ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome back to our imaginative, exotic island of Oahu, Hawaii here, and to the show that is relentlessly looking into how we can create a built environment that's as comprehensively and substantially beautiful as our nature undoubtedly is. And this time, I still have our tropical tourism expert, Suzanne, on the island, so I was asking her of her choice, and she said, please bring me back to about 20 years ago. And that is to a place that, if you can get the first picture, that is that place where she was at the turn of the millennium. And we want to go back even more in time and go to the next picture. And I want to use that occasion to introduce our guest today, which is Rick Prahla. And I like to pronounce you Prahla, the more the German way, you know, that you have in your ancestry. And yeah, thank you, Rick, for being here. And I always wanted to bring you on a show, but you're resisted for a while. I wanted to bring you on in your different capacities you are as an architect by training, who has worked as an architect in numerous capacities, but also someone who's working for the government right now and tries to make sure that we stay an inclusive island here. And but today we bring you in, and we say this explicitly, not in any of these capacities, but we bring you in as Rick, who is a native of Hawaii. Thank you. And so welcome. And before you were a native, we're looking at something that DeSoto has graciously given us here, because when he's not in the show, he has to charge for the picture. So we're thanking for this and the next picture, which has given to us for free. And if we go back, please, to this picture you hear, what are we looking at, Rick? Well, this is Kuapa Pond before large-scale development. And you can see that strip of land by the ocean is a start of a portlock road. And there were fee-simple houses along that. And then the road that comes across the bottom of the screen is what is now Lululu Home Road. And so, other than the Lululu Old Folks Home, which I think is the big house in that picture, most of that was Leasehold land owned by Kamehameha Schools' Bishop of State. So this is what it was prior to the early 60s and development by Kaiser Development. And even before that, it was basically one of the largest native Hawaiian fish ponds, right, on the island. I believe so. Again, I only go back to Hawaii in 1962, so when I arrived, the development was getting underway. Yeah. And next picture is the one who developed. So this is Henry J. Kaiser, and he's quite a remarkable guy. For those who don't know, he built Liberty Ships during World War II and did a phenomenal job with that, and he was also earlier than that part of a consortium of contractors who built Hoover Dam. And Mr. Kaiser also created the Kaiser Medical System, and he did that for his workers on his various large construction projects. And we were running two shows. This is the right row of pictures here. The top two ones with the soda was called Kaiser's Exotic Hawaii, which he built the Kaiser Dome, and these kind of funky cars that never really went into production. And then we did another show that we called Kaiser's More Mainstream Hawaii, which was his Kaiser Cars for the people and also the Hawaiian Village. But we saved his probably largest project that he did for today's show, and that is your neighborhood. And the next picture is a picture that I wanted to get from the Sony, said, well, that one I couldn't give you for free. So I stole it from TV because I saw a documentary here, and as you can see, it's still courtesy of British Museum. And what are we looking at here? Well, Kaiser, when he started Hawaii Kai, one of his goals was to try and build with local materials. And so he came to Hawaii, he got involved with the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel, and then he started developing Hawaii Kai. And actually, I think this is in the triangle area of Portlock, because that was one of the first communities in Hawaii Kai that was open. And he did a lot of the early homes, were simply made with concrete block, some interior, either stud walls or single wall. And he really had sort of, you know, the houses looked like they belonged in Hawaii. And today we have a very special opportunity to go and look at one of these closer. And next picture, explain us what we see. Well, this is actually my house. My wife and I bought a terrace lanai town home. We bought in 1985, but this building was actually built in 1964. And along Kauai High Street, which is actually the very first street in Hawaii Kai coming from town, Kaiser built a series of condo projects. I think a lot of realtors know them as the Hawaii Kai condo projects. And the two-story units that were split level were called terrace lanais. And the one-story units that were generally duplexes, but I think the largest building has either four or six units strung together, those were called garden lanais. And so in this picture, the trellis work is alongside the garage. And so, you know, we do have a garage sticking straight out in front, emptying straight into the street. When you drive by, it's a series of either carports or garage doors that you look at. But you walk along that and into the entry. And so the second picture is from the lower level, which is the living room, looking up the stairs to a mid-level landing, which is the front door. So let's go down into that living room and check that out. Next picture, please. So this is our living room. And we are on the canals in the Waikai Marina. These units are 22 feet wide with concrete block party walls. And the back of the house is, in our case, is strictly a wall of glass with two sliding glass doors that open up. There are 4x12 beams that span from party wall to party wall and 4x8 cross members. And we actually have actual two-inch thick tongue and groove decking that forms the second floor. And the structure is expressed on the interior. And if anybody is familiar with the work of developer Joe Eichler, this is very reminiscent of that. Very much. Very much. It's just down to the bones, right? And you pointed out previously, but we want to be more explicit that Kaiser could have easily, he was such a rich industrialist, he could have just basically retired somewhere at Kahala. But he was up for actually making something for the people and making what we call affordable housing to do. Right. Absolutely. I think his vision for Waikai was a place for all income groups of Hawaii to live. And so from the beginning, there was a mix of multi-family and single-family. I do think that the triangle area, which is the area clustered around Cocoa Head Elementary School. And I think that that was the first formal Hawaii-Kai neighborhood that was developed. And along with that came Hawaii-Kai Drive and Kauai High Street, where I live. And those areas had much more modest units that were built. For instance, our townhouse, we don't have a master bathroom. There's three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. And downstairs, out of the picture, is a galley kitchen. And we have a downstairs den with a half-bath and powder room. And we raised two children there, and we all survived without killing each other. So it was plenty of space. And I took these pictures when you generously and graciously had us over, the emerging generation for a fear trip. And this is you out there and them hanging out. And the next picture is sort of the, introduces the next room, which is actually the outdoor, the garden, Ryan. Right. And what's nice about these units are is that we have sort of everything a single family dwelling has, except that I am attached and I am an end unit. So as you look at that picture on the right side is a unit that is the mirror image of ours. But we have a yard that then goes out to the canal. And one of the reasons we bought this unit was when we moved in, my children were four and five years old. And we had a beagle that we had had since we got married. And so this was the perfect place to have a dog, kids. We had a rabbit for years that roamed around the backyard. And we've just gradually worked on the landscaping. And what's great is the house just flows into the lanai, into the garden. And so there's no curtains in the living room. So you're just, when you're downstairs, you're part of this whole thing. Yeah, awesome. House is a garden, garden is a house. And the next picture shows you at the edge of the property and looking into the canal because Kaiser was not just doing what they're doing out west and Ewa, which is pretty much like Phoenix, Arizona, or likewise. But he took advantage of the natural opportunity of having been fish ponds and obviously was sort of more domesticizing that and doing dredging and work. But he wanted to make sure that everyone had a waterfront property, right? Right. And most of the early development along the waterfront was, in fact, multifamily. Or the houses, as you look out that picture, we're actually looking at a weenie way, which is a little U-shaped island of single-family homes that were some of the original houses built in Hawaii. Now this picture is rather artfully taken because, in reality, we look straight across the canal at other townhomes, Conley Marina. And we see a wall of glass windows. And one of our neighbors 20 years ago got one of the first big-screen TVs, and literally you could sit on our watch TV across the canal. Well I admit the photographer being me is romantically exotic, so I admit that. The next picture is then us looking back from the water.  So you've been doing some upkeeping, but basically always pretty much went back to the original or improved it, right? Right. I've tried to keep that original structure going. And I really like sort of that trellis work. Our neighbor's unit had a major fire, and we sustained relatively minor damage. But we had to rebuild the trellis over the back lanai. And originally it had been one by twos with the plexiglass corrugated roofing material. And I just upsized it to two by two. But it's just a nice effect. And it really gives some nice screening. And if you look at the lanai floor on the left hand side, there's a vertical trellis that divides us from the in-yard. And again, it's just a very pleasant, tropical kind of feeling. It is. It is. And you know, it's just a bare painted concrete. Yeah. I mean, it's nothing fancy, but it works. And it's a fairly dry area as well. It's not super wet like in Manoa. It's probably not as dry as out in the Everplains, but still. And through the architecture, we have to say this is majorly easy breezy, naturally ventilated. It is. And the other great thing about these units are that the party wall extends out four feet beyond the back and front wall. And what that does is it really helps capture breeze and funnel them into the houses. And also you get privacy. So in the front and the back, the bedroom level, you know, you're not right next to your neighbor's window.  And it really helps with noise transmission. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Very, very tranquil, very sort of contemplating atmosphere. But you were also nice to take us on a little tour, so you want to do that here. Now go to the next picture and you took us here and gave us an overview. This is pretty much where Suzanne was standing as well way back. You see that high rise in the left corner, which is close to where you are. Right. The high rise is Mount Terrace and it has sort of an orange-red roof. And so when our children were growing up, we always would point out the high rise and tell them, look, you live by that high rise, if you ever anything ever happens and you don't know how to get home, you can tell people to go for the high rise. Absolutely. So what I do want to say here, though, is that the first time I went to Hawaii was about 1963 or so. And we lived at Hickam at the time and we were on our way to Bellows. And my mom's car was in the shop, so we were in my dad's old 52 Plymouth and it wouldn't go over the poly. So we went around the island and it was the first time I came out to the east side. And what absolutely astounded me is that, you know, you take this and this is pre-freeway. So you pretty much got there from Hickam by going on Nimitz Highway, crossing over to Cam Highway. All of that is obliterated by the airport viaduct now and through town on King Street to Wailai Avenue to Kalanian Only Highway and out to Waikai. And once you passed Kulio O, this big valley and pond system opened up. And Kaiser's house was on the slope of Cocoa Head right on the water. And my memory is that it was painted pink and apparently his wife was not quite as enamored with Hawaii as he was. And so he started painting everything pink. And at the time we did this, they were building the Waikai Drive Bridge. And so here were these barges, cranes, bulldozers. All of that equipment was painted pink.  Here's all this construction going on and all these guys working in pink equipment. And for years afterwards, there would be these abandoned construction equipment all over Waikai with this rusting pink paint. So that's my first engagement with Waikai. So this is the lookout. If you come down from Huala Bay, this is the lookout over Waikai. The big ridge going up is Mariners Ridge. And you get some glimpses of Marina, but it's really quite a scenic area. Now it is. Very nice. So let's go on the next picture. The next couple of pictures were just me basically pretty much out of the passenger side window of your car. If we can get the next picture like here. The next one's where you just showed me some of the still kept original homes. So this house is actually in sort of the triangle area backing up to Kalanianole Highway. And again, this is the vintage of my townhouse. And this is one of the original concrete block homes, open beam ceiling, very simple. And the one thing that I've always heard is that everybody made money in Waikai except for Henry J. Kaiser. And so one of the things I read was that when they started building the houses, particularly along Waikai Drive, somebody decided that they should sell for $28,000. And somebody figured, well, somebody had done the math. And it turns out they were taking a loss on every house that they sold. But again, it's a little about 1,200 square foot rectangle. Just a very nice tropical home. And the concrete block does a good job of kind of some heat shielding because it delays transmission. So that's one of the original Hawai'i homes. And so is the next one. I subtitled that along the same lines I called it. Middle, classy, they're all very eichlery, as you say. And so this is up near the Cocoa Head District Park. And this is, I think, one of the single wall houses. So Kaiser started development. I think the first closings occurred in about 1962. And those were houses in the triangle area. And then the areas alongside Lululu Home Road were developed. And so from the sort of mid-60s to late-60s, there were probably a couple thousand single wall homes constructed. And again, there's sort of a mix of Asian influence and very honest structure.  Next picture, another one of these here, kept original, exposed beams, eichler. Right. And I think this may be in Hawai'i, Hioni Valley, somewhere. And again, it's just, it's a nice effect. Yeah, yeah. And so next picture as well, concrete block, here's stack bond. We discussed quite a bit about if it makes sense to have the beam stick out because you had some rotted in your way and I always put in a word for them and say, but it looks so nice. And then you got this sort of flashing. So there's little things here and there. My garage had this detail where the beam actually stuck out further in the roof. Well, the problem is, of course, it creates a pocket that collects water and it rots. And when I did some work, I had to take off the beam ends because they had been rotted. This is actually cocoa aisle, which is quite a nice townhouse development. And those units all have private courtyard. So that gate that you're looking at, that actually opens into a private courtyard off the front of the unit. Very nice. And do some, next picture, so they don't call us totally romantic here, which I am, I admit. There are some things in Hawai'i, Kai, they're probably not as Kai's are had imagined, Ryan. Well, commercial infrastructure right here. So you have to remember that Hawai'i Kai was sort of envisioned in the late 50s and 60s. So I don't think everybody would agree that it was the best way to do it. One of our problems is that we have multiple shopping areas. So there's no sort of Hawai'i Kai town center, even though I think that's one of the shopping centers. It's called that. But you sort of can't hit all three by walking. You get in your car and go. This area where Costco is located and there's a big storage facility, I think this was always slated to be commercial development, but it just didn't happen. And so I think that, I think this was probably driven by Kamehameha schools at the time was probably the landowner. But this all makes sense. But at some point in time, that waterfront location may have a better use than something else. Let's hope so. In the next picture, we see a Costco truck here delivering, but we see something next to it that almost looks like the cargo box. It is. And let's jump to the next picture already and then please explain what that is. Well, this is a newer rental tower. The property is the corner of Hawai'i Kai Drive, and I'm not sure what that cross-street is. Or something. And they tried to develop the site for years. There were multiple different development plans. And so they finally went ahead and built this like 10-story tower. And there'll be rental units, but at probably at the end of the 30-year affordability period, they may possibly get converted to condos or something. My only problem with this building is that it's way out of context with everything around it. So you can see just to the right of the tall building, there are these three-story townhouse type buildings, and these buildings just march right up to them. So that's sort of unfortunate. And also, it's a double-loaded corridor. So you're pretty dependent on air conditioning to keep the temperature under control. I'm missing what your home features is, as we call it, exotic and tropical and easy-greasy. But then the question is, can you bring, you can't sprawl anymore because the valley is pretty much taken over by a single family, right? So the challenge is, how do you basically can keep that sort of quality of living and the development that's higher? And we agree on that. That's not the way. And where's the lanai? There's no lanai. There's basically pretty much mainland curtain wall, you know, and you live pretty inside indoors, and we think this is just not along the lines of Kaiser's imaginative way. And so we want to close every show with an optimistic look out and views. On the next picture, something I want to contribute that basically traces back to something that you have told me when you were driving me through the neighborhood actually before, the year before we did it with the students. We also drove by the few high-rises there are. There's the one next to you, but there is this sort of little cluster of other ones. And you said, this is actually the best way to put high-rises is actually tuck them right at the foothills of the mountains, where they can cause the least harm and they almost could blend in as being part of the mountain, and you're not staring at them all the time, right? Right. No, this series of high-rises, they're all different developers, and they're along Huai Kai Drive and then Hioni Street, and they are single loaded corridors, so they all have natural ventilation, although one of, at least one of the buildings is centrally air conditioned, but they are, you know, they're up against the hillside. They're not blocking anybody else's view, and they pretty much have guaranteed views in that they're overlooking single family-zoned areas. And you, when we're doing professional talk, and me as a professor, and you with your agency, I always bound self one of my visions, which is primitiva and buggy without one. And so I'm here pitching it again. It could be nestled in the foothills of Huai Kai as, again, we have the housing crisis. You deal with that every day in your business, and I'm trying to address that in school. So just all we're trying to say is this project or something else, but try to understand sort of the imagination that Kaiser had that, as you said, was doing local materials, was doing affordable, was doing exotic, was doing easy breezy. That, I think, is the genetic code of Huai Kai that you should sort of continue as, you know, challenging as it is, as we see, because some investors and, you know, whoever is engaged have different sort of ambitions. Well, he started that way, and I still remember in about 68, the grant companies came in and built Mariners Cove, and we all went bananas because, you know, fancy models that one of the models had a pool with a table anchored in it and stools so that you could sit in the water and eat lunch, and it was quite a different thing from sort of what we started with. But, you know, Kaiser development only did a certain number of projects, and they ended up then selling off parcels for other developers to build. And the next picture is sort of along the same lines of the genetic code. This is one of these sort of island communities down there. Right. Well, this is the peninsula which ultimately Stanford Car developed and did a great mix of their group of single-family houses. There were the carriageways, which are two-story, long, thin, zero lot line. Those are along the interior, and then the rest of the exterior were cottages and townhouses. Again, a mix of styles, a mix of sizes, just again, a community that has a broad spectrum of types of units, and also they have the four-story product built on a concrete parking podium. And again, we're, as the little suggestion, it's the top row. We did a previous show with Peter Shi, who has done this building in Hawaii at the very top left, and he built it with tilled-up concrete panels. He also developed this, which he called the double-eye CMU, which is pretty much epoxy. So this is an island, you know, innovation that sort of, again, could be, and David Rockwood and I were very impressed by your townhouse, and we developed something that we call Volcrete Valley, and there's a very old show about that, where we do zero lot line construction. We use autoclave aerated concrete. So we're thinking, these could be all things that go beyond what the conventional developer does, a Stanford car, and the other ones, which is pretty much conventional construction, mostly stick frame, and, you know, it is in the water.  So why not sort of reconnecting again to the genetic code? And along the same lines, the next picture is something I was tempted to show before, but then I put it in here, because that's also one we drove by, and he said, Martin, that would be interesting for you. Look at that. Right. This is, there's a small street with, you know, maybe there's 20 or 30 houses.   Yeah. Well, it looks like Hawaii. Absolutely. And so the phasing out picture is the next one, because as if I would have known when we were developing with DHHL and the BIA and our school way back, the new Hawaiian home for DHHL, we were going along the same lines, you know, you see the similarities almost striking as if I would have been stealing, you know, but I always tell my emerging generation, there is no stealing in architecture. It's just long term borrowing. Right. So it's the same kind of notion that we developed that with great specific Rotary Mountain Precast as prefabricated and, and so all these things. So we're saying to the next generations of developers of architects, look at the genetic codes, go back to the original, and then that might inspire you, you know, what you want to do. So yeah, absolutely. And hopefully somebody can figure out how, you know, it's easy to have this very ecological residence when you're sitting on an acre of land, you can open your doors for breezes, etc. And hopefully there's sort of a midpoint where we can achieve density. Yeah. But at the same time, we can take advantage of this wonderful climate. Absolutely. Perfect closing. No, thank you, Rick, so much for having been with us and for the insight into your native hood. And we're probably going to do a couple of follow up shows. We actually have a doko Momo talk story planned about Hawaii Kai, and I'm probably inspired by you are probably going to do one with one with the Soto that we call Henry's Hawaii home, which will be his own home, which is a different standard. And but it's also worth looking at quite different from where it's quite. Exactly. So with that, keep tuned in next week to Soto and I again, we're going to talk about celebratory circulations, which is about how you get up in a building here. And there's some interesting history and how do we deal with this in the future. And so I hope you'll be with us for that again. And until that, please stay as imaginary tropical as Rick and Henry. Bye bye.


