Hello and welcome to the session. This is Professor Farhad. In this session, we would look at computing AGI and this will be a quasi CPA simulation. So on the CPA exam, you might see an exercise like the one I'm going to be working. Mine will be more comprehensive, but you might have a piece of it, but this is a good practice if you are practicing for the exam. Also, this exercise will be helpful if you're taking an income tax course and obviously if you're sending for your CPA exam. As always, please link in with me on LinkedIn. If you haven't done so, YouTube is where I house 1,500 plus accounting, auditing, tax, finance. I cover all these courses. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please subscribe. On my website, I do have, in addition to my lectures, I do have additional resources. For example, the Excel sheet I'll be using today will be available there. You can download it as well as other information, multiple choice, true, false exercises, 2,000 CPA questions. Please check out my website. StudyPal.co is an artificial intelligence driven study platform that matches you with someone studying for the CPA, CFA or any other exam. They have 80 users in 85 countries and 2,800 cities. So to illustrate the concept of adjusted gross income, we're going to work this example that's going to involve rental vacation income as well as other deductions and income. So the best way to do this is to look at it from an Excel sheet. So I'm going to copy this exercise and take it to an Excel sheet and work it from the Excel sheet. This way we can, there's a lot of computation involved. So let's go ahead and transfer this to an Excel sheet and let's compute adjusted gross income. So that's the individual. She is a single, 40 years old, and they have the following income. So we're going to go through it step by step, starting with salary. Okay, starting with salary. Is salary taxable? Of course salary is taxable. Let's start with that. So we have salary and salary equal to 43,000. So let's first count all the income. Rental of vacation home, $4,000. The home was rented 60 days for 60 days and was used personal days for 60 days and was vacant 245 days. Here we have to determine whether this rental vacation is primarily personal, primarily business, because it makes a difference, or personal slash business. Well, if you don't know the rules for this, please go to my, go to my YouTube or my website where I have a lecture for each one of them. But I can tell you the rules here is in this situation, it's going to be personal slash rental. And the reason is because it was rented more than 15 days. But also the personal use was the greater of 14 days or 10% of the rental days, which is 60 days is more than 14 days. And it more than 10% of six days. Therefore the situation here, the property is personal slash rental. Because it's personal slash rental, there are specific rules we have to follow in determining the income from the taxable income from this property. So simply put, we're going to have a schedule kind of think about we're preparing a schedule schedule for this rental property. And we're going to start with 4,000 of income. Now we're going to determine what expenses do we have for this property? Well, interest on mortgage on home mortgage. That's, that's not interest on vacation home. So here we go. Here's we have interest on vacation home. We have taxes paid on the vacation home. We have utilities and maintenance on the vacation home. And we have depreciation on the vacation home. So those are our 4 expenses. Now we need to know how to compute the expenses because the expenses reduces your income. Now, bear in mind, not bear in mind personal slash rental. It's like a hobby. And when you have a hobby, remember in a hobby, the maximum you can have the maximum losses you can have is zero. So you cannot have losses, but you can report zero zero of nothing because basically you don't have to report any income if you have enough expenses. But if you have more expenses than revenues, well, then you have zero. If you have more revenues and expenses, then you have taxable income. So let's see what we have here under those circumstances. So either we're going to have either income from this rental property. So some of the 4,000 will be taxable or we're going to have zero. We cannot have a negative. We cannot have a loss. Okay, any remaining expenses will be carried for future years. Now also we have to know the ordering of the deduction. First, we start with the interest and the taxes. And the reason why we start with the interest and the taxes is because those are deductibles anyway. Now, how much do we deduct of interest and taxes? There are two ways. There's the IRS method and the court method. I'm going to be using the court method in case you're wondering the other method. How does it work? Well, look at my recordings. Okay, so let me go ahead and say MGT mortgage interest and taxes. How much do we have of those? So I'm going to put the formula here. Mortgage interest and taxes, we have $4,758 for the mortgage plus $1,098 for taxes. Okay, now again, what's going to happen? We have to multiply this by the number of the days we rented this property. We're going to be using relative to the whole year. We only rented the property 60 days. Therefore, we're going to multiply this figure by 60. We're going to assume 365 days, 365 days. So simply put, from the mortgage and the taxes, we are going to deduct 600 and, let me round this, 600 and, oops, sorry. We're going to be 962, let me just do it, $963. I'm going to put a negative sign here this way to indicate its deduction. Okay, now how much of the profit remained? So we're going to be 4,000 minus 963. Well, we still have profit. Now, okay, since we still have profit, we can deduct more. But I just want to let you know that any mortgage, any interest, any interest, any taxes that's not used, because we only used 963, any amount that's not used, we can deduct somewhere else. You're going to see in a moment. Okay, so this is the income remained, income remainder. It means we can still deduct more. After you deduct mortgage and taxes, if you have any utilities, maintenance, then you can deduct those. Well, we have 2,600. Can you deduct the whole thing? No, you cannot, because it's not primarily rental, it's personal slash rental. And simply put, use that 50-50. Therefore, from the utilities and maintenance, you can only deduct half of the amount. And what's half of 2,600? Well, 2,600 times .5. I'm going to put a negative sign this way. It's a deduction. It's 1,300. I have to put a plus sign here, sorry. Okay, there we go. Remainder is 3,300. Now, what's the remainder? So if there's any income remainder, because as long as we have income, if there's any deduction, we can take them. We take this, net it to the utilities and expenses. We still have 1,737. Now, the last thing we deduct is the last thing we deduct. So we took care of the maintenance. The last thing we deduct is depreciation. We have 3,500 of depreciation. How much depreciation we can take? Well, guess what? We can only take up to whatever we have left. So all that we have left is 1,737. So after we take 1,737 minus 1,737, the answer is zero. So simply put, income from the vacation home, income from vacation is zero. Now, if we were able to deduct everything, we would have a loss and we'll be able to deduct the loss. But simply put, since this is personal slash rental income, zero. I'm going to put zero here just to remind you. So it's basically treated as if it's a hobby, because it's a rental slash vacation. So we're done with the rental. Let me just clear this up. So we're done with the salaries, done with the rental. Municipal bond interest, 2,000. Now, remember, municipal bