Thank you. I won't have any slides. I thank you again for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here. I come, like Sara, from the bioethics kind of background, and what got me very interested in this area was the ALS study from patients like me that we heard about. And as I guess a standard bioethics person, my first question was who reviewed that study? Was there an IRB review in that study? And I didn't see an answer to that. And then my next question was who ought to review that study? And I couldn't find out the answer to that question either. So I thought, well, that's a great research area. So I've been thinking about it for some time, and I thought we heard a lot about it already today. So what I'd like to maybe do in the next minutes is just to pull some of the threads that we already heard and speak to three points that I think we could use to frame the discussion at the panel. So my first point is about the heterogeneity of the activity, and we heard a little bit about it. We talk about citizen science as if it were one thing, but it seems to me that we have a lot of different activity, a lot of different research that we seem to think that goes under that. And the reason that this heterogeneity I think is important is because we need to ask the follow-up question, which is in what way is this kind of research different from our standard research, the one that we send to the IRB, the one we understand to be covered by our ethics regulation? And I think the reason that's an important distinction to make is because we need to look again, and again that came up already, at the different roles that citizens play as researchers, as investigators, as funders of the activity. So in the various slides we saw today, they were overlapping circles of what their roles might be, overlapping circles in what kind of activity. Is this really research as we know it? Is it labor as we heard? What exactly is it? I think the important point here is not simply to look at that because we like to be pedantic, but because if it is actual research, as we understand that the rest of our research, maybe we have to come up with a very good reason why we're not applying our standard mechanisms. The second, I think, important reason to that, the second reason for which that demarcation is important is because I'm a little concerned that sometimes, given the appeal of citizen science, it might sound like the right thing to say, although basically what we mean is our standard research. And I think we need to be careful to this difference between how much of this is rhetoric and how much of this is really a different kind of research, a different degree of participation, a different degree of engagement. My second point is about the uniformity of standards. No matter how heterogeneous the activity is, research still needs to satisfy certain scientific and ethical criteria. And I think everyone would agree on that. We don't want a second class scientific kind of research. We need to do high quality research, no matter how it's done or where it's done, and there are values that we value in how we're doing research, and we need to secure those, although we might have to secure those with different models. Now, in terms of models, what I'm thinking here is we might have to revise our process to consent. Okay, we all know our consent mechanism is not perfect, but some of them are good enough, our ethics review is maybe not perfect, but it does help improve our research. So we need to think maybe differently about these things, maybe also differently about attribution, about fair sharing of benefit. And the reason we'll be thinking about it perhaps differently is also, I think, because we need to recognize the value of that activity. Health research is a socially valuable activity, but we have certain criteria that need to be met in order to recognize it as such. And in particular here, I think we need to make sure that we recognize these new roles and the roles of the citizen. I was looking at some literature from a very different area, biodiversity or mythology, and there are two papers that were published very recently. One seemed to suggest that even in these areas that have a longer history with citizen science, citizen science are not mentioned. We saw in your example that they were mentioned as co-authors, as 3,000, 3,000 something dusters. But in that systematic review, it seemed that we couldn't pick up the citizen science because they were not mentioned in that context. The second study that was a bit more worrisome was concluding that if we look at costs in kind that citizen science contribute in biodiversity research, we're talking about saving up to two and a half billion dollars. That's a serious in kind contribution. Yet, the majority of citizen science collected data do not reach peer-reviewed literature. Well, that's something maybe to worry about, but if it's not to worry about very much for that research, if we were to embrace more of citizen science in health research, which I think would be a great thing to do, maybe we need to look carefully at things like that. Do we want data to be collected that we're not going to use? Do you want the people who participate not to be recognized? So I think it's important to learn from this sort of activity that, or others, we've been doing this for a bit longer. And the last point, I hope... Okay, it was time. All right, one minute. So in the last one minute, the one word I think I'd like to have you maybe think about is that of innovation in governance. We've been talking about governance, but we haven't talked about how we're going to do innovative governance. If our IRB, or Research Ethics Review Committee in Europe, where I have my operations, is not the right mechanism for some of the citizen science activity. What is the appropriate mechanism? And then how are we going to define that? And the innovative line perhaps to pursue here is how much we're going to involve that constituency of citizen science in becoming part of the governance. Again, it would be probably unfortunate if we decide, whoever we is, how we're going to govern these activities that seem to suggest that we have a different type of engagement from all these people. So can we think in different ways, in more innovative ways, where those citizen science in whatever form and shape we can be represented and become part of this are part of our oversight mechanism, part of the governance mechanism, and make then through this approach a more meaningful kind of contribution, and also in that sense have the whatever we call citizen science, which is more than just simple research participation to be able to be realized. So I'll stop here. Thank you. Thanks. We'll invite all of the panelists now to the table up front.