Remember Jack Bogle you get what you don't pay for it's true. So I want to convince you of two things get real and Arithmetic still works Now forget real which is better earning 10% when inflation is 12% or Earning 3% when inflation is 2% Which do you think makes people happier? We like to see the balance go up even if the spending power is going down so stocks This is all speculative, but stocks may have a real inflation adjusted return of let's say 5% annually high quality bonds Maybe 1% So that means a 50-50 portfolio might in the long run beat inflation by 3% So how much of it do you want to give away? Now I ran something by Mike Piper on a spreadsheet last night But I should have run this by 3-2 does equal 1 right? Yeah, Mike Mike agrees. He's nodding So the most brilliant paper you'll ever read is three pages and incredibly simple By Nobel laureate William Sharp arithmetic of active management and what it says is That if the stock market let's just to find it as the US stock market earns 10% The average dollar invested is going to earn 10% Lest the fees and by the way, that's over any period of time year to date 20 years etc. And Rick is right over the long period of time The total stock funds do better and better and better So the doctor analogy the first time I met Gus Souter who was the chief investment officer of Vanguard and was Launched the Vanguard total stock index fund he gave me this analogy if you needed heart surgery Would you find the cheapest heart surgeon or the best? What's wrong with this analogy and by the way, he gave me this analogy is what other active managers were using My doctor wouldn't have to make somebody else die in order to make me live The stock market is a zero-sum game. We do not live in Lake Wobe gone We're 90% of us are above average So how much do you want to give up between fees? The expense ratio hidden fees bid ask market impact hedging etc advisor fees my hourly rate is a drag on Returns emotions Taxes and remember tax or chart taxes are charged on nominal basis not inflation based So I showed you this slide earlier and again, it's incredibly important the cost of emotions Those are very very large 1.7% so if you think about it if a 50-50 portfolio Might earn 3% above inflation If we pay 1% in fees to the fund managers our Financial planner investment advisor, etc. We give up another 1.7% in emotions and the government taxes us that that tax number is much lower because the active fund is going to have lower returns and Be a little bit more tax-efficient from that standpoint, which is not a good thing So, you know, maybe the average investor loses seven percent of his point seven percent of a spending power This is illustrative So the Vanguard total stock index fund Christine showed this slide boy. I'm really glad that we both came out with 4052 holdings whoo an Expense ratio of 0.03% plus a vanguard Returns all the profits from securities lending So the net cost is even less than that the total capital gain distributions of the last 10 years is Zero and by the way, a lot of active fund managed a lot of active fund holders are going to get 1099s this year When their value has gone down because they've sold stocks within the portfolio So mathematically the average dollar invested in us stocks over any period of time must be higher for Vanguard total stock then active funds, right? This next slide from a research company. I shouldn't have used their name It was very very stressful to me because what it shows is that the Vanguard total stock index fund Underperformed its peers by 1.7% 73% year-to-date of mutual funds bested the total stock index fund I Can't tell you how stressful that was for me and how much research I spent to get to the bottom of it and How I got to the bottom of it is what Rick showed is that the S&P 500 index fund year-to-date beat most of its peers And then there's another fund out there called the extended market index fund Which are every company based in the United States. That's not in the S&P 500 and both of those beat their peers so how could the sum of the two beat their peers and John Wreckenthaler helped me get to the bottom of this Morningstar has changed the way it looks at the total market. It used to be a third growth a third value and a third core now growth is much Larger so it doesn't look I argue the market is the market. It's neither growth nor value if you own everything you own everything so John Wreckenthaler is just absolutely brilliant and you really know Somebody who's good when you disagree with them and they get to the bottom of things So as he puts it owning a low-cost market cap weighted index fund is both psychologically and Mathematically superior so we hate to lose money. I've lost money this year But I know that I've lost less money in the US market than most other people So the most important sentence I've ever written on investing is minimize expenses and emotions maximize diversification and Discipline it's that Simple so conclusion you can have a bad low-cost portfolio, but you can't have a good high-cost Portfolio I could have had everything in a low-cost Russian index fund and that wouldn't have worked out all that well Not very diversified. So John Bogle gave us access to low-cost and high diversification It's up to us to manage discipline and emotions Smart beta was the rage about 10 years ago. Let's put everything in value equal weighted Small-cap momentum and that's active investing.


There are several reasons why it is seriously a phenomenal process. Number one, it made it so that critters were guaranteed to never run out of food. They could make their own. I also often thought, oh my gosh, I wish that I could have like chloroplasts, tattooed all over me, but real live ones, tattooed all over me. And then I could just sit in the sunshine and have lunch and not ever have to eat anything ever again. Like that would be so amazing. A grow light. I could just sit next to a light and I would have all the food I ever needed, ever. Oh, I shouldn't even think about it, especially right now. So if you knew that you had all the food that you needed ever, that's a very good thing. Second, photosynthesis is the process that resulted in our oxygenated atmosphere. If it wasn't for photosynthesis, there would be no oxygen in our atmosphere. And without oxygen, we would not exist. So that is game changing in and of itself. It also somehow, I don't know all the chemical details of this, but it facilitated the creation of the ozone layer. So the process of photosynthesis produced the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation, which is also very handy. When photosynthesis began, there was just like this explosion of biodiversity. As critters, like it was like a jackpot. As critters went, dude, I can take advantage of this kind of environment. This oxygen that's available to me, now not only is that critter making its own food, but it's making its own food. I can eat it, and it's also like farting out a gas that lets me metabolize the sugar in that thing that I just ate. I mean, it's phenomenal.  We're going to end this lecture with a walkthrough of an animation that's very similar to the one that I did for cellular respiration, and we're going to call it good. Holy energy. That was fun, huh?


