this logical fallacy group would be appeal to authority. This is also a very common one. It basically means that someone is trying to use a very respected opinion, an opinion of a very respected person in the society to put it weight to prove their point and to discredit you. So saying we're talking currently about AIDS, it is scientifically proven that AIDS is caused by HIV, which is a virus which you could occasionally get having sex with infected people. That's why we all use protection in order to protect ourselves from HIV.  He found out that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. So does it mean that we don't need to have protected sex anymore? Well, this appears to be wrong as well. And this is probably would be quite obvious in that example that we shouldn't listen to one person's opinion in order to judge. However, you can probably feel the weight of the Nobel Prize winner and how it can confuse you in that particular case. Let's move on to another type of logical fallacies where the claim itself is replaced. So this is probably the funniest one because here's when the discussion goes completely off topic. So this is called strawman. And it's called like this because that's what your opponent is trying to do. So they are trying to create a dummy of your claim in order to make it easier to attack. So let's move on to a different example. And here we're talking about laws banning beer advertising. So say you would argue that beer is actually quite unharmful. This is a mild and soft alcohol drink. So why don't we just relax laws on beer advertising? And your opponent says no, we shouldn't absolutely not do that. Because we because drugs are evil to the society, and we should ban them completely. Technically speaking, beer contains alcohol and alcohol is considered to be a drug. However, drugs are a wider category. They also include narcotics. So obviously, this argument is stronger. And it's misplaced, as you can see. On the one hand, your previous argument doesn't make sense.  Let's use another another example here, and talk about strawman in a different case. So suppose we're on a presidential conference. And one, you are a newspaper journalist, and you're saying that there is a new power plant being constructed in North Carolina, and it's projected to pollute all of the rivers. So Mr President, could you please ban this power plant construction? And I would, my response to you would be, how dare you prevent creation of new workplaces?  You should be ashamed. So as you can see, the claim again is tweaked here. And my previous, your previous bad image of the plant construction is replaced with another pro of this plant construction. So the argument doesn't make sense anymore. And the final logical fails you will focus today. It is called two coquet. And it's basically a personality attack. It's when your opponent is trying to damage you or undermine your credibility to prove you wrong. And it is called two coquet because two coquet stands in latent for even you. And these were the words said by Julius Caesar when he saw that he was stabbed by Brutus, even you. So it resonates a lot with finger pointing. And that's how it goes. So again, we're talking about climate change.  And my response to you would be, Mr. Opponent, as far as I remember, you also travel by planes. So you're probably contributing significantly to a pollution as well. So could you please shut up? And you're not the eligible person to talk about this whatsoever. So in the real discussion, the takeaway here is that sometimes what your opponent basically does, they're pointing out that you're not following your own rules and you're all standpoint which you're advocating for. And you could be potentially confused by that. Don't fall into that trap. What are the key takeaways of our talk today? So first of all, logical fallacies, what are they? They're flawed or incorrect ways to connect arguments with the claims they're supposed to prove. And secondly, and this is very important, there are a lot of logical fallacies. Sometimes they're disguised. Sometimes it's very difficult to spot them because they're hidden in an ambiguous language. The easiest way to be able to combat them is to learn all of them. So please, you're welcome to Wikipedia. Just read all the articles by 150. Please let me end my talk on the note that I deeply believe that if we all refrain from using such techniques in our own reasoning, I think that the world will be better off and the society will have better quality of public discussions in our society. Thank you. I need to sip my blue wine. So we said everyone uses logical fallacies. It means you use them too.  I see one question over there. Hi, thanks a lot for the presentation. It's really interesting. So one question, not everyone of us, actually everyone of us is only expert in one area. So that means there are so many things that we don't know. How can we recognize the logical fallacies for the area that we have no idea about? Because I think when you argue in a specific area, some of the arguments, that's why they're called logical fallacies, because you recognize these logical patterns and you can fit as you've seen. I've also brought examples from different areas, right? But they all fit this logical form and it is just pretty simple to recognize it. If maybe you do some expert research, as in the case with volcanoes, but most of them are actually easily recognizable disregardless of your area. I just have the feeling that it's in the newspaper every day. It's like a lot of logical fallacies. It's not possible to do ever research for ever topic. So yeah. Well, actually if you go to the... So there are even websites which collect very frequent climate change fallacies. I think there are also like around 40 arguments. There are even like real blogs and forums which are dedicated to this topic. So there are, I would say, common ones in each area. If I can also suggest something else. You said you're afraid you're not an expert in every topic. Well, come to our following events and it's only a matter of time. So any other questions? I see one raised hand over there. Thanks for the lovely talk. It was very interesting. Which one of the fallacies do you think is the hardest to recognize for yourself? For myself. I would say that so cherry picking is very hard to recognize because that goes in the direction of what the lady before you said. You need to be aware of the data scope in each field and if you're not a professional it would be difficult for you. One other question in the middle? Thank you. Very engaging talk. I have a question regarding the use of fallacies by autocrats, dictators and so forth. So for instance, President Trump has once claimed that the Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. So what we have seen that this was this was really widely circulated in the media and I have also read a lot of reports of the people who are really supporting this very dangerous idea. Now we know that with the help of social media and mass media, dictators and autocrats are using fallacies very efficiently. So what's your take on that? So how a general public can fight with this logical fallacy? So in an ideal world, if I were president, I would introduce a beep-beep sound every time someone says it. But I think that actually Facebook is working on developing some AI and machine learning based algorithms to recognize fake news and that's how they work. I think the first principles which they're integrating to this mechanism are actually based on logical fails. So they just analyze the natural language and they try to connect the sense of the sentences and they come to the conclusion that the news is fake. So I think they're working on it. Interesting.  Okay, I guess we would have time for one more short question of the guy in the blue t-shirt. So I just have this person question to you. What do you think about religion and these fallacies? How do you connect those and what is your thinking upon all this? Yeah, well I am personally an atheist. Okay, but what was the question again? So I mean religion and all these sacred texts they have their own explanations and they have their own beliefs and people believe in them, a lot of people believe in them. How do you connect your talk and your logics to religious people? How do you convince them with all of this? I don't think you like really need to try to aggressively convince someone of something. So I think that that religion is a private matter of every person, every individual and obviously there are a lot of videos on YouTube on people and especially atheists who try to debug kind of all these beliefs but that contributes a lot to conflict maybe in the society. So I would try to keep it calmer at least at least this particular matter. So you are censoring it right? I mean you are trying to censor it. I mean you're not keeping it private means you are trying to not talk about it. I mean there should be a clear, there shouldn't be, but I mean there should be right logically. Yeah, I think you need to talk about such things. You definitely need but in with a very specific set of rules so that the discussion is kept ethical and no side is trying to really convince somebody of something because that's a private matter. I guess it has been a few millennia, the discussion which God has it right so I guess you'll have enough time to figure it out afterwards too. Thanks for the question. Thank you for your talk.