your family re-situation. You did do that, as a matter of fact. Yeah, I'm fine. For years. I mean, they were going into these things, and it's just been, you know, the last few months that I really felt that I needed to have that intense time to go into it. You know, I just, I felt ready. I felt ready to totally devote myself, you know, and think of until then, it had been, I just wasn't ready.   I don't even know how to describe it. I, you know, but it really is a matter for me of coming to clarity in my own mind of what's really going on, and that's where the peace is. And that's where the joy about it is, when I'm with them now, is to be clear in my own mind that it's not about leaving anyone behind. You know, again, I hear what you're saying about all the people saying things to you, because I've had the same experience, and I'm sure there's a lot of parallels, because I've talked to so many people along the way, friends, family, neighbors, you name it, who said, what the hell is going on, and what are you doing? And so I've had to go into it so many different, with so many different people in so many different ways, because everybody's kind of coming at it from a different perspective. And yet, in a lot of ways, it's almost indescribable for me to, you know, I mean, again, when I hear myself talking about it, it all is just symbols, because it's, again, the experience of it, and it's like it may look like one thing on the outside, but until I have the experience of it, there's just, it's just words, you know? What I was hearing David say, though, was that you couldn't be in a family setting and still do this, you know, have this experience of enlightenment. Yeah, and that was what you were saying. So would that mean that Rhonda would never go back, or could never go back to that situation, if that was a choice, or is that something? But when you say go back to me, what that means is I will never go back to being who I was, who I thought I was, as a mother, as a wife, as a family member in that way, without the attachments, without the specialness, I won't go back to that. I can't. She won't go back and remind how it's seen that.  No. That you have to step apart from roles and be totally neutral. So you could not work and reach enlightenment, is that right? It would be that enlightenment would be defined as letting go of all separate concepts of self and accepting first of all one concept, which Jesus calls forgiveness, which is just seeing the feather, seeing the falseness false. That precedes the awakening. Yeah, you can see that there are definite implications of this as we go in. And it's good to really talk about those and get clear, because again, the egos version is happiness, and then you end up feeling like the splits after a while, because the farther you go into it, you see that the ways of the world and the ways of the system. There's no dancing. There's dancing, but not like that. Everything would dissolve then. The thing about Rhonda, I hate to pick on you, but are you all saying then that she cannot return home if she wants enlightenment? Well, what I'm talking about, because I'm not as far regressed as any of the rest of us. As a matter of fact, and that kind of level that you're talking about, the body that is speaking, has not gone up and just shared the idea. You have reminded Rhonda of, again and again, as this body was going back to Traverse City, is that you no longer go back to Traverse City as mom, or as wife, or as neighbor, or as daughter-in-law, or any of those things, because that's not who you are. And Traverse City is in town. Right.  Yes. Because, you know, but it's a very helpful metaphor. And it's been totally transformative, totally. I mean, I have a totally different relationship with every one of those people, and it is beyond anything I ever imagined. And we are going to Traverse City at the invitation of Tom, who wants us to come so that he can go into these ideas at greater depth. Because he's finding them more and more attractive as he sees the changes in me. Right. So we're not going to Traverse City because there's someone there named Tom who has been called husband in the past that has nothing to do with why we're going to Traverse City. The invitation could be, seems like it's coming from Tom. It's really internal direction and guidance. You know, as we come together and you go into the silence, because it's really, again, how can I be most helpful? Well, let me ask this. For people to study the course, is the goal, the idea behind that is that you should accept the call at some point and become a teacher, or is it just fine to study the course and live the life without devoting yourself to it as you have chosen to do? Or are you missing something? Well, if you look at the way the course is even written, when you get back to the teachers manually we're talking about, it's written as a training manual for teachers of God and he actually talks about being called, they come from many backgrounds, they come from all religions he says, they come from no religions, they don't look alike, they don't come from same backgrounds. So once they've answered the call, once they've seen that there's no separate interest in their brother, then they have become a teacher of God. And literally it's written for their pupils, they're becoming a teacher of God and more in the line of being like an apostle or the mystics and the saints. Now again, for yourself, where you perceive yourself and where you believe you are, you work with the Holy Spirit's curriculum, it's highly individualized and it's not even about trying to project like, oh my gosh, if I work with this, am I going to end up like that or whatever, but it's just saying, here's where I am right now. This is what I perceive. This is the world I perceive. Help me to move in that direction. You know, you could see where, if you got into all the expectations of where this will take me and so on and so forth, it could seem overwhelming and that would not be helpful. And admittedly, what you're hearing here is quite a deep, deep conversation. And for yourself, if the ego starts to come in with like, oh boy. But look what's coming in, what's the reaction behind that? What's the fear of something? Maybe all that these people can do to take these steps in their lives. Well, yeah. Because it's not all implies that there's somebody involved. There's somebody involved. It's with all these people. Yeah. That's the question. Our changes requiring the life situation of the teachers was real helpful to me, I don't know. That's in the manual. The teacher's manual. I saw the section. I didn't read it. And it was mentioned someday. Okay. Is that helpful? Well, you answered the question. What are the other questions? I had a sense that maybe there's even more questions. No, that was the question. That was the question of the moment. How does that feel to you? It's clarification, I'm speaking. It's clarification and understanding of what this is all about in order to put it in perspective. And so it feels neither hot nor cold. It's just there. Further and further and further. Now I know I'm barely pushing it too far. I just need to bring it back and deal with it right here. And I think that's part of the caught in the future thing.  No, wait. It's just doing it right now. It's okay. It's okay. Past and future thoughts will take away the past. Yeah. Except that I was reading something. In the course today, we're in one of the papers about, or maybe it was the fish. God, I'm reading so much. I don't know, but something about their useful past thoughts. And I think it just meant those lessons. I'm not sure, you know, what it was. But generally for me, any thought of the past or the future in this world's terms putting it into a world-like picture of the past or future, take away the peace. Yeah. A reference to what you're talking about would be where Jesus talks about keeping the past in a purified form. Which can seem like oxymoron. Wait a minute, Jesus. You say, let go of the past and the past is gone. Now you want to save the past in a purified form. What is this about? But that's a metaphor for what I was describing when Linda was asking about the body's eyes still report differences, but the healed mind has put them all in the one category. They are unreal. You see, there's still a perceptual component. The body's eyes still seeing differences. That's the past. That's definitely the past. That's not the holy instance. But it's that metaphor of that's a purified form of the past. If you can see the past as flying feathers being ordered to be judged and they're equally unreal. Becca, what you said I think is so helpful that to keep projecting out ahead of where this is taking me can be very scary. And in fact, if I had seen a video of how it looks now three years ago I might have been terrified. Because


Hey, everybody, Matt here for Latin Sports Cards, ripping 2023 top series two baseball jumbos. Six box full case break number five. Pick your team. We have Alex M. Cardinals, Andrew L. Giants, Brendan L. Pirates, Christopher O. Orioles, Christopher F. Rockies, Colby C. A's, Daniel K. Mariners, Darren G. Royles, Henry C. Blue Jays, Jeff M. Marlins, Jerry B. Metz, Jim L. Twins, Judson C. Guardians, Keith M. Tigers, Kengo F. Angels, Marci S. Padres, Matthew B. Cubs, Miles H. Dodgers, Poe U.S. Phillies, Richard G. Nationals, Roy M. Ranger, Sean D. Reyes, Sean L. White Sox, Sean B. Reds, Stash Rookies, Yankees, Todd D. Astros, Vaughn B. Dvaxx, Red Sox Braves, and Zachary S. Brewers. All right, here we go. Breaker breakers, Mariano. Angles down just a little bit. Michael Kopeck, Rainbow Foil, JT Romuto, WBC, and Rhino, All-Star, Masatake Yoshida, Rookie, David Hensley, Rookie Goldfoil, and Mrs. Braves, Crowning Achievements, Memorative Patch, Hank Aaron, Aaron Judge, and Oscar Gonzalez, Jordan Walker Rookie, Thompson, Medresario, Rainbow Foil, and Phillies, that is Game Use Jersey, Reese Hoskins, Tucker, Byron Buxton, Adam Frazier, Willie Castro, Goldfoil, Taylor Walls, Gold Paper, All Aces, C.C. Sabathia, and Mike Trout, 88, Anthony Volpe, Rookie, Corbin Carroll Rookie, and so many good rookies in this. There's another one, James Altman, Miles Miclus, Goldfoil, Jose Ramirez, and Legends of the Game, David Ortiz, Tobar, Francisco Alvarez, Matt Carpenter, Rainbow Foil, Julio Rodriguez, WBC, Chateau, Josh Young, Rookie, Xander, Goldfoil, and Jurickson Profar, that is WBC Blacks, 299, Rice Harper, and D.L. Hall, Longoria, Trace Thompson, Gold Paper, Chateau, Roda Senga, Corbin Carroll, Rookie, James Altman, Carson Kelly, and Phillies to 99, that is 88, Otto Black, Reese Hoskins, Tony Gwynn, Legends of the Game, Jordon, Hunter Strickland, and 25, that is Rookie Takeover, Cubs, Memorial Day Camo, Morelle and Velazquez, Memorial Day Camo to 25, Iceman Cubs, and to 199, Dane Dunning, Red Foilboard, Jordon Diaz, Dunning's been pretty good this year, Roda Senga, Silver Pats, Musgro, Clemente, Casas, and Cease, Yoshida, Ruiz, Dawson, and Suzuki, box number two, record breakers, Mark McGuire, yeah, I have David, there's Luis Ortiz, Rookie Rainbow Foil, so I did confirm with Forest, the Goldmere Image Variation SSPs, he's pulled, have also had the Silver Foil, Mazataki Yoshida, I just talked to him between breaks, so yeah, Goldmere Image Variation SSPs, Silver Foil on the top's logo, and then the SSP on the back, Bradley Jr., and Mariners, this is Emeritive Patch, King Griffey Jr., and that is Crowning Achievements, all Aces Mackenzie and Verlander, Logan Ohapi, Arshow, Enner Diaz, Rookie Rainbow Foil, and Orioles, that is Rookie Jersey Adley-Ruchman, now Thomas WBC and Jackie, yeah, I pulled one last case and won the case before, that is Harper and Marsh, Philly's Gold Foil, Wilson Contreras, Gold Paper, Sunny Gray, Favorite Son, and Adley, that's awesome, 88 Rookie, the All-Star Rookie, the 88 Topps McGuire, base card, the All-Star Rookie is like one of my favorites, it's like one of my all-time favorite cards, Anthony Volpe, what's up, Luca, how's it going? It's James Altman, Rookie, Von Soto, David Hensley, Rookie Gold Foil, Von Soto Home Run Challenge, Judge and Steer, Kodai Senga, Jordan Walker Rookie, Corbin Carroll Rookie, Alvarez, Corey Kluber, Rookie Sasaki, WBC, that'll be random to all, Shohei Otani, 88 All-Star, yeah, lots of good rookies in there, Jordan Walker, James Altman, Corbin Carroll, Anthony Volpe, Josh Young, Francisco Alvarez, Masataki Yoshida, Kodai Senga, Logan Ohapi, there's Carson Kelly, this is World Baseball Classic, Black to 299, Shohei Otani, there you go, nice one, goes to the Angels, Pujols, Legends of the Game, J-Rod, 88 All-Star Rookie, didn't see any of these in the first four cases, I've seen two here, thinking the same box, right? Man, if they have a Nolan Gorman like that, I'm definitely gonna have to get it. Madrigal, Rainbow Foil, Travastar Node, Gold Paper, Jimenez, and Acunya, Jordan Walker Rookie, and Logan Ohapi Rookie, little Brendan Donovan even, yeah for sure, James Altman Rookie, we'll do a roll of die for the duels left, one, two, three, right, four, five, six, unless it's an auto relic or one of one, that is one, duels go left, yeah, remind me of Twin Breaks, I'll go get another pen. There's Muncie, Gold Foil, and Astros, Baseball Stars, Rookie Otto, Jainer Diaz, Cunha, Derrick Jeter, yes, Kodaisenga, Ran, Rainbow Foil, and 299, Kyle Tucker, Orange Foil, nice Astros color match, Wilson Contreras, Hugh Darvish, Yvonne Herrera, and Marc Vientos, Francisco Alvarez, Mikey Strimsky, Bo Nailer, and Simeon Woods Richardson. Echo Breakers, J-Rod, Rikas, Rainbow Foil, I'm gonna talk to Murakami, WBC, that'll be a random to all, Buster Posey, Donnie Sands, Donnie Sands, Rookie Gold Foil, Padres, Silver Slugger Award, commemorative patch to 75, Josh Bell, Allaces, Kevin Galsman, Wilson Contreras, Anthony Valpe, Rookie, Francisco Alvarez, Rookie, Orioles, Rainbow Foil, and White Sox, Game Use, Bat Relic, Eloi Jimenez, Jinderan, Josh Young, Caleb Mayhew, Gold Foil, Travis Darnout, Gold Paper, Kershaw, Old Calhoun, Gold Foil, Kodaisenga, Rookie 88, Jordan Walker, Rookie, Jake Fraley, Rainbow Foil, and 499, Green Foil Board, Joey Manessus, Rookie. There you go, nice one, Nats. Xander and Bregman, Kodaisenga, Rookie, Jordan Walker, Rookie, Corbin Carroll, Rookie, James Altman, Rookie, Austin Voth, and this is Cubs, Home Field Advantage, Rookie, Christopher Morrell, Congrats, Chicago. There you go, Cubs. Berto Clemente, Lunge into the Game, Hannager, without Bruton, Rainbow Foil, David Bednar, Gold Paper, Wander, WBC, and Freddie Freeman, Masataki Yoshida, Rookie, Adam Frazier, Gold Foil, and at his D-Bax, 88, Otto, Alec Thomas, nice one, Arizona, Logan Ohapi, Logan Gilbert, Rainbow Foil, and 299, Babe Ruth, All-Star, Blackboarder, nice one, Yankees, Aronato, WBC, Envato, Masataki Yoshida, Rookie, Silver Hacks, Andrea Rosarena, Luis Castillo, Jonathan India, and Ken Waldechuk, Berto Clemente, Tristan Casas, Dylan Cease, and Dan B. Swanson. There's Rhino, Rekker Breakers, at his Heavy Lumber, Ken Griffey Jr., nice one, Mariners, that's awesome. Go Seattle, this goes in the weekend. Robinson Srinos, Hacian Kim, and Ted Williams. James Altman, Rookie, Astros, Gold Foil, that's an awesome card. I don't like the Astros, but that's an awesome card. And Cubs, Crowning Achievements, commemorative patch, Ernie Banks, Brian Helsley, and Albert Pujols, 88. Go Dacenga, Rookie, Pirates narrow the lead, these are up seven to three now, Michael Tuglia, Sturri Ruiz, Rookie, Rainbow Foil, and Astros, that is Rookie Jersey, Hunter Brown, Mike Trout, WBC, and 88, Trout as well. Masataki Yoshida, Rookie, Joe Ryan, Gold Foil, and Chad Pender, Gold Paper, All Aces, Tom Siever, and Joe Musgrove, Logan Ohapi, yeah, they're, I guess, yeah, Silver Mirror, Cole Calhoun, Gold Foil, Home Run Challenge, Boba Chet, and Legends of the Game, Babe Ruth, that's unfortunate, that has foil lifted on that lower edge. Yankees will send you the empty box wrapper, if you wanna reach out the pops, try to get that replaced, that's a cool card. So Francisco Alvarez, Rookie, 88, Bronze Mirror for update, yeah, maybe. Javier Baez and Greg Maddox, Austin Vaughn, All Aces, Randy Johnson, Aronato, favorite son, Corbin Carroll, Rookie, 88, nice on the D-Vax, Anthony Volpe, Terrain, Corbin Carroll, Rookie, Francisco Alvarez, Gene Cigura, Rainbow Foil, and Jake McCarthy, Gold Paper, is that another Tops Now Redemption, yep. Tops Now, Free Card Redemption, this'll be a random to all, so you just go to that website, enter the code, and you get the Tops Now card, can I have that one back, please? Jerks and Profar, and Nolan Aronato, Josh Young, Achilles, Gold Foil, and Astros, baseball stars, Rookie Otto, Jainer Diaz, Go Houston, Legends of the Game, Ken Griffey Jr., it's Pedro, pack of box number four, Corbin Carroll, Rookie, Francisco Alvarez, Austin Hayes, Rainbow Foil, and Orange Foil Board, Terrain Vabra Rookie, Orioles Color Match, Maggie and Mookie, Michael Grove, Drew Waters, Dale Murphy, and to 150, that is Rockies, Rookie Blue Refractor, Michael Tuglia, Adrienne Beltray, Jeremy Pena, Logan Webb, and nice, Metz, Silver Pack Chrome, Rookie Purple Refractor to 75, Kodai Senga, congrats Metz, awesome card. Two boxes to go, Adley Wrecker Breakers, Rookie Insert, Rookie Box Topper, Francisco Alvarez, Ira Estrada, Rainbow Foil, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jose Ramirez, Neda, Josh Young, JBJ, Gold Foil, and Phillies, Crowning Achievements, Commemorative Patch, Ryan Howard, Mookie, Hank, Dolpho Castro, Kotz Hucker, and Pirates, that's Jersey, O'Neill Cruz, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, World Baseball Classic, that'll be a random to all, Hank Aaron, Kodai Senga, Rookie, Irving Carroll, Rookie, James Altman, Rookie, Tray Turner, Gold Foil, Alec Burleson, Rookie Gold Paper, Randy Johnson, Legends of the Game, Soto, Will Brennan, Rookie Gold Foil, it's a Bryce Harper Home Run Challenge, Strowman and Masatake Yoshida, Rookie 88, Anthony Volpe, Rookie, Michaelis, Rainbow Foil, Vinny Pasquantino, and Frank Thomas, Masatake Yoshida, Rookie, Logan Ohapi, Daniel Rivera, Gold Foil, and Andres Jimenez, that is Sky Blue WBC Guardians, short locker Rookie, Tray Mancini, Rainbow Foil with Al Bruhan, Gold, Peterson, J-Rod, All-Star, Max Muncie, Gold Foil, and Astros, that's Baseball Stars, Rookie Otto, Blind Madras, I'm on grease, another hit for the Astros, there's Sonny Gray, All-Aces, and Dale Murphy, Anthony Volpe, Jumbo Pack, a Block 5, Charlie Blackman, Rainbow Foil, and 72, Black Paper, Whitmere Field, Lubaven Tattis, Mark Vientos, Carlos Rodan, and Kodaisenga Rookie, Michael Masi, Julio Arias, Randy Rosarena, and Luis Castillo, last box, we have more random style, I'm sorry, pick your team style breaks tomorrow during the day, that's Bryce Harper, Rekker Breakers, that's Francisco Alvarez Rookie, Michael Lorenzen, Rainbow Foil, and to 4.99, that is Green Foil Board Rookie, James Altman, nice one Dodgers, go nice one LA, Cunha WBC and Chisholm, Brandon Davis, Rookie Gold Foil, no Salty, that's Silver Slugger, commemorative patch to 10, Nolan Aranato, nice one Cardinals, five of 10, nice Aranato, Ichiro, Legends, Anthony Volpe Rookie, Jihwambe, Rookie Gold Foil, that's Outman there, that's Rangers, Rookie Jersey, Josh Young, Rookie WBC and Vato, Corbin Carroll Rookie, James Altman, Willie Castro, Gold Foil, Brian Anderson, Gold Paper, Rotmuto and Alvarez, Victor Reyes, Gold Foil, Carlos Correa, Home Run Challenge, Michael Harris, favorite son Rookie insert, Mike Trout, 88, Anthony Volpe Rookie, Bailey Falter, Rookie Rainbow Foil, Harry Ford and Soto, Masatake Yoshida Rookie, more Jumbo Packs and two Silver Packs to go, Colton Long, Gold Foil, and that's Red Foil Board, Nelson Cruz, Padres to 199, Allaces Blakesnell and Kodaisenga, Rookie 88, Thompson, Josh Young, this is Rookie Rainbow Foil, Masatake Yoshida, nice one, Red Size, Miguel Mosten, Gold Paper, Phillies, Otani, WBC, Geerick, Francisco Vendor, Gold Foil and Asperos, again, baseball stars Rookie Otto, Jiner Diaz, here in the judge, and Miguel Vargas, Anthony Volpe, Rookie Terrain, Josh Young, Josh Hader, and Brandon Crawford, Favorite Sons, Black 299, Arias, Masatake Yoshida, Rookie, and Asturi Ruiz, Julio Arias, Randy Rosarana, Luis Castillo, and Jonathan India, Lenin Sosa, Sandi Alcantra, Kerry Carpenter, and Eloy Jimenez. We're gonna do a random here before we do a recap. We get that one ready to go, this is, so we're gonna do a single random. We'll do Top Spot gets the Free Tops Now Card Redemption, Second Spot gets Munitaka Murakami, Third Spot gets Roki Sasaki, and Fourth Spot gets Yoshinobu Yamamoto. So four winners in this. We'll randomize eight times, good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Braves get the Tops Now Card, Pirates get the Munitaka Murakami, Orioles get the Roki Sasaki, and Blue Jays get the Yoshinobu Yamamoto. All right, give me just a second to tag those, and we'll do a hit recap here. A little bit easier here. Relics first. We had White Soxie, Eloy Jimenez, Padres, 75, Josh Bell, Cardinals, Tip 10, Nolanaranado, Rangers, Rookie, Josh Young, Phillies, Ryan Howard, Pirates, O'Neal Cruz, Astros Rookie Hunter Brown, Cubs, Ernie Banks, Orioles Rookie Adley-Ruchman, Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr., Phillies, Rhys Hoskins, Braves, Hank Aaron, Autos. We had Astros, Yiner Diaz, Yiner Diaz, and Yiner Diaz Rookies, Astros Rookie, Bly Madras, Debacks, ADA, Auto, Alex Thomas, and Phillies, ADA, Auto Black to 99, Rhys Hoskins. We had a Free Tops Now Card Redemption, went to the Braves and the Random. This was Pirates, sorry. This went to the Blue Jays, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Rosisosaki went to the O's, Minotaki Murakami went to the Pirates. There was a Shohei Otani WBC to 299. Christopher Morell and Nelson Alasquez, Memorial Day Camo, Team Card to 25. We had Christopher Morell home, sorry, Home Field Advantage, Rookie for the Cubs, Kodai Senga, Rookie Silver Pack Chrome Purple Refractor to 75, Metz, and Dodgers, Rookie Green Foil Board to 499, James Outland. That'll do it for the break. Thank you everybody. Case six is up next.


So I'm going to take this simple document, I'm going to open it, and if you open it in a typical PDF viewer, this is on Linux, but it doesn't really matter, versus LibreOfficeDraw and we'll take the current release, I'm going to show you the side-by-side in a second. The blue frames are not part of the rendering, they're just to distinguish the different applications, and also when you open it in LibreOfficeDraw there's a grid, so that's not a bug, that's just fine, but let's have a sense of how these things look, and this is when the system I'm running it on has all the fonts, so this is not about missing fonts. So these are just our bugs, okay, so what problems are we seeing here, there are issues with positioning, issues with spacing, issues with font selection, we're not choosing the right fonts, there's overlap of words, and that's just the immediately visible ones, there's also the fact that we're not reconstituting the document structures, so like Chalme was saying before, there are stretches of text, but not paragraphs one after another, and other structural features. Yes? Can I ask a preliminary question, do you have the same rendering results if you open the PDF from later using the... So they would be extremely similar, yes. So that's one aspect of motivation for even having this discussion, of improving LibreOffice as a PDF editor, but that's even just as a PDF opener, then another aspect of motivation is this kind of archetypal exchange that you might see on the bug tracker on our bugzilla. So some user opens a new bug and says, please improve some aspect of functionality involving how we open PDFs or edit PDFs in LibreOffice, and then someone from the QA says, oh, but you know, we're really not going to be doing that because LibreOffice is not a PDF editor. So if you're asking for better support for editing PDFs, that's out of scope. And then I join the discussion, and then I say, but come on, LibreOffice is a PDF editor, what are you talking about? And the reply is no, so LibreOffice is not a PDF editor, we support importing PDFs, we support editing the structure document that you get from importing the PDFs, and we also support exporting it to a PDF, but it's not, and then my answer is, but this is what makes it a PDF editor, yes, Mike? It's not the same person every time, plus I'm going to present these arguments in a more convincing manner in a second, this is just an archetypal exchange which motivates this talk, so I hope I haven't, well, at the end of the talk you'll tell me whether I've offended you or not, and this goes on because you can repeat this exchange several times. And then the third part of the motivation is, so I'm not really going to give a talk about winning an argument that I've had with someone on a bug page, there's actually an even more substantial motive, but I won't tell you what it is right away, although Italo actually kind of knows if he's still here, but yeah. So this will be our mystery that I hope you will figure out as we progress in our discussion. So let's try to, I hope I can make the fair argument against considering LibreOffice as a PDF editor, and if I haven't, you'll have to excuse me because I'm biased. So PDF is not a format that's intended for editing, it's a final present or presentational format, mostly or essentially, and other than the tags which we heard about an hour ago and are very often or most usually not present, there is no semantic decomposition of the contents of a PDF, we don't have indications of things like sections or paragraphs or breaks to the next line, and we don't have information about a lot of the constructs that we have in our structured documents, so things like tables or columns or document objects and groupings of things, and what's the header, the footer as opposed to the main part of a page, and what's the footnote, etc., etc., and also things like what's a numbering as opposed to just text or how text is aligned, we do have positioning information, but there's nobody saying that that means this text is justified or this text is on the left edge of something, and certainly not things like tabs, and also not really any style information, of course the individual element that's in the PDF is styled, so to speak, but nothing tells us, this styling is the same styling as we have elsewhere in a different run of text, so all that information that we need and an editor has and uses and needs a PDF basically doesn't have, of course the PDFs do carry all the specific information that is required to actually render the document, and like Khaume mentioned, if you use that mostly, and because of this, and if you use a different kind of filter that doesn't extract structure, just renders it the way, like in a presentational sense, say using the PDFium filter, then you can get very good rendering of the PDF inside LibreOffice, but then you can't do anything with it, it's just like it's similar to an image, and so you can either do that or you use the input filter which gives you a bit of the structure, but not a lot of it, so that's one reason we shouldn't consider it as a PDF editor. Another reason is that the import and the export are separate from each other, and they're imperfect, and they don't produce something that is an authentic representation of the actual structure of a PDF. We make it into something else as though we would take sort of a sketch, some artist would take a sketch of what's in the document, then we would work on the sketch, and then we would save it to something else, or like photocopy the sketch, and that means that whatever problems we might have with the import filter and the export filter, they expound each other and make everything, so every such problem becomes even more serious. Another reason no less important is the intentional reason, that is it's not supposed to be a PDF editor. We've never decided that I know of to offer a PDF editor, so PDF editing capability, we got it through having an import filter, but we did not design a draw or writer or any other module for editing PDFs, and actually some contributors think that it's a bad idea to even invest effort in enhancing these capabilities, so maybe it's an inappropriate use of project resources to work on something or to improve something that we never decided we want, and here is a semi quote, not of Mike, that we actually need to do, yes spelling error, we need to manage the expectations of our users who now might be mistakenly believing that the Libre Office is a PDF editor, because it isn't, and if they expect it to be then they will be disappointed. So like I said, I hope this was, I related the argument fairly, but definitely check out the relevant bugs if you want to read it, read the actual proponents of this position, which is not mine. And now, so I want to think together with you about this question and put it in perspective, through several prisms, one of them is functional, that is how relevant are we or how relevant is Libre Office to the use cases that people do PDF editing in, then also something more formal, so what is it, should we consider Libre Office as a program which meets the definition of an editor, and finally mention public perception, so what does the public think or what does the internet think about Libre Office as a PDF editor? I'll start with the functional part, which is perhaps the most educational, so let's talk about cases in which a typical office suite user or typical user would want to edit a PDF document. Of course this is my opinion, perception, experience, and I've not conducted like a proper survey or anything like that, but I think you'll probably agree with me that if these, and I have like four or five cases, there might be another one that you might mention or you might claim that one of them is not as significant, but here is the way I see it, so perhaps the most common or very common use case is getting a form in the PDF format, so some organization could be the government, could be the TDF, could be a company, has a procedure in place which requires us filling a form and the form is not available interactively, it's available statically as a rendered PDF document, and the document is done, so it doesn't have form controls which the PDF format supports, it's just a rendered, like a rendered piece of paper or the file equivalent of a piece of paper and maybe it's even a physical form that somebody scanned, although then you might want to extract the image but never mind that, so that's the PDF that we got and it's very, oh missing font, yeah, so the font here is supposed to be different, anyway, so we've gotten this file, we need to submit the form, so we need to edit the PDF and of course if it's a smart PDF with form controls then we wouldn't use an office suite, we'd just use a PDF viewer, so what kind of editing would we do in this case, we would need to add text within boxes or on lines, we might need to add like individual digits when you want to fill out your ID number or phone number, we might need to insert a signature or another image from somewhere, we might need to be able to check a box or mark it with an X or fill it with black or some kind of color, we may want to strike out some text, we may want to circle some texts or maybe we might have a free form area in which you want to insert all sorts of contents, so that's one use case and I claim that it's quite likely for a user to expect to do this kind of work in LibreOffice and again now we're in the part of the presentation where it's my opinion, so if you disagree, you're of course entitled too. A second use case is when we want to do markup or add commentary on the PDF, so somebody sent us a file, somebody sent me their slides for this conference and I want to provide all sorts of comments but I don't want to edit their presentation, so I want to add some text, I want to mark certain areas, there is some overlap with the previous use case. Doing this is also, this is not extremely common but it also happens occasionally and it's less clear, we want to use a proper editor for this because the PDF specific tools whether it's commercial like Acrobat or even PDF viewers or like viewers plus often have some features for doing annotation, so it's not clear that people would turn to something like an office suite for doing for this use case. Another use case is that you have a document that is supposed to be the final form but you notice that you need to make some changes to it, it's your document or a document of say a colleague of yours but maybe there's a typo in it or a phrase that's missing or the graphics is misplaced or misaligned or something is missing and you can't use the original document, so you can't take the original document, make the change, reproduce the PDF, maybe you don't have access to it or you don't have access to some of the fonts it uses or other artifacts so you have no choice but to take the PDF and make an edit to that itself. This is another very common case of PDF editing and this is something we might expect to want to do in LibreOffice, if the import filter were good enough then making this sort of changes, possibly we would consider an office suite or something like draw a writer for doing. And another use case is when you want to combine pages, so we have maybe some existing PDFs or we have content from some of the LibreOffice modules or other applications and maybe we have some images and you want to combine all these things as different pages within a single PDF, maybe you want to concatenate them and maybe you want to cut out some of the pages and include other pages or you want to do some rearrangement and when does this happen? So if you're writing a letter and you want to add attachments or you've worked on some complex document in several applications, maybe you have a page in calc and a page in writer and an image that you worked on somewhere and maybe you it's the form filling case but you actually don't need all the pages so you want to drop some of the pages etc. And this is another use case that's extremely common and here it's not clear to me whether an office suite is where we would want to do this because this is less about the actual editing of the content and more about the arrangement and again there are like custom apps or utilities which are better tailored to do this but if LibreOffice were really good in importing content then maybe it would still make sense so not entirely clear and the final use case is when okay so I'm going to skip one of these because we're short on time and the final use case and the least relevant for us is when you want to make precision alterations so you want to make changes to the specific structure represented in a PDF and even though you're changing things the rest of the contact must be maintained pristinely and precisely and this is if you're doing some kind of professional type setting then you might need to be able to do this maybe you want to do some programmatic generation of documents or other similar cases and this is a niche use case which is really not fitting the way an office suite or specifically LibreOffice works with documents because the kind of structure like the native structure of the PDF is just not something that we work with so we definitely would not want to work with LibreOffice on something like that so functionally we have some use cases that are more relevant and some use cases that are less relevant and this is independently of how well we can import PDFs so that was the functional part and now for the formal part then so if we look at the dictionary and we look for the definition of an editor then here are a few definitions of what an editor is and if I combine these three definitions which you really don't have to memorize there are the parts of the definition that are important so it needs to be computer program that works on data and it needs to be able to create or change the data or correct the data or read what's stored and make changes to that and so technically if we take these parts of the definition then yeah we are a computer program we can create PDFs we can open PDFs although not perfectly and we can make changes or corrections but not really to the original PDF but to something that's not the PDF it's a it's a it's the result of a somewhat destructive process and plus we have so many issues and the things are introduced by the the import filters that it's it's hard to to say we really can probably make these changes so actually my argument for meeting the formal definition is not such a strong argument for for Libre Office as a PDF editor so I regretfully have to concede that that part of the argument or the discussion but now now is the more the more interesting part so public perception so first let's do let's search on YouTube I searched for that and I did this a few days ago as I was preparing the presentation I searched for how to edit a PDF and the top result is how to edit a PDF free by this guy and here is the like the image that you get this from 2020 so we've approved a bit maybe and here's what he suggests first he suggests Microsoft Word because you supposedly have already paid for it or gotten it somehow so you can use that then he suggests this web application which is it's mixed free and like it's a freemium kind of arrangement but there are some free features there and the third opportunity is Libre Office draw and these are his three suggestions so that's like the top result and the by far the most the most popular now what happens if we ask chat gpt and by the way you can ask chat gpt anonymously if you follow the link that's in my slides how do I edit a PDF so you get a bunch of texts it's you know very conversational and it tells us the few methods you can consider to edit PDFs and these are a few applications some of these are online and we're not on here at all so but google docs is and we're not that that bad compared to google docs and I don't know about preview so I asked it another question because that's all commercial software so how to edit a PDF with FOS and now it said this to add the PDF with FOS you can follow these steps install an editor and then use the editor so which editors does it just suggest we're number one so Microsoft somehow likes us I'm a pdfsem inkscape and scribbus and we won't go into comparison of all of these but this but we're the like the top FOS suggestion from from chat gpt and and then let's also do like a plain web search on how to edit a PDF file and we'll use unfortunately I'm using google because it's the most popular but you should really not use google for anything at all because they spy on you so let's not use google but most people do that so what does what does google suggest so google suggests several things Microsoft Word and and some online apps and LibreOff is draw so it's it's the main apps it suggests are office weeks our main competitor and us um uh so I know we're a bit short on time but I started late so I'm going to steal some of the some of the time from the next talk so you would you thought that I might now put these perspective together and and reach a conclusion right so I'm not going to do that at all um because think of what we've seen here LibreOffice is perceived as one of the top if not the top PDF editor that's free and open source software so what which means that people find it and download it and use it for non-niche and more common PDF editing scenarios and and that means that even though we've never made the decision for this to be the case we sort of have an an extra variant of a module so and especially in in in draw so it can be either impressed for presentations draw for drawings or the PDF editor module which is draw for drawings and effectively we have that and and it doesn't really matter whether LibreOffice is a PDF editor or not what matters is that at least in terms of FOSS or free software it is the PDF editor and that's that's a that's a public fact but what why does this matter it matters because um uh uh think about some of the challenges that we have when we're promoting LibreOffice so we need to make people aware of of of the suite of LibreOffice um we need to give people reasons to prefer LibreOffice to Microsoft Office we need to give people reasons or motivations to install to download and install LibreOffice even if they haven't necessarily chosen Microsoft Office over us and we also want to to build a good technical reputation for our office suite and the fact is that that all of these are massively helped by those PDF editing use cases because millions of people um are may notice and probably are noticing LibreOffice not as an office suite but as a way to edit PDFs even if they don't care at all about switching from Microsoft Office or from anything else and um uh and that's a that's a consideration when choosing which office suite to use because you have at least on in one of the features if we could be better than Microsoft Office then then why not another um uh point in favor of Libre and uh and then also if you've already installed this thing because you wanted to work on a PDF you wanted to edit a PDF then maybe you might just you know try it for other documents and it's since it's already on your system and finally if you know if you've been impressed with how we're handling PDFs and it's such a nice such a nice piece of software maybe it's it's good overall and but of course and and I'll close with this that we're not even though that's a potential boon for us we're not really there yet because um uh um because there isn't that much awareness um that that we we're promoting of of LibreOffice as a PDF editor we're not the top contender if you remove the the the free software qualification um uh and Microsoft Office opens PDFs with a similar or better quality to us so that's embarrassing let let's not be in this situation we're not encouraging people to download LibreOffice as an editor of PDFs and finally the impression that people might get is that I'm I'm so annoyed by so these PDF import bugs that I'm seeing when I try to use um uh draw as the PDF editor that I doubt whether the rest of LibreOffice is really all that good so the the boons are also like detriments if we don't don't um handle this or or invest effort here and so with not very significant but not terribly extensive coding effort we can convert all of these detriments to the benefits from the previous slide and with this I will end my presentation and thank you very much


To coincide with the release of the movie Top Gun Maverick in 2022, Flight Simulator 2020's developers Asobo added some free DLC to the simulator that was themed around the Tom Cruise blockbuster. The star of the DLC was however not Pete Maverick Mitchell but the fictional experimental spy plane that Tom Cruise's character flies at the start of the film. The aircraft is called the SR72 Dark Star and although its performance statistics are frankly insane it is generally accepted these days that the aircraft or indeed something not unlike it probably exists in a Lockheed Martin experimental facility somewhere if in fact it's not already in service in the deepest blackest parts of the American military. Utilizing a combination of conventional after burning jet engines at lower speeds and very unconventional scram jets at higher speeds and altitudes the plane is capable of reaching speeds bordering on Mach 10 at 120,000 feet. For its introduction into Flight Simulator 2020 the plane has been beautifully modelled both in appearance and behaviour. Indeed it was during the making of this video that we realised that the game even goes as far as to simulate the sonic booms generated around the Dark Star's flight path as it moves. Whilst things tend to happen a lot quicker in the Dark Star's cockpit for obvious reasons inside the cockpit is actually quite serene once you get used to it. But what does such extreme performance in an aircraft look and sound like to the outside observer? Once airborne the plane accelerates very quickly particularly once the afterburners are ignited and it's at these speeds that you start to get your first impressions of what is to come. This is what Mach 1 looks like at around 20,000 feet as the plane passes. Were you at ground level? This is what you'd hear. Interestingly our flights during the making of this video showed that the speed of sound appears to have been modelled as well. The sound of the boom at ground level taking longer to reach the observer once the plane had passed by. Once the plane accelerates past Mach 3 using conventional engines the scramjets can be ignited and as they take over and begin to accelerate the plane through Mach 6 and Mach 7 as it climbs higher and higher the exterior of the Dark Star can be seen glowing red hot on its leading edges as friction with the Earth's thinning atmosphere heats the outside. It's at around 120,000 feet that the SR72 is in the sweet spot for its maximum performance and it's able to achieve truly hypersonic speeds. And to a stationary observer this is what the Dark Star passing at Mach 9.5 looks and sounds like. The Dark Star can't do these kinds of extraordinary speeds at lower altitude but if it could this is what the pilot would be seeing out of the cockpit at ground level. Have you flown the flight simulator SR72 Dark Star yet? What speeds were you able to achieve and what was the highest altitude that you took the aircraft to? Let us know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video be sure to like and subscribe to make sure you see all our content and if you'd like to help support our work here at the Burpit you can also become a patron and gain access to exclusive perks, content and community events just like the wonderful folks you see listed on screen right now.