The main focus for today is the bullet lipsticks that Fenty just came out with, but also on my Sephora order, I tacked on one of the new Tom Ford cream formulations. I will have that in the timestamps as well if you're interested or you can skip through that if you're not interested, but it is currently what is on my eyes and I am digging the luck. We're going to get started strong with the lipsticks here. Very interesting launch. We all talk about it. You can buy these on Sephora or the Fenty website at the current moment. They'll probably come to Ulta eventually now that Fenty is going to be carried out Ulta, but the range is pretty good as I'm looking. I like the colors that are available are 10 shades. I have to say I definitely ordered the MVP, which is the blue red shade. They gave me a different color instead. I don't know. I'm a little salty about that, but anyways, available in 10 shades. They are $20 for the lipstick itself. The catch with this is though, is you have to buy the case and the case is $12. So this is what the $20 lipstick is going to look like, and then this extra case is $12. You do not need to buy a case for every lipstick that would be $32 in total, but if you want you should at least get one and then you can interchange all of the shades that you picked up. This is not Fenty's first bullet lipstick formula, however, do you guys remember these? These are like the slim bullet lipsticks. Really, really love these. Sad that they got rid of these. It's my old. I've had these for a while, but I love the formula of these. You do not have to buy a separate case. These are great, but again, I think they're definitely making it more lux though if you get it with the case. So we'll see. The formula here is supposed to be a creamy semi matte lipstick, any range of high pigment reds and neutrals for all skin tones that is made to be refillable. You choose a shade and then you add the case to the cart. Hydrating, long wearing and matte finish are the key points that they added. So like I said, I ordered this dang case. I'm going to show you how to put the lipsticks in and then I ordered the three shades of the refills. Let's see where everything is made, all of that. So the lipsticks are going to have a 12 month shelf life and they are made in the USA. And then the lipstick case out of curiosity made in China. When you order the lipstick, it's going to come in this tiny little box here. When you order the case, it's going to come in a bigger box here on the lipstick case and the lipstick. There's going to be instructions, which I just used the tutorial on Fenty's TikTok to learn how to do this because these instructions confused me and I did practice because I did this completely wrong. I thought I could do this without reading any instructions. So don't do that. So I'm going to first show you how to actually insert the lipstick and how it works. Let me pull it apart. It seems pretty easy to pull apart to interchange the lipsticks, which is nice. It's going to come out of the box straight like this and all you're going to do is tip it over and this is going to fall out. Don't push this in. Just let it fall out. The lipsticks themselves are going to come like this. Now don't do what I did and just stick it in. It got stuck, okay?  Okay, so this is what you should have and then you're going to take that bottom piece that fell out. You're going to literally press this in and it should look like the bottom of a lipstick without the top. And then I just want to show you if you twist the opposite direction, kind of comes off. So yeah, press it straight in. Take the main case and push it in like so and then to get the lipstick out, you twist the bottom and then you pull it out. It's not that hard. I was being very dramatic with that face I made, but you just pop it in and then to get your lipstick, you pull it out. It's quite chunky packaging. This is very, very large. It's definitely not going to fly open or anything, which is nice as it might in some of your purses, but yeah, that's how it works. Here's my two cents on this. It's a little extra. Honestly, if I didn't have a rude view channel, I certainly would not have bought this for $12. You can use the lipstick just like this. It definitely feels incomplete. It gets rid of that luxury experience really fast, but you don't need to have this if you're not interested. I'm honestly not really interested in packaging like this. I don't like the interchangeable. I just wanted to come in a nice package first thing out. I'd rather pay a little bit more than that. I just preferred this honestly, but whatever. Okay, let's get into the colors that I actually picked up. Oh, this is cool. What is nice though is you can still see the color. So the color is on the silver part right here. So you will still be able to see the color. So the first shade that I picked up was Post Queen. Post Queen is a neutral pink nude. It swatches super-duper smooth. I haven't put these on my lips yet, but they feel really, really nice, like a good cream lipstick. Then I picked up Scholar Sister, which is a rose nude. I'm like, I promise you it's swatching super smooth, but there you go. Those are those two together. I could have sworn I picked up the MVP instead of this one, but anyways, this is major magnate, and it's a cool-tilt nude. I'm not mad at this shade though. It is really pretty. So these are the three shades that I got. Let's put them on. To define my lips just a little bit, we're putting Supernatural by Pat McGrath underneath. This is gonna go good with all the colors for sure. And we'll start off with the lightest shade, Post Queen. They are super-duper smooth going on, very comfy. I love that. This is a really nice-feeling lipstick. It's not as soft as the Natasha Denona for reference, but it's up there. It feels really nice, and I see what they mean by like a soft matte. It looks a little matte, but there is a sheen. It's not a complete flat matte, and I much prefer this consistency for a lipstick anyways. It's just so much more comfortable. This shade, so pretty. Love that. Okay, let's try the next one. We're gonna do Scholar Sister, which is the rose. You can see quite pigmented too. This for me is like an ideal everyday rosy shade. I add some color to the face, but it's not too bright. It's still pretty neutral. Ooh, I like this. I love this formula. They're lucky. This formula is so good. Because I was not feeling the refillable aspect of it, but that shade is also really stunning. All right, last one, the deepest one. This is Major Magnate. Love these kinds of shades. Very grungy, perfect for my look today. I actually, I love all three of the shades that I picked up. If I could do it over, I would not pick up both Pose Queen and Scholar Sister because they're kind of very similar. I'd rather pick up probably just Scholar Sister and then add on the MVP for just a red lip, but love, love, love, love, love, love, love this formula. It doesn't feel like it's going to be the longest wearing lipstick in the world and that is fine because I would trade comfort for that and this does give comfort. So I am a big fan of these lipsticks. Very turned off though by the refillable aspect. It's just not my speed.  