The South Downsway is a long-distance footpath and bridleway running along the South Downs in Southern England. The trail runs a hundred miles from Winchester in Hampshire to Eastbourne in East Sussex. Join me as I navigate the chalk bridleways and rolling hills of the South, check out some of the greatest sunsets and sunrises I've seen to date and interact with some wonderful people along the way. Welcome to day two on the South Downsway. Jobs are good and legs feel fresh. I'm going to put a couple of miles in and then I'm going to put some, then have a drink and stuff. Here we go, another glorious day. Sun shining, middle of eight wave. Crack out. I've stopped in that cafe for some avocado and egg on toast. Carrot cake and a coffee, if you're wondering. And we're back, back on trail, sun in my face, walking past some of these massive houses. Look at that. On these hikes, I often use them as a time to think about stuff, obviously, because you spend a lot of time on your own brain. So I spend a lot of time like packaging stuff in my brain, if that makes any sense, like going over situations, like filing, it's like refiling stuff in my brain. Sometimes I might get a bit melancholy or I might go down a path that's got a chew over some stuff in my brain and it sort of puts me on a bit of a, I just want to be in myself and focus on it and hike, which doesn't necessarily mean it's good for vlogging the hike itself. Because when I'm like that, I don't really feel like talking to you like that. Honestly, yeah, just feel like talking to myself inside me, nodding. But then I'm like, oh, well, I can't just do that. I can't just think about stuff and then not, you know, film dead animals on the floor or gates, whatever. But I'll get what I can today. I feel like, you know, it is a journey and it's one of them ups and downs. Got a lot of stuff coming up. Some right decisions so that I can go in the right direction with my life. And that sometimes takes time. I'm aware that this is waffling. It's a second day of this heatwave, so you can't do me for it, mate. You can't do me for anything. Because it's heatwave, heatwave, heatwave hazy. I can't be done for anything. Disclaimer, heatwave hazy. If it's boring, if it's not funny, if it's too extreme, heatwave hazy did it. It's fine. Gunshot there. So, I'll bring you up to there. I mean, look at this, look at this, for example. Look how good this is. So, chamfer it down into there, into there. Nice. I enjoy that. I enjoy stuff like that. So, I'll still bring you stuff like that. It's just, you know, it's just got serious head on a little bit of serious thoughts in head. So, I don't feel like goofing around on here. But we're strictly business anyway today. I'm fancying just beasting myself and doing over 30 miles today. Because I didn't get as far as I wanted to yesterday for one reason or another. Pre-occupied with stuff. And it was hot and I didn't want to overdo it. So, I don't know how long the fire did. Maybe 18, 19 miles, something. Maybe. But today we're just going to smash it, I think. That's my plan. Cut to me, crying in a heap covered in sweat. It's a different height and each one of these national trails will be very different and have its own personality. And this one's really good because it's sort of, it takes me through lots of little hamlets and little villages and I get to, like, ogle at people's houses, which is one of the things I like to do. It's one of the things that, you know, one of the things about me is I like to look at houses. Roads and gardens and stuff like that. Right, south-downs with this way, is it? Yes. And there's a lot of flat stuff. There's quite a little bit of, like, country lane.  Head down arse up and all that. Goal sheet, man. They've got a right idea. Look, they're all knackered. I know what you feel, lads. I know what you feel. Prime real estate, bit of shade. Get yourself in there. Look at this lad here, look. Just smashed. They're all just smashed in from heat out there.  You've got to have lollipop head on though. It's just giving me a bit of, keeps that sun out of smashing my eyes in. Mad dogs and Englishmen. Shape couldn't handle it. All animals are just, like, screwing for shade. I'm out here trying to do 30 miles. I know my limits though but water, on this particular hike, there's a lot, there's a lot of water stops. My bottles are always full. So, I had too fussed. I'm not too fussed about bonking out or drying up like a little shriveled pork scratch in and out. And this is the views. It's just pleasant, you know. That's the word I'll use for it. Pleasant. England's not so green and pleasant lands. As you can see everything's, this would usually be green but because of the heat wave, and there's not been much rainfall, it's all sort of cacked itself. Britain's yellow and pleasant lands. Been this for a while. I can't get me, I can't be like excited about what's next because I just don't know. So, I'm just sort of taking it all in as it comes. On the Cleveland Way, I'd be like, Rana, there's this view coming up or I'm going to get to the sea soon, because I knew it. But here, it's just the unknown. Middle of the road. Fuck, how come? Still doing it. Still doing walk-by's though, Rana. Deep. Deep in thought, still doing walk-by's. Crossed that busy road, under the tunnel, and then, we've got some decent uphill but we're in the shade of this woodland and I'm off for it. Before I was like, I don't need some cream, it's fine. And I didn't use any up Cleveland Way and it was kind of alright but I've got a little thing of factor 30 just back at neck and my legs. Because I was feeling it a little bit, they were getting a bit scorchy. Yeah. I suppose to put them on, you're supposed to put it on your toes as well, aren't you? So they don't go cranked. So, I know Mr. Butler, oh, yeah. I know Mr. Butler won't be happy if I was just subjecting his artwork to raw sunshine. Sunshine. This woodland is beautiful. The trees are so tall. Look. Look at that. I feel better now. I feel great in fact. I've been going a good few hours but this morning, I just want feeling like talking to you. When I say you, I just mean this camera. And you. I feel like I do talk to you a lot but I wasn't feeling you this morning. I just wanted to do my own thing and just I mean, you don't even need to know this, do you? But it's nice to share everything just because there might be other people who feel like this. But I just couldn't be janked to talk to anyone or put on a happy face or do stuff that's... I just didn't want to do anything other than just be in my own mind and in my own thoughts and just think about things instead of having to be like, ah, here we are. Couple of hours. Home norm. Packaged a few things around into nogging. Filed it all away nicely. And we're good. We're back. We're back. Sun cream all over. Legs aren't back at neck. And it's luscious. Luscious. I thought a beach. Is it beach? Beach woodland. So there's a fair old climb up out of here. But I feel like I've had it all my own way. It's been all sort of... There's been no great elevations or anything. It's all the pathways just very well troddening. Very easy hiking. Good hiking. No excuse not to get some good miles in today. And that's what I'm going to do. I'll tell you what there's not a lot of on the South Downsways. Medics. I've not seen... There's not been so many animals in need of a medic. I don't know why, maybe it's just up north they're just all of it show out there. They're just like... Tapping out left, right and centre. Down there they're a bit more reserved. Probably just go away somewhere nice and private and die. So they're just like... Here we are. Look at all these little shelters look. Just in. In there. He's been busy, hasn't he? There he is, look. Still going through this wood. I'm loving it, it's giving me life. It's just a little change of scenery. There's always stuff to look at when you're in a woodland. Have I gone the wrong way? It seems to be taking me down the other side. Not too far down. Come on. Preserve yourself. Bad. Hampshire down sheep like the one grazed the hillside. Get on here and have a look over there. Tempest 1. The heat has really ramped up now. So... Feel the old skin tingling and the bulb fizzing a little bit. Locked off. But we're good. Doing good progress. I've not even deployed my sticks. They just don't seem to I'm sure I will in the next few days. But... Because it's so kind of level I feel like I don't need them. Medic! Sorry, I'm getting a bit desperate. Come on, I'm not in the mood for this. Lift it up. Shoulder work. Shouldn't have to put that shoulder work in. Nice. 15 paces max. Ranking it on back at neck. That's better. Took the old pork scratchings into the top of there to stop them getting flame grilled. I can't do that. That hurts. Get them out. Get them out. Quite blinding this stuff when you're walking on it with sun. But I'm looking over there and it looks like it's going up top of that hill. With sun up back. That's going to test the old legs. Another trick point. So this is the real first sort of I feel like testing terrain. It's up and down, up and down. I can see the path. Sort of undulating up and down there. And I know that thing's pretty hot but it's nice. Feels nice to have a little bit of ups and downs. Not too much though but it's nice to get a bit of a sweat on. Look at this. All these little poppies. And this look. Memorium Joseph 151940 It's tucked away in there. Look. Fair do's. Fair do's. I've deployed the old walking pulley. Don't think about else to say about them. It's hot mate. It's really hot. Sailed over 30 degrees now it's like 30 odd. Keep getting a little bit of shade from some trees but it's mainly just out in it. So I've deployed these because we've had some ups and downs. So I'm just trying to take a bit of pressure off legs because trying to do a big couple of days there's not a cloud in the sky so there's no respite from it. So I'm just drinking plenty of water I'm going to stop and redo my sun cream soon. Not much to report mate. I'm just sort of head down crunching the miles out as much as I can. The tap of joy. Can't look can you. I've got now tank for this stuff like that looks good as well. Sorry. Not bad but you know it's a tough gig when the CEO of Latch and Locks can't even muster the strength to talk you through. Summit as good as that. I'm warm. Warm as. Been hiking now for roughly 8 hours and I'm going to do another 4 hours that's 12 hours and then just see where I'm at at 12 hours and then look for somewhere to get me head down. I'm airing feet out man. I've come in here under this beach tree just to get a bit of respite from sun airing my feet out a little bit. Only 10 minutes, 15 minutes and then I'll bat on again. But I'll tell you what getting shoes off of that ah. Joy. I'll get blistered. You mind. This is nice. Nice wild meadow. Someone's cut the grass around these trees which makes them look makes it all look very nice. Also a good place to pitch as well. Still the same gear. It's been nice for a long time. Not seeing a single soul which is good. Solitude 10 out of 10. I'm just poutling along at my own pace in my own thoughts. I've not been doing much filming and chatting because when it's all pretty same here there's no point like jumping on and showing you the same stuff. I'm just jumping on now to tell you that. I don't know why. Jumping on to tell you that there's no point jumping on to tell you the same stuff. My band has gone down to we're on low. We're running on fumes actually. All day, all day the chat has been a little bit under part today. Not being feeling chitter chatter. What time is it? It's coming up to maybe 6 o'clock now. So we've done 10 hours and I still feel okay. 10 hours it's so hot though. The only problem is it's just sapping me. I'm burning. So yeah, I've got to be aware of that. Once the sun starts to lower its sky which it doesn't look like it's doing man. It's like it's on one today. It's hard to sun. But I'm aware that I don't want to break myself for the rest of the hike. So what is it? 6, 7, 8, 9. I'm going to put another 3 hours cap on it. 3 hours lollipop lady cap on it. And we'll see where I'm at around the 3 hour mark. I don't know what to expect. Do you know I kind of feel like I want a pub. I would love a pub actually. I'd love a pint. I'd also take one of my camping meals and a light down. I'd have to pitch in the shade though because everywhere is just wire room. Look at this. Gloria. You can't see on this camera but there's all the wind farms out at sea. I wonder what that is then. That's my first sight of the big blue. That gives me a springing step. Beautiful. Looks like that sun's going to finally poke its head back down over that hill within the next couple of minutes. And although it's a lovely little sight I can't say it'll be missed. She's been a cruel mistress today, that sun. But we've done a lot of work and we've done over 30 miles. We've done with 32, 33 miles today. I'm going to do maybe another one or two just to get over this hill and horse flies man.  Probably not going to set the tent up just sleeping bag and bugging it over my noggin and that'll do me. I won't take much rocking tonight but I am hungry. I am hungry. I'm going to have some to eat. I have one of my freeze dried meals and hit the hay. But I've got to find somewhere to kip first because the problem is it's all flint. It's sharp stone. So I don't want to pop my air bed or my kidney. So I'll crack on and try and find somewhere to bed down for tonight. I'm going to be it. There's a road just there which is quite loud but I'm tired. I don't want to get to the road and then not be able to find anything on the other side of it. It's just these motorbike dudes who are going well quick but they'll chill out. It's half eight. Everyone will chill out. The path's just on the other side of this. There's the path but I reckon if I just look at it I'm just pushed to sleep by the sounds of midlife crisis is going by on two wheels. I might not even blow my air bed up because there's a lot of ouch a lot of this gear. Out mate. Which is flint which is going to pop my air bed if I see that. Well you wouldn't have seen me if I was down it dig because you wouldn't have seen me. But yeah this it's all over here and that's what they used to make tools like cutting tools so it's so sharp it'll just sever me what's he doing look he's going through that wood I was going to camp in there that's a lucky one wasn't it? Is he going in? He is. He's gone in woods that would have been a nightmare because I was just about to keep on that pathway woods. Well that's a good news.  Voila Bed Bedroom for tonight talk you through it whatever that is Trekology pillow I'm just using this thin little thing here because I don't care if it rips I'm going to have a little go underneath and try and move all the sharpest of stones that's going to actually wreck my back in it might deploy air bed might not like it's light on top of this which is the Rab Neutrino what are you it's the 400 yeah it's the Rab Neutrino 400 sleeping bag that should be plenty enough and there's my views not bad I've earned this kip that's for sure so so excited to have this mate spaghetti Bolognese I can't put you anywhere because you'll just fall over onto these stones and wreck yourself you promise not to fall over I'll try and get you down there that's not going to work is it mate you're not happy there are you come on it's not the best it's not the worst it's all we've got all we've got is each other lads right noggs well into it what's point mate I'm going to stick this one out what else to do focus focus on that spag ball you even come on spaggers right I tell you what I'm not eating this until it's focused on that focus on the spaghetti there we go look anyway is that worth it or what look at that come on I know it's getting dark it's because it is getting dark it struggles we did it we did it plenty of miles in moon it's full moon I'm going to love this I might get a time lapse going it was tough going today there was a lot of repetitive like samey sort of grounds a few deer down there that's quite sick I'm just sidetracked by this moon I can see it there look see that ye old full moon 98% I reckon it'll be about we bang on tomorrow but that's as full as it's going to get look at it rising man it's orange I've got to go anyway because I want to eat this and I want to film that moon I think if I can great moon but yeah cheers to a good day's hiking that's the moon isn't she bonny lovely stuff the skies are doing something out of the look at it I'm going to right treat while I have my tea it's getting dark last at night now get a moon man can I look at that from me from me pit I'm just going to watch that from pit I guess thanks very much mother nature making up for all blasting with sun today ain't she right map time right map time from the future but first watch this there you go so Fern dropped me back off here where I finished and we were off this was a big day mate it was so hot and I put some miles in all across here it's quite nice actually and I think the sustainability centre is where I stopped and had some breakfast cracked on some lovely houses around here over these tops again lovely views down through this tunnel and into these woods which was a lovely little change of scenery afforded me a little bit of shelter and I came up through here over the tops it was quite same so I didn't do much filming although the video probably says differently as I was just waffling nonsense so along here some nice views down here mate to be honest and I'm really sorry about this but I'm really naffing up map time because I can't remember it was so long ago mate I can't remember down here I came down here loud here putting a shift in putting a shift in but we're down here to cooking that's where I got some water and I just wet my cap and put it back on that was nice if I'm honest where did I even alright so I really did put a shift in is it possibly there the skies were amazing the sunset and the moon rise was fantastic I think I'm going to say that this is the road with all the bikes on right so the truth is I don't really know where I am because it's been so long and I didn't have this map with me so I don't actually know yep so that's that's map time guys sorry about that but I've got to meet me robbing and I'm sorry about that so I'm somewhere on here I'll do better next time I promise I will I though because I don't have a clue where I am alright sorry so that's map time I don't really know what I'm doing with map time so let's go back to the past I hope I've done map time there from the future right I'm off consider subscribing if you're not already and click the bell notification if you want to be notified of the next upload which will be the next episode of this I think and thanks for watching take care of this end


a demo on IGN a live demo of Street Fighter 5 I got to watch this let's get this in now I am ready let's see what this is like you know personally I'm not gonna let whoever loses live it down I'm just gonna make sure that happens All right All right so Ryu, are we this real? Ryu Chun-Li I guess mine is Only two for Ryu Oh okay wow that's crazy Medium kick maybe It's really hitting, they light up Fireballs have a nice lighting effect to them Shit looks good The backgrounds look good Just so y'all know, my favorite character is Ryu Street Fighter 2 It is That's would be a cool one Sometimes they change places depending on which game and which one I enjoy using the most It gets double fireballs now Did they start right here?