That's great, but it's extra trouble that I just, I don't want to deal with. I wouldn't have a problem, honestly, just carrying this little guy around, I don't care. But for $20 though, I would expect something a little nicer, but anyways, beautiful formula nonetheless. I like the colors, so far, so good. I'm going to wear this all day. I'm just gonna update you here. I wore this yesterday all day and then also I went out to dinner. These aren't super long wearing lipsticks. I mean, they're really, really comfortable. They don't go away within 20 minutes. They have a decent wear time, but if you eat or as the day goes on, you will need to put on a fresh layer. It's not a liquid lipstick or anything like that, but I think it has really great wear time considering the type of formulation. It's just a really solid, comfortable lipstick. Love it, but definitely throw it in your purse. That's not gonna last all day. But I like the colors that I got for sure. Am I gonna go back and buy more? No, I don't need more lipsticks, but I'm very, very happy with this range. So if you're in store, you see a color you like. I think you'll like the formula a lot. Now I'm gonna get into the rose topaz quad that I picked up from Tom Ford if you wanna see how I got this look. Curiosity killed the cat, as it always does. And I thought I would sneak this in with the Fenty lipsticks. I did also, when I placed my order, pick up the rose topaz quad from Tom Ford. It's a brand new formulation. I feel like he's redoing his line. There's a couple formulas that have come out recently and I just wanted to see. There were three that came out in this formulation, honestly. At least online, all three literally looked the same and there was no way I was gonna pay $89 times three to get all three when they looked the same. So I picked out the one that I thought I would like the best, rose topaz. And I just wanna play with this formulation because it's like a cream formulation. They're supposed to feel super-duper soft. Anyways, so 89 Zollas, it came in the velvet slip and then we have the quad, made in Italy. Same look, same look. Immediately when I saw this palette, let me show it to you. It's the same packaging, same applicators as normal. I saw this and I thought it was the most cool toned one and it had the glimmery shade so I thought this one would be the most exciting. When I saw it, it immediately reminded me of disco dust. So let me show you them side by side. They totally look similar, just staring at them. Here is the new rose topaz and then right here is the disco dust. Don't those look very, very similar? Okay, let me swatch rose topaz first. So these do have a very soft, creamy feeling to them. They don't feel as wet as a cream but they have a very velvety slip to them. It feels really nice and you can see there was no powder kickback. Oh, what is on my hand? Okay, so let's see. Very, very soft. These are swatching. They look super soft. And I like how the glittery shade does not feel like it's going to get hard pan like the normal Tom Ford formulas but this is the rose topaz. Really pretty, really soft. As you can tell by the look that I have on my eye, it's a soft palette. $89, I don't think a lot of you are gonna be pleased by that but let's swatch the old disco dust in case you have this. I don't really like disco dust. So I don't know why I decided to go with rose topaz but anyways, let me try and do side by sides. So this is the old disco dust and then this is rose topaz. It's less vibrant. This is definitely more neutral but they definitely remind me of each other but they aren't exactly the same. Okay, anyways, let's put it on our eye so you can see how these colors work. So I'm gonna start off with this peachy shade right here. I wish very, very much that this was a little deeper but I just wanna show you, there's no kickback really. We're going to place it right in the crease. It's just like one shade darker, not even one shade. It's like a quarter shade darker than my skin tone and a little bit more peachy so it does show up but I don't love this shade honestly. With a quad that's $89, each shade needs to hold its own. I really feel like this shade does not hold its own. Here I am bashing Tom Ford. I love the way that these feel but I'm regretting my choice of this. It all looked boring online. I didn't know what to pick. What is the problem? So I don't know if the other colors are gonna be prettier or if I just don't like the color stories but let's go into the shade next. Oh, see, I'm sorry, I'm forgetting to show you. See, no really kickback at all which I like. This is a relatively mess free palette. This black though, kind of incredible. I wanna show you how easily it blends itself. Look at that. Honestly, just completely seamless. If you struggle with blacks and blending, this palette is super easy to blend and then I'm gonna blend it out just a little bit and in towards the crease, see that? Zero effort at all. So for those of you who ask me all the time why do you keep buying Tom Ford? You don't like the palettes because they are so easy to use because when you get a good one, it's really great and they're so easy to use. It takes some weeding through to find one that I love but keep in mind I do this as a full-time job. I weed through them for you. I am so lucky to be in that situation but that's why I keep buying them. It's kind of my job. Anyways, that blended out just lovely. I love this shade. Okay, next up I'm using the glimmer topper here. I really like this formula as well. It does not feel like it's going to get hard pan and it's just very easy to apply all over the lid for a sophisticated yet glimmery eye like this. This is like the easiest smoky eye ever. It's pretty light but I like it. And lastly, we just have a shimmer here. How pretty is that? It still turned out like soft and elegant how Tom Ford turns out. So Tom Ford in general is not for everybody. They have a more soft formulation that's like this. It's a little bit more elegant. It's just a different style of makeup. Don't come in expecting major, major pigment. I don't know how I feel about this. I really like a couple of the shades. I just don't like the colors that were placed in here. I really love the formula. I love the glimmer shade. I love the dark shade, but the other two shades are kind of a waste to me. You're just paying too much. So I'm looking forward to seeing what other colors come out with this formula because I like this formula but I don't love the particular quad that I got. And I would like to see in stores the other two palettes to see if they're prettier or something. This look is absolutely gorgeous, but it's just $89. Anyways, let me finish the look. You guys, so here is the thing. I was talking smack about this palette a little bit. I was gonna tell you I don't like it. It's not worth it, but this always happens with Tom Ford for me. After I do the look, after I add the liner and the lashes and the whole shebang, suddenly I love the palette. It looks so elegant and pretty. What a fun smoky eye that I did. I took the darkest shade and blended out a little bit of the eyeliner from my waterline to give it a little bit more of a smoky effect. But now I really like this palette. Being smart though, is it worth $89? Not this color story. I do enjoy the formula, but it is a bit pricey, but I'm not mad at this palette anymore. I like it. I prefer a metal lust a lot better and the extreme badass collection for that formula. But this I really, really like it. It still gives that really soft and sophisticated look that luxury palettes give in this new formulation. I'm happy with it.  I am curious to see the other colors that you launch. Not curious enough to spend my money on them. The formula is not worth buying blindly, but if I see them in store, I might stop and swatch a little bit, but I love the look.  Final thoughts on everything. The palette is nice. It's up to you if you decide you need it or not. It's not groundbreaking, but if you like the typical Tom Ford Charlotte Tilbury kind of eye, I think you'll like this. And the lipstick formula, really soft, really beautiful. Not a fan of this, obviously, but the formula's good that I would buy this. But what I, I don't know. Again, you are gonna have to decide if it's worth it or not, but I'm giving a thumbs up to the formulation at least. It feels really, really comfortable on the lips. And there we have it. That is my review of those two new products. I hope you guys enjoyed this and you found it helpful. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask down below. And if you tried either of these products, please let me know your thoughts down below as well. I wanna hear what do you think of the cream formulation? These are called the eye color quad creams, by the way. I don't think I specified that. Did you try any of these? My crazy, let me know. And then also the lipstick stuff as well. What's your favorite color? All right, guys. Thank you so much for being subscribed to my channel and liking this video. And I will see you guys in the next one. Have a good one.


Throughout this pandemic, Britain's political editors haven't showered themselves in glory, whether that's Laura Kuhnsberg blaming the public for Tory failures or Beth Rigg be lavishing praise on Boris Johnson for following the science, a reluctance to learn the basics of epidemiology has left many correspondents little more than stenographers for those in power. However, one of their number did discover their critical capacities this weekend. You'll find out in a moment who it is. First, we start our journey with this photo. So this was put out by Downing Street of Johnson receiving a call from President Joe Biden. So you can see he's got his thumbs up. He's very happy because apparently he was the first European leader to get that call. Obviously, this government doesn't believe in playing hard to get. This is not like, oh, Joe, you've you've called me so nice to speak to you. I was a bit busy, but whatever this is saying, oh, my God, Joe, you've called us. Oh, I was so happy. The special relationship still exists. Anyway, the focus of this section is not going to be the relationship between Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, because this image was tweeted out, was tweeted by an account called Mike Gove, too, with the following text, laying cable, the excretion of lengths, lying cable. When the phone cord in the mirror is from a different picture after your 100 thousand pound taxpayer funded photographer has finished photoshopping your spontaneous chat with Joe Biden. Now, as you can see from that image, this tweet is implying that the angle of the phone cord in the reflection doesn't match up with the one that Johnson is holding. And this is now the basis of a conspiracy theory that this was a photoshopped picture. So the Downing Street sort of mopped this up. And because the mirror doesn't match the reality in front of it, something's gone horribly wrong here. Now, most people reading this would think that's obviously a joke, providing you understand how it works. When you put a camera close to a mirror, it depends what angle you're pointing at as as to where it looks like anything is in the mirror. But if you weren't certain, if you thought that was a convincing story, perhaps you might have taken a look at the account who posted it. So as I've said, the Twitter handle is Mike Gove 12. And the display name is Michael Govan ready. The bio says, I'm not Michael Gove or Mark Francois. And the bio link to goes goes to what is clearly a comedy video about the conservatives. It's obviously a parody or a comedy account. And you'd think that anyone with basic social media literacy would be able to recognize this. Indeed, it's precisely the kind of media literacy you'd expect from Britain's leading journalists. In fact, you'd expect it from an entry level journalist to work out that that was a parody account. However, one of Britain's two most senior journalists was taken in by the Wheeze. Here is Robert Peston weighing in. He tweeted, this is flipping weird. The phone cable should be visible in the mirror descending from Boris Johnson's watch in this official Downing Street picture. It's not what is going on. This is this is the political editor of ITV. I said the second most important political journalist in the country. Three minutes later, Peston did have a little moment of doubt or maybe the angle of the mirror just means it looks as though the cable is going straight down when in life it's at an angle. I am just trying to work out if that's physically as in physics possible. What did you make of this? You had it right, which is that this displays a sick lack of internet literacy on the part of one of the most well paid and prominent journalists in the country. And he's not alone in that. I remember a little while ago on election cast. Was it Laura Koonsburg and Chris Mason and some of the other lot got together to discuss shitposting and they were so pleased with themselves for having discovered the term shitposting. You could just tell it was written all over their faces. They're like, oh, it's kind of a naughty word. And they defined it incorrectly. And I put out a tweet about it saying why it was incorrect. They got me on the next show to talk about why it was incorrect. And then they also then put up someone from BBC who said, actually, you're both right and said that the wrong one was also correct. Which to me was really weird. I was like, why it's their definition of shitposting is just wrong. But it is a real lack of instinctive comfort and competence when it comes to reading the sort of layers of irony and joke and parody, which permeate social media. Another example of this is Rory Stewart, who got drawn into the Trevor bastard extended universe. This is a real Twitter deep cut, by the way, a fictional football team called Stratum Rovers. Rory Stewart was first responding sincerely, then clocks that he was part of a gag and then tried to make himself in on the gag and it didn't it didn't quite work. But you do have a kind of generational issue here. What I don't understand is why if you were Robert Pesson, even if you thought that this was a particularly legitimate halal account, why you wouldn't just think maybe that's a bit of a weird angle or maybe it doesn't even matter that much. And I think what that indicates is something deeper than just the basic lack of sort of core competencies when it comes to using social media. What it indicates is what they think their job is. It's not to hold the government to account on the big picture stuff because when it comes to matters of life and death, well, they must all be trying their best. What they want to be involved with is sort of gossip, a very minor petty scandal, which can kind of nod at their own insider status as part of, you know, the hallowed few allowed in or around the halls of power. And so I think that that's why Pesson was drawn to this in the first place to tweet about. It's exactly that kind of low stakes, high drama, you know, petty nonsense that lobby journalists love to talk about. They don't like talking about the important stuff. You might be watching this thinking, you know, look, Robert Pesson is the political editor at ITV, but he's also just an ordinary guy with a Twitter account. Maybe, you know, this is very separate from his job. When he's doing his job, he's asking important political questions. And when he's on Twitter, you know, he's just shitposting in the morning, like maybe we all do on a Sunday morning, maybe he was hung over. The next street, though, shows how relevant his job as a political editor here was. And just for the avoidance of doubt, Downing Street tells me they would never doctor or photoshop a picture. And as I assumed, it is the angle that makes it look strange. But it is certainly strange. No, it's not strange. It's the most annoying thing on the planet. But he called Downing Street. Can you can you imagine being that close to Downing Street? It's sort of like you get to call them up just to say that picture looks a bit weird. Is that is that angle on that phone line? Correct. Is that really Boris Johnson? That's the game. That's the game. You are granted access in return for a certain amount of obsequiousness. And it's not something which is an explicit contract. It's not something which, you know, Pestin or Kuhnsberg or anybody else is told, which is you will have a career where you get the scoops. You have access to everyone you want to talk about as long as you're not that critical. It is a sort of drip, drip, drip throughout the course of their careers. You have the right mates, the right networks, the right contacts, as long as you're never that much of a threat to the status quo. And that's why, you know, Jeremy Corbyn had some very competent press officers, but they still never had that same level of full on integration with the, you know, sort of Westminster, you know, media, political, industrial complex as the Conservative Party clearly do, because it's much deeper than that and much more entrenched than all that.