This video is about the Coalitional Game Theory Solution concept called the core. Recall that the Shapley value told us about how to divide the coalition's value fairly among all of its members. In this video, we instead want to think about whether the agents would be willing to form the grand coalition as compared to forming smaller coalitions that might give all of their members greater value than they're able to achieve in the grand coalition. Let's begin by looking at an example, which we're going to call the voting game. We're going to think about a parliament that consists of four political parties which we'll call A, B, C, and D. Each of these parties have different numbers of seats in the parliament, 45 seats, 25, 15, and 15 respectively. The parties have to vote to decide whether to pass a spending bill of $100 million, and also to decide amongst themselves how to divide that spending between the parties. It's necessary to get a majority, which is to say 51 votes, in order to pass any legislation. And of course, if the bill doesn't pass, then there'll be no money for any of the parties to spend. Let's begin by thinking about the Shapley values in this case. I'll tell you what the answer is in a second, but you may want to pause the video here and work out for yourself what the Shapley values are in this situation. So these are the Shapley values here. I won't show you how we did the calculation. Notice in particular that even though B and C and D have different numbers of votes, they end up getting the same value in the Shapley value. The question that I want to focus on today is whether any sub-coalition can gain by defecting from the grand coalition. Again, I'll invite you to pause and think about that before I give you the answer. So the answer is that a sub-coalition can gain. In particular, A and B together could form a sub-coalition, which would do better than the grand coalition being paid according to the Shapley values. So A and B by themselves have enough votes to pass the legislation without the help of C and D. And if they were to divide the 100 million amongst themselves, for example, 75, 25, then they would each get more than they got under the Shapley value division and they would still pass the legislation. So this goes to show that while the Shapley values may be fair, they don't necessarily give the right incentives to all of the different parties to want to actually join the grand coalition. And so instead we should look for different ways that the parties could divide the payments so that they would be willing to form the grand coalition. So that's the question that we're going to think about in this video. Under what payment divisions would the agents be willing to form the grand coalition? And the answer, as we'll see, is that they would be willing to do so if the payment profile belongs to a set which we'll call the core. Here's how we define the core. So we're going to think about a given payment vector that's going to be an assignment of a certain amount of value to each of the different members of the coalition. And we're going to say that the core, that this payment vector is in the core of a coalitional game if and only if the following condition is true. For every coalition that could form, which is a subset or equal to the grand coalition, so every subset of the grand coalition, it's the case that for all agents in that subset, if we sum across all of the agents in that subset, excuse me, the amount of payoff that the payoff vector says that we give to each of those agents I in the subset, that sum is at least as much as the value that the agents would have gotten as a coalition if they had deviated and instead formed that subset S. So kind of intuitively, what we're guaranteeing here is that the sum of the payoffs to all of the agents in any sub-coalition is at least as much as they could earn if they actually did go off and formed that sub-coalition. And you can see in the voting game, that's what we saw wasn't achieved, that the amount that we were paying A and B under the Shapley value payments wasn't as much as they could have gone off and gotten on their own. So if there doesn't exist any sub-coalition where the agents could have gotten more on their own, then our payoff vector is in the core. And intuitively, this is like Nash equilibrium because what we're saying is the agents don't have any profitable deviations. It isn't the case that any sub-coalition could deviate away from the grand coalition and end up with higher payments for themselves. The way it's different from Nash equilibrium is we're thinking about groups of agents jointly deviating. So in a sense, it's a stronger notion than a Nash equilibrium. We don't think only about unilateral deviations here. So anytime a solution concept is introduced to you, there are two questions that you should wonder about. The first is whether the solution concept always returns something. Analogously, remember pure strategy Nash equilibrium doesn't always exist, mixed strategy equilibrium does always exist. So we might wonder, is the core always non-empty? Does it always suggest at least one payment profile to us? Secondly, we might wonder, is the core always unique? When it does return something to us, does it always return one thing? Does it make a sharp recommendation? Or might it return multiple things? Well, first of all, is the core always non-empty? The answer here, unfortunately, is no. So there are some games in which there aren't any stable payments that can be allocated to the agents. And we can see this already in the voting game. So the set of minimal coalitions that are able to pass the legislation are A-B, A-C, A-D and B-C-D. All of these subsets of the agents have enough votes to pass the legislation. Now we can, just looking at these sets, reason that there isn't any way of dividing the payments that would be stable for all sub-coalitions. In particular, we can see that if the sum of the payoffs to the parties in B-C and D ends up being less than 100, then this set of agents has reason to deviate and form this coalition, where they can then divide the full 100 million amongst themselves. However, if B-C and D get the entire payoff of 100 million, then A can form a coalition with any one of B-C or D, which would be sufficient. And A could do this with whichever of B-C and D is getting paid the least under whatever payment profile we're assuming is adequate for B-C and D. And thus we can see that there's always some sub-coalition that could profitably deviate from any payment profile that we propose. And that means that the core is empty for this game. The second thing we might wonder is, in cases where the core is not empty, is it unique? And again, here the news is bad because, no, the core is not always unique. So now let's consider changing the voting game so that we require an 80% majority instead of a 51% majority. It's now the case that the winning coalitions are these two coalitions. These are the only coalitions that are able to obtain 80% majorities or the only minimal coalitions. And it's now the case that A and B are required in all winning coalitions. And this means that any complete distribution of the 100 million between just A and B is going to belong to the core. Because there's no way that C and D, even if they're not paid anything, can go off and form some different coalition that would pay them more. And so the grand coalition is stable as long as A and B get paid everything. Now let me give you a few more definitions so I can say some more positive things about the core. First let me define a simple game. I'll say that a game is simple if it's the case that for all coalitions the value of the coalition is either 0 or 1. And notice that our voting game is a simple game. And the reason is that we either produce 100 million dollars or 0 depending on whether we get a majority or not. And so we can scale those payoffs where 1 is 100 million dollars and 0 is 0. And we can then encode this as a simple game. My second definition is of a veto player. And I'll say that a player I has a veto if the value of all coalitions that don't involve I is 0. So in other words the participation of I in a coalition is necessary if the coalition is going to produce any value at all. Putting these two things together it's possible to show that in a simple game the core is empty exactly when there is no veto player. And that's precisely what we saw in our voting game example already. We had no veto player in the case where we needed a 51 percent majority because there was a coalition that didn't involve A. On the other hand and the core was empty in that case. On the other hand if there are veto players the core consists of all of those payoff vectors where the non-veto players get 0 and the payoff is divided among the veto players. And again we saw that in our voting game example here where we had the 80 percent majority required where A and B were both veto players. I want to say one more positive thing about the core and to do that I'm going to illustrate another coalitional game example. So this is called the airport game. In this example there are several different cities in the same geographical area that need access to airports. And the different cities are different sizes and so they need to be able to accommodate different sized airplanes. They have to decide between each building their own airport or building a regional airport and sharing the cost of building the regional airport amongst all the cities. If they build the regional airport its cost is going to depend on the largest plane that has to be accommodated. So whichever city in the coalition that builds a regional airport needs the biggest aircraft is going to set the size of the airport for everybody. Otherwise everyone just builds their own airport. So we'll model this as a coalitional game as follows and is of course the set of cities. And the value of each coalition is basically the amount of work that was avoided as compared to having all of the airports built individually for each city. So more specifically the value of a coalition is the sum of the cost of building runways for every city in S minus the cost of the biggest runway which is the one that actually has to be built for the regional airport. Well I'll define a convex game as follows. A game is convex if for all coalitions that are strict subsets of n the value of the union of those subsets of those two different coalitions is at least as big as the value that the first can achieve by itself plus the amount the second could achieve by itself minus the amount that the coalition in common between these two can achieve for itself. So notice that we already talked about super additivity. This is a stronger assumption because super additivity assumed that S and T had an empty intersection whereas here we're allowing them to have an intersection and we're just subtracting the value of its intersection. So this speaks about also cases in which S and T do have one or more agents in common. Nevertheless convex games are relatively common and the airport game is an example of a convex game. So the reason I mentioned convex games is to say some nice things about the core and here are two kind of positive theorems about the core. First of all in the case of convex games the core always is non-empty. So there's always at least some way of dividing payments between all of the agents to support the grand coalition and in a way where no subset of the agents would be willing to deviate in order to benefit themselves. Secondly even better the Shapley value is in the core for convex games and so that means that for these particular games dividing the value of the grand coalition in a way that is stable and dividing the value of the grand coalition in a way that is fair are not goals that are at odds with each other. So in these games it's possible to do both.


It has been estimated that almost seven-and-a-half million Australians do not get enough sleep. People are having disturbed sleep because of the way they're keeping their minds. If you are in a comfortable state of mind, if you go to sleep, the body knows when to wake up. One day it may sleep for this many hours, another day it may sleep for half the amount of time. It's perfectly fine. The body needs rest, the body does not need sleep. Restfulness is not in the hours, it is in the drop of metabolic activity that you have. Generally in deep sleep, your metabolism drops approximately eight percent. You sit for Shambhavi, your metabolic activity can drop up to twenty-four percent. The restfulness that you're gaining in meditation is three times more profound than sleep. Then one thing that will happen to you is sleep quota will come down suddenly. Yes, one is a lot of calmness has come and my weight reduced by about eight to nine kgs, which still continues to be so and sleeping hours reduced. Earlier by seven o'clock I used to feel very tired, by ten o'clock I used to go to sleep. Now I sleep after twelve o'clock, I keep walking till that time, I don't feel tired at all. If I lie down in the bed, I immediately sleep, there is no problem, no medicine, nothing of that sort. I don't take any medicine also, yoga is my medicine.


Welcome, this is Melissa Armo with the Stock Swoosh and happy Labor Day to everyone. We're getting into the long weekend and it's hard to believe, but it is officially going to be the end of summer very, very soon. So hopefully everyone will enjoy themselves, take this long weekend and relax, have fun with your family and friends wherever you are and please, please stay safe. So I'm doing some Labor Day sales for people who want to start trading with me in the fall. If you're interested, you can email me at Melissa at thestockswoosh.com, you can call me at 929-3200 Gap, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Skype. So happy Labor Day. You know, one of the things I've been thinking about, you know, I've been teaching a long time now and it's interesting because people really appreciate the support of learning and also seeing the trades in the trading room live every day, explaining what's happening with the market, going over the targets, just making it as easy as possible for people to trade. And I think having the live room support really, really, really assists people right after the class in order to make money trading right after the take it. So wherever you live, happy Labor Day weekend. These are the specials that I'm doing if you're interested in signing up through Labor Day, September 7th. So I'm doing the Gold and Gap course special, which will include one year of the trading room. This is a great offer. You can take the class in September, September 26th and 27th. This is the bearish class. Normal class tuition is $69.99. And then you get one year free in the room, which is normally $39.99. So this is a savings of almost $4,000. And again, the support of being in the room for an entire year is just huge. Then I'm doing $1,000 off the newsletter for the options newsletter. If you are interested in signing up for this, it's normally $69.99. This is a special price for $59.99. This is the one year of the newsletter. All the options trades are emailed to you. You've received one year of the trades. This is a nice deal. And this is, if you are too busy, can't do the class and just want to get the options trades, they come emailed to you in live time. I'm also doing a bullish class, which I rarely do. It's only about once a year. The bullish Golden Gap course is in September 2. September 19th and 20th. And I'm offering one year of the options that are free for this. This is huge because this is normally $69.99 for one year of this subscription alone. And I'm doing this in combination with the bullish class because a lot of the overnights we're doing are calls. And a lot of them are bullish gaps. So I think this will be vital for people to understand why we're doing a lot of the options trades as well. Then I'm doing some other sales, 50% off, other products and services. One year subscription of the market report, 50% off, normally $500, $250 for the sale price. The specialty classes I'm offering, the Trends course, which is $9.99. That's half off, $500, that's in September 2. The Wealth Manifestation course, normally $59.99, includes one month free of the trading room. That is 50% off for $300. Entries course, normally $14.99. That is 50% off, $750. And then the Gap Options course, which includes one month free of the letter, this is a great deal. You get this half day class and one month in the newsletter, only $12.50. Again, 50% off from the normal price of $2,500. If you would like mentoring sessions with me, I'm doing 50% off. 10 sessions, $5.00 and $3.00. Again, if you're having trouble if you're struggling, whether you're a previous student or if you are new and have never done in the classes, they're one hour sessions via Skype or Zoom or on the phone, whatever works for you. I think it's best to do it online through Skype so you can share the charts. But whatever works best for you, this is again going on through September 7th. So if you've been thinking about trading, especially if you're in this position right now where you're working from home and you want to transition into a full-time trader, it's a great time to do it. You can trade part-time, do your job part-time from home and transition for 2021 into doing trading full-time. But I say do the day trades, do the options, whatever you have time to do allows with your schedule and whatever your interests really lie. I think it's good to do it all because you can make money on the overnights with the options and then you get the quick fast trades with the day trades. But I teach the system, the meat and potatoes is the 26-point rating system, which I teach only in the Golden Gate course. And again, the bullish class is different from the bearish class. So it depends which one you want to learn and which one you want to do. Now this was a day trade that we did in a bearish gap down that was in PLCE. Stop close to your gap down, boom, we shorted this as a day trade. And I always get this question about risk amounts, which I'll talk about here briefly. You can risk an advanced risk or you can risk at a beginner risk or you could risk an intermediate risk. Whatever your risk determines, it should be the same on almost every trade and it also should be determined based on the size of your cash account. And you can look at your margin, but really you still have to take into account what your cash is. Okay, so that is extremely important. And if you want to talk to me about that, you can always email me or call me and ask me questions about that too. So if you're experienced and you do the class and you want to take an advanced risk for this PLCE, the entry was $18.95, risk was $2,300, $2,000 shares, we didn't add, which I sometimes do. I'll talk to you about this later. Anyways, we added $19.90, lifted shares $4,000, profit $2,680. And I'm just going to go back to this here. This open dropped fell, so it was a little tricky in there, but we stayed with this. And again, it was one of these ones where when you have those tails and you're playing those tails, they can be really tricky, but you have to know to stick with it in the right direction. And again, this was a short, it was a day trade, profit $2,680, nice trade. And then the beginner amount here was $268, again 200 shares. This is a good trade. Whether you did the ad or you didn't do the ad, this is still a good trade for small size account, $200, $400 for this price point, it's really, when you think about breaking it down, $200 on average a day is $1,000 a week. Many people are losing in the market, so if you can average $1,000 a week, that's $4,000 a month, that's 48 grand a year, that's not nothing. That's a lot for a part-time job. And some people don't make that full-time. So you can trade my system with a small account or a large account. Again, if you have questions about that, you can always ask me. But what I do is gaps and it's really based on momentum trading. I'm looking for a large move. I'm following the buying, the selling that's coming in with institutional money. Again, I choose my trades by the gap rating, which I look at every single morning. And particularly in this time in 2020, I think it's important to map out where you want to be six months from now, where you want to be 12 months from now financially. And no one could have expected what happened this year. But you do have to plan for the future and you have to take risk if you want to get ahead in life. And if you're an independent person and you want to work for yourself and you want to be someone that's in charge of your own finances, trading may be for you. So think about the Labor Day sales. If you have questions, you can always call me. You can always email me. Here's the class dates again. I just want to review them. The golden gap course is the 26 and 27th, which is the bearish class, 9 to 5 Eastern. It's online bullish class, 19th and 20th, 9 to 5 again online. And the gap options course September 17th, 11 to 3. Email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com. If you want to sign up, all sales end September 7th. Stay safe everyone and take care.


Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday June 22nd and also June 29th Yep, I'm gonna take another vacation the last one I think I did was the last week of October 2021. So, yeah time for a break Chief me. I'll just join in sort of for long about public media All right, so our first in your phase this upcoming week is Tuesday the 28th with a new moon and then Wednesday July 6th, we have a first quarter minute, which means if it's clear you'll get a nice moon hanging in the southwestern sky for the night of the fireworks on the 4th of July Independence Day The Sun this week has some very active sunspots here So for the next week if you happen to travel closer to the Arctic Circle to Canada or something for vacation You could see some aurora at night. Nothing is expected to be as far south as Colorado Look at drought conditions. We have a little lessening of drought South of Denver Colorado Springs area, but a worsening of the drought further south and southwest Forecorner's area definitely needs some moisture. We are drought-free here in the northern part of the state And that's where I hope to go camping Nationally not much changes a little lessening of the drought up here in the Pacific Northwest and on the margin of the Great plains a little worse down in New Mexico, but a bunch of rain has hit there And that was a spam call sorry Not gonna start over keep on going So looking at rainfall We got some relief down there in the southwest so the place it needed at the most got some good water some two inch Greater amounts see the thunderstorms up in I-25 and foothills of the front range, but not much out of the plains Do you look at the severe weather climatology from March to the beginning of July you can see the area expanding and Probabilities getting pretty high through with the June 4th week of June And then first week of July starts to less than the plains as the jet stream heads north and cold air Usually doesn't invade far into the nation. So but we are still at our peak. So if you get thunderstorms They're very likely to Be on the edge of severe if not have some days to get some marginal or slight risks of hail primarily. It's usually not tornadoes in Colorado, but You still I-25 it can happen But there we are at our peak Looking at the actual sphere where the forecast for the first three weeks of this 14-day stretch. Sorry about that We have chance of thunderstorms basically south of Lawnmont on Wednesday So you might see some build-ups all of the state Has a chance of thunderstorms on Thursday with a little marginal right over here at the Nebraska Kansas border and on Friday all the state could get some thunderstorms Looking at the surface analysis We do have this week front that is down here and ahead of it you have your severe weather chances there got fire I say here you got heavy rains and flash flooding at fire opposite of fire So that's really good. That's part of the drought Some of the worst drought conditions right now Mexico had it has had a long-term fires burning and things like that For Friday the Southwest is getting I meant to look this up, but it seems that this really is a very early Kicking on of the monsoon that normally hits Arizona and four-corner states including Colorado I living in Arizona, I Think it was like the second week of July is when you usually saw Monsonville flow kick in and it's it's underway Then for Saturday we have Front range and the Western part of the state getting some thunderstorms have you rain up here on the Canadian border And the front kind of lingering over the northern Rockies So let's take a look the normals the normal high temperatures continue to Creep up through July So even though the first day of summer the longest day of the year just occurred on the 21st Tuesday the temperatures do Keep going up for a few weeks after that because we're still getting a net increase of Energy over what can be lost at night. So I kind of need that way So we're going from 85 to 88 for a normal high 54 to a whopping 57 by the end and that's largely because normally there is some moisture Slipping in in the beginning of July as humidity to go up The atmosphere can't cool as much at night Take a look at Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday this weekend really looks Wet this is gonna be a lot of moisture coming in We'll take a look at that in the next maps in a moment and then beyond that we have the daily afternoon pulse of thunderstorms So a little break there, but not much beyond that So yes, we have a high here pumping tropical moisture up into the heart of the nation We have some coming over the high to our west kind of giving us a flow here You can see that moisture pretty significant since green is above normal precipitatable water and We get the storms on Saturday night. You can see pretty good coverage of rain thunderstorms around Lonson and on the state Jumping way out to the 4th of July. We do have a ridge Sitting over the west big high pressure system. So you'd expect some pretty high temperatures, but with moisture high there should be not as extreme highs or lows and Thunderstorms around pretty good chance actually for the night 4th of July. So bring an umbrella bring some Rain coverings, so let's take a look at that for the next 14 days now Here we are on Thursday with the ridge to our south a little passing trough on Friday Take a little cooler area and briefly then you just have this flow coming up from the south is not really a Trough pass and over the weekend. It's just a lot of moisture and heat Going the next week. We get the ridge building out west and then that drifts over for Wednesday So expect some really good high temperatures midweek a little weakness in the flow coming through at the end of next week We're going two weeks out here. So the ridge reestablishes itself for the 4th of July Independence day and we have sort of Northwest flow and moisture Circulating around the back side of the high just coming from the south Going out into the end of next week week after next is a little trough in the west I'm not going to spend much time on temperatures here because it's summer and so yeah, you get the afternoon Blossoms of thunderstorms and rain cool air. There's that little front coming in the weekend Yep, cool air. It's kind of unusual So our temperatures will drop with precipitation lots of convection going on Sunday Monday There's the cold air and that is weird to have that much cool air sink all the way down to Texas He comes back Wednesday He the cool is still down here in Texas in the south And after that things become a lot murkier. There's the second of July And we have pretty normal heat or cool bubble coming down on the third He kind of comes back for the fourth of July. Yeah So this is much more telling at this time of year This is the precipitable water and you can see the moisture flow Lots of moisture just kind of rotating around in the west There's on the Mexico kind of covered. There's Sunday into Monday. There's a tropical system down here That's certainly adding to the moisture in the westerlies There's Tuesday Wednesday the 29th and even though the dryer comes down briefly the moisture comes back pretty fast So we're never far from at least having clouds and a chance of afternoon Storms and showers or the weekend before the 4th of July A little dry air comes in. There's a big surge coming up over Arizona, Utah and that spreads Eastward, so we have a lot of moisture in the atmosphere Independence Day and then I mean the week beyond that look at all that going by another tropical system So we're gonna look at the daily afternoon storm chances. It was Friday June 24th going to Saturday The 25th and there's the weekend storms Just popping up around noon or before noon and then spreading across the state It was Monday into Tuesday more storms Maybe a little further south, but still northeast Colorado gets some rain We get a little break on Wednesday and stuff comes back after that Storms again on Thursday and then Friday Storms in the afternoon moving off as a line Here's the weekend before 4th of July We'll get a little break there with that dry air that comes in and then we get more showers for the 4th of July Beyond that Start with a surge of moisture afternoon storms are plentiful So expect a lot more moisture. This is just great news. That's five days Long-run area seems to get about a half inch of precipitation And going out 10 days we're up to inch to inch and a quarter of moisture And then snow how does have to put this in 10 days snow right there a little bit north of Durango And then to go out 14 days. Have you switched? Websites your tropical tidbits and you can see we're almost at the two inch mark over the next two weeks So an inch and a half to two inches of precipitation the mountains even do better with two to three Even three and a half inches in some spots in here with the moisture And let's go to getting a lot of relief. So great So taking up two weeks We start in the 90s who cool way down to the 70s this weekend with a cool front and high chances of precipitation through Monday Tuesday it backs off a little bit but afternoon storms are still not impossible The more moisture we get the more the the land of the vegetation Becomes healthy and wet the easier it is for even on days when there otherwise isn't a lot of moisture Local moisture sources can can kick off a few storms For the following week we return to the 90s when it drives out a little bit We cool by the end of the week. We have pretty good chances of afternoon storms. I'm giving a long ways out. So take this with a grain of salt, but Monday Fourth of July independence day a pretty good storm chances 60 percent and then drives Briefly after that and then I'll make another video for you guys Take a look at a new month the weather surface has put out its preliminary month forecast giving us above normal chances of above normal Heat and below normal precipitation, which right now doesn't look like that's coming about I don't have a graphic for this But weather bell, which is a great site to go to maybe I'll just wipe the bullet someday and spend $25 a month for subscription there It's going for the opposite. They're saying the Western and Central US is going to be below normal temperatures and above normal Precipitation at least the next 14 days that forecast looks better than what No has been putting out But we already look to that that the past no forecasts have not been the greatest So I'm at leader calm broomfield leader calm for local news and frequent weather updates I will continue to post weather updates there. It's easy for me to do that So this has been the weather forecast for The last week of June and the first week of July chief needle disturbance worth wishing you to keep looking up