to see just to find new shorts. I set out from the start just to find my goal. Do I find you? Find you? I'll find you. Be my destination is always here. Try to shield the sun. The days are turning


Sympathetic nervous response. Let's look at the anatomy of the sympathetic nervous system. What are some things that you notice right away from this drawing, what we've already done? Anatomically speaking, the sympathetic nervous system has some characteristics that are kind of bizarre. First of all, our ganglion in the sympathetic nervous system is close to the spinal cord. That's because do you notice that my preganglionic neuron is short? What does that mean about my ganglionic neuron? These things are long. That's an enormous and obvious anatomical difference between a sympathetic pathway and a parasympathetic pathway. There's something else that you notice. Holy branching preganglionic neuron. Look at this thing. The preganglionic neuron, its axon, actually branches out and heads in many different directions. Think about that. Your sympathetic nervous response is a holy bear coming straight at me. I better do something, I better run away quick. The quicker you can get the information out there, the more efficient you're going to be, the more likely you are to activate the number of pathways that you need to activate to effectively get away from the bear. One way to do that is activate one neuron. Here's my one neuron. My one ganglionic, I mean preganglionic neuron, is cell body was member in the lateral gray horn. Just tell one of those guys, hey, there's a bear over there, let's do something about this, and that one is now going to, it's the phone tree. It's the pyramid scheme. That one is calling like 50 others. And now 50 of them, 50 ganglionic neurons have been activated and all of them are sending out their message to the effectors saying bear, run, or hug, bear's got a hug, it's a bear hug. Aww. So the branching aspect of the preganglionic neurons is something you're not going to see in the parasympathetic nervous system. Can you defend the functional consequences of this structural setup? Oh my gosh, I hope I remember because that's a phenomenal exam question. What else? Not only, okay, we've got our differences here. Now let's go map it on to a spinal cord because now we're going to notice that there's some interesting stuff going on in the parasympathetic nervous system that we're not going to see anywhere else. And remind yourself, where is the sympathetic nervous system? Remember, it was T1 to L2. So if we took a slice of spinal cord at that level, this is what we're going to see. Well, don't look at this yet, but I'll bring you back to that and show you what that one means. Here's the Wendy-style version first. Got to do a Wendy-style first. Does it look familiar? Of course it does. We can map everything onto our spinal cord and I am going to resist the urge to do like a giant review and map everything onto the spinal cord and instead I will focus and just map my sympathetic fibers onto this spinal cord. Where are my cell bodies of my sympathetic neurons? Of my pre-ganglionic sympathetic neurons. Where are those cell bodies? I hope you just answered me. Right there in the lateral gray horn. Where does my axon travel? Absolutely. Out through the anterior gray horn. Out through the anterior root. Out through, where am I now? Spinal nerve. And it's actually going to hit it. Now, what do you see that's different?  Nobody knows. But guess what? It's an off ramp. It's an off ramp that, look, my pre-ganglionic fiber is going to take that off ramp. It does.  And then what is the little bobble here? You know that's the ganglion pounds, right? It is. Doesn't it look just like my posterior root ganglion? It's a ganglion. It's my autonomic ganglion. It's my sympathetic ganglion. And it makes me a little bit excited.  Can you see the difference between my greens? I want you to be able to see it because now we're synapsing on my sympathetic ganglion and that neuron is going to re-enter the anterior ramus and then it's going to head out and do its thing out. Who? Who's it going to affect her? Because I love you. It's going to affect her, your heart. It's going to affect. It's going to innervate your heart and it's going to dump neurotransmitter, right? You can't see that at all, but yellow is my favorite color. Okay, we'll make it orange. There.  Sorry, doesn't mean that I don't love you. Here's my post, here's my ganglionic neuron. My ganglionic neuron in sympathetic nervous system is long. It innervates the heart, it increases heart rate. It doesn't really impact, but this is the weird part. This is the piece that is different. These are called the rami communicons and that, remember, this was the anterior ramus. These are the rami communicons. Rami, maybe like branch, spinal nerve, rami communicons, rami communicons, spinal nerve. The anterior ramus and heading to my effector. Does it make perfect sense? But of course, let's draw what else do we have that's true. I feel like I've drawn this before, but I don't know if I did. Remember that my ganglionic neuron is, excuse me, my pre-ganglionic neuron is myelinated. My ganglionic neuron is not myelinated. Does it make you happy? I think it's good. Oh, I know what I want to show you. I want to show you a real picture. I'm not showing you one of the characteristics that I really wanted to show you, which is the branching. I'm not showing you the branching because actually these structures right here go up and down just like the spinal cord goes up and down. So look, there's a really cool visual in your book that shows you, oh, let's look at this one right here.  It's easy, isn't it? You want to see how the parasympathetic system has different anatomy. What's one thing that you already know that will be different about the parasympathetic nervous system? Where's the slice taken? This slice of spinal cord is taken somewhere between T1 and L2. If we're outside of that range, we're going to have a different anatomy. Okay, I'm going to come back and tell you about the parasympathetic nervous system.


After winning his first match at the AWP finals, Novak Djokovic has secured the year-end number one for a record eighth time, breaking his own record of seven from last year. Been a crazy ride at the top as well because Elkhoraz has obviously taken the world number one here and there and Djokovic has taken it back at the very end. Let's go have a look at the point situation. So with that win against Runa today, Djokovic cannot be overtaken at the top of the leaderboard because Elkhoraz, even if he wins all these matches at this event, can only make 1500 points and Djokovic is now ahead by more than 1500 points. So Djokovic could retire the tournament and still be year-end number one. He's not going to do that of course, but Djokovic with that one win wraps it up for another year. So there you have it, Novak Djokovic year-end number one for another record, breaking his own record eighth time and keeping Elkhoraz back and it's been such a fun ride at the top. I know Djokovic of course didn't get to stay at the top for long because of the not being able to play in America and also the point situation at Wimbledon lost a lot of points there last year. So there were some funky reasons why Djokovic wasn't number one for longer this year, but it was so much fun having Elkhoraz and Djokovic battle for world number one. Do you think Elkhoraz can get to number one next year though? That is the question because we know Djokovic has a lot of points to defend in Australia, at the French and then Wimbledon of course coming up as well in the middle of the year. Can Elkhoraz regain number one sometime next year or do you think Djokovic is just going to hold onto it and of course getting to 400 weeks after this tournament too. That's going to be guaranteed. We'll talk about that in a week or so. But Novak Djokovic record eighth time at year in number one as he wraps it up today.