The First Item of Business is General Questions. At Question 1, I call Pam Gossall. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the consultation on the future of qualifications and assessments. Shirley-Anne Somerville. Professor Hayward is leading an independent review on the future of qualifications and assessments to inform that review. A public consultation was launched on 21 October yw i'w gwaith i'r 16 ymgyrch chi'n gwyll�r, a dweud i'r 16 deis peidwyr chi'n gweithio gwaith i'r adnewid y blaenydd o'r drafod i ddiwedd ar hyn o'mwneud yn cyhoeddwyr sydd o ddarmell, ac yn cydweithio i gwyllgor ac yn cymdeithasglwyno'n gwyllt nawr. Felly, rwy'n gwithfawr i chi'n ei gael i ddwygen arfer oedd ddod o fewni'r Seiddur, ond ei gwylleptor hwyrddi, byw ddim yn cydweithio i'ch gydag i gydag i march 2023, a bwysig i chi'n mynd i'r parlymonau, dyfodig i ysgolau'r ysgolau yn y cwestio ar gyfer y newydd. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. Last week saw the launch of the consultation into the future of exams and qualifications in Scotland. Only three of 59 members on the education reform board are teachers and there are no parent representatives. What assurance can the Waist itwch i chi'n meddwl teithaeth? Mae Gwyrdd yn ei gweithio i chi fyddrach i chi'n meddwl i chi efolyg â'u gwagod honnod, maennyddol i chi'n meddwl i chi wedi gweithio The board membership refers to the reform of the three national agencies. Professor Hayward's work, which is independent of government, is being supported by an independent review group. That includes learners, parents, carers, education staff and college and university representatives. I hope that I have clarified that. Ms Gosall will be satisfied that parents, carers, education staff, colleges and universities representatives are included. Mark Ruskell To ask the Scottish Government what support is available to displaced people from Ukraine who are moving from temporary accommodation into permanent housing. Our aim is to improve the performance of the super-sponsor scheme. This week, we published 16 interventions following a review of the scheme. Our aim is to empower those arriving with clear advice, support and improved access to longer-term housing options, thereby reducing dependency on short-term and temporary accommodation. That is why we have put in place up to £50 million for our Ukraine longer-term capital fund to increase the overall supply of housing stock. That has already provided over £400,000 to North Ayrshire and £6 million to Aberdeen City Council. Mark Ruskell I have seen first-hand how communities and local authorities across my region from Cylindr-Rysaith are working tirelessly to try and find long-term housing solutions for displaced Ukrainians who have found sanctuary in Scotland. It is critical that any housing offer empowers our new Ukrainian neighbours to have choices over their next steps. I did welcome the Minister's statement on Tuesday, but could the Cabinet Secretary outline what further support will be made specifically to local authorities like Stirling Council to support the displaced Ukrainians to access that housing, but also critically to co-ordinate efforts with local communities who also have their own interests and their own efforts in trying to find solutions for their Ukrainian neighbours? I can tell the member that we have provided £11.2 million of funding to increase capacity of local authority resettlement teams to support refurbishment of properties and enhance the pace of host checks and matching. I encourage local authorities to ensure that they are making full use of that funding. We are encouraging all local authorities and registered social landlords to consider what properties there are in their area that could be brought back into use. I encourage the member to discuss the fund with local authorities in his region to identify opportunities to make best use of the funding. Mark Ruskell also mentioned the role of communities. He makes a very important point. The warm, welcoming response from communities the length and breadth of Scotland has been absolutely amazing. We want to encourage that to continue. Sometimes solutions are being proposed by the community to be listened to and acted upon where that is appropriate. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to help GPs manage their workloads. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, general practice has been strengthening significantly. We are committed to increasing the number of GPs in Scotland by 800 by the end of 2027 and making good progress towards that target. We have also recruited 3,220 whole-time equivalent healthcare professionals, such as community nurses and physiotherapists, into our multidisciplinary teams across practices. Local evaluation shows that the expanded MDTs are freeing up GP capacity, allowing a focus on patients with more complex conditions. It is also reducing multiple appointments for the same issue and associated with high staff and patient satisfaction. I thank the cabinet secretary for the answer. Almost every MSP in the chamber will have constituents who are unable to get an appointment with a GP. Instead of helping to address the issue, the cabinet secretary has cut GP sustainability payments by around £5 million, considering the tremendous workload that GPs are under. How can the Scottish Government justify that? I remind the member that investment in general practice is going up, not down. We are investing at least £170 million a year in growing primary care multidisciplinary teams. That is up £15 million. Last year, we were supporting general practice. We know and have heard that anecdotally, face-to-face appointments are beginning to increase, but I accept that not to the level that some people would like. Therefore, I have asked GP practices that are not offering pre-bookable appointments to make sure that they are offering them. Let me remind Alexander Stewart that the reason why we are having to reprofile money within health is, in large part, to respond to the economic incompetence of his party. The health budget is worth £650 million less just due to inflation. Pay rises are way in excess of what we budgeted for because of the Tory cost crisis. Please do not come here and shed crocodile tears about primary care when it is your party's disastrous stewardship of the UK economy that has caused such devastating impacts in the first place. Christine Grahame, I have constituents advising me that post Covid, their experiencing barriers in certain GP practices is only certain to booking face-to-face appointments because the practice has changed their process to online consultation forms, which is difficult for some constituents to use. Is the cabinet secretary aware of his moody comment? I am aware and I absolutely accept what Christine Grahame is saying. As I said in my last response, I have spoken to the British Medical Association and the Royal College of GPs about this matter. It is also why I came to this Parliament a number of weeks ago to say that I will personally be in contact with every single GP practice to ensure that pre-bookable appointments are available, which can help with that face-to-face issue. On the online appointment and online booking, I will make sure that I reach back in to our key stakeholders, such as the BMA and the Royal College, to make sure that those who are digitally excluded are not left out in terms of getting face-to-face or GP appointments. I am very grateful. Last week I met a very respected GP in the south of Scotland who indeed trains the next generation of doctors. The GP was blunt with me and said that himself and his colleagues are burnt out—the impact of the pandemic, yes, but also the strain that GPs have been under for years. Many GPs are now at breaking point and are seriously considering early retirement, and the Scottish Government need to show the GPs that they are serious about getting primary care services right. Given the announcement yesterday, does the Health Secretary not fear that this will act as a catalyst for early retirement by GPs? I would say to Martin Birtfield—he raises a very important point up—that when I met with Dr Andrew Bueast earlier this week from the BMA, he was saying similar about GPs' burnout and workload. That is why it is so important that we continue to invest in the multidisciplinary team model. Let me say that funding for that continues. That is why recruiting 3,220 members of healthcare staff as part of that multidisciplinary team model will help to ease and alleviate some of the workload from general practice. To Martin Birtfield, the reason why we are having to reprofile some of this money, which is staying, of course, within health, is to help us to ensure that we can put forward the best pay deal possible for our healthcare staff in these challenging times. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the work of the Women's Health Group, including when it will next meet. The Women's Health Group was established in February 2020 to develop a women's health plan. It was disbanded following the publication of a plan on 20 August 2021. The Women's Health Plan Implementation Program Board was established in January of this year to oversee the delivery of that plan. Chared by Professor Marion Bain, the deputy chief medical officer, the board brings together a range of organisations to ensure that the actions within the plan are implemented effectively, along with continued input and influence from women themselves. The board meets quarterly at last met yesterday, the terms of reference, and other information about the board is available on the Scottish Government's website. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Six months ago, I was advised that the Government is working with the Scottish Perinatal Network to examine adoption of the percentile growth factor test for pregnant women in order to detect preeclampsia, which can kill both mother and baby and lead to further health risks later in life. Such tragedies can now be prevented by using these simple and reliable tests already in use from England to Sierra Leone. Can the cabinet secretary therefore advise as to progress in rolling out PLGF tests in Scotland? I first recognise and record the interest that Kenneth Gibson has had on the issue for not just many months but many years. Progress has been made. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that women receive high-quality safe care, including in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of preeclampsia. While NHS boards in Scotland can already choose to offer placental growth factor PLGF testing, should they wish to do so, we have continued to work with and progress that work with the Scottish Perinatal Network. We have also approached the Scottish Health Technologies Group, which provided advice to NHS Scotland on the use of new and existing technologies. That group started work last month, considering the most recent nice guidelines on PLGF testing and will produce an adapted version of the guidance for Scotland with recommendations. The SHTG group has started consulting there with the clinical community, with patients organisations and wider stakeholders, and that work is expected to be completed by spring 2023. On the back of the member's question, I will explore if there is any further pace that can be injected into this process, given how important me those tests can be. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it is reducing waiting times for children adolescent mental health services. We are setting the conditions needed for long-term sustainable improvement to CAMHS systems. We saw an 8.6 per cent drop last quarter in the number of waits over 18 weeks. However, I recognise that performance against the national waiting time standards varies across health boards. We are directing tailored support to boards not on track to meet the standard, providing access to professional advice, ensuring that they have robust improvement plans in place, and we are monitoring progress closely. I have also met recently, with boards furthest away from achieving the standard, to discuss my concerns and expectations for improvement. I have previously written to the Minister about my constituent John in East Dunbartonshire. John's nine-year-old son has been self-harming. He waited six months from referral into initial assessment by CAMHS. He was then told that it would be a further year until a support plan was in place. John's younger son is now imitating his brother's behaviour. The entire family are at their wit's end. Thousands of children are on waiting lists despite the Scottish Government repeatedly promising to fix this. Can the Minister explain to John why children are continuing to wait so long to get the proper support plans they need? Minister? Neither John nor his son should be put in that position. I will write to Mr Bibby about that situation again. We want to see young people treated as quickly as possible. We also want to put in place a system whereby there is not an over-reliance in acute services and that we can deal with things before they reach that stage. We are working very hard and have invested heavily in CAMHS services. Obviously, there has been impact because of the Covid pandemic, but we are seeing progress and I hope that that continues, and I will write to Mr Bibby. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that affordable housing and development plans have been put on hold because of eventries. Scotland is significantly ahead of the rest of the UK in providing affordable housing, having delivered almost £113,000 affordable homes since 2007, over £79,000 of which were for social rent. We recognise the impact of interest rates on high material and labour costs, which is why we continue to operate a flexible grant system that we expect will support the continued delivery of the affordable homes target. In advance of the emergency legislation, we set up a working group with social landlords to help assess the options to keep rents affordable for tenants beyond 31 March in the light of the cost of living crisis. That work is continuing, and during the passage of the bill, we further committed to giving clarity and certainty to social landlords on rent setting no later than 14 January. Jeremy Balfour has failed to answer the question. Lord Willie Hawke recently announced that his plan to spend more than £1 billion on building 11,000 affordable homes in Scotland was scrapped. Specifically, he said that because of Patrick Harvie's rent-free bill, he would have to put things on hold. Does the cabinet secretary now recognise that the SNP Government's rent-free housing crisis has made the housing crisis worse not better in Scotland? I recognise the lessy-fair attitude of the Tories. They oppose measures to help tenants with rent increases during a cost of living crisis. In the same way as they oppose measures to restrict the loss of housing to short-term holiday lets, no ideas, no solutions, just opposition for opposition's sake, and yet they refuse to take responsibility for the disastrous economic policies of the Tory Government, leading to high interest rates, which is the biggest impact on the social rented sector and the affordable housing supply programme at this moment in time. Total hypocrisy, as ever from the Tories. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its consultation on a new agricultural bill. The Scottish Government launched our consultation entitled Delivering Our Vision for Scottish Agriculture Proposals for a New Agriculture Bill on 29 August. The consultation closes on 21 November, and all members of the public are encouraged to submit responses. Alongside the consultation, we are hosting a number of events to hear views from across the country on what needs to feature in the future bill to transform how we support farming and food production in Scotland to become a global leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture. Rachel Hamilton I thank the Minister for that answer. Presiding Officer, yesterday hundreds of farmers and a handful of tractors rallied outside Parliament to highlight the issues facing farmers across Scotland. They feel let down by an SMB green coalition that simply does not understand their concerns. Their disdain for the Bute House agreement was especially clear. Given the views expressed by farmers yesterday, does the Minister agree with me that her green coalition partners have no understanding of the needs of rural Scotland? Presiding Officer, I am not even sure where to begin with that question, except to say that farmers and food producers in Scotland are quite right to come to this Parliament to speak to representatives here. The fact of the matter is that, while I stand here answering this question, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs is right now with the Agriculture, Reform and Implementation Oversight Board proactively engaging with industry to design future policy. Whether it is Brexit, whether it is utter economic incompetence, or whether it is with its complete refusal to listen to industry, it is the member's party and Government who are repeatedly and profoundly letting down Scotland's food producers. Presiding Officer, I absolutely never cease to amaze me when the Tories try to promote themselves as the party standing up for farmers. They can say what they like about the concern and support for agriculture, but where was that support and concern when they opposed this Parliament with holding consent to the subsidy control act? The hypocrisy is utterly galling. The NFUS were clear and expressing concerns about the potential impact of legislation on farmers. It could have profound and fundamental impact on our ability to tell the support to the specific needs of Scotland's farmers, which it is supposed to represent. Does the Minister agree with me that, while the other parties can be relied upon to play politics, when it comes down to the facts, the SNP can be relied upon to safeguard the interests of Scottish agriculture and deliver on those interests? I completely agree with Jim Fairlie. A very useful voice for the farming industry and the Parliament. Members, can we make sure that we hear all members when they are speaking? The inclusion of agriculture support in the scope of the UK subsidy control act is unnecessary and risks undermining the agriculture support framework. Farmers and crofters in Scotland face challenges that are not found elsewhere in the rest of the UK, yet that constrains our ability to develop future policies that are tailored to meet them. However, we remain fully committed to delivering our vision for agriculture and implementing a framework that delivers high-quality food production and empowers Scotland's farmers and food producers to play their very important role in mitigating climate change and supporting nature recovery in Scotland. We will get on with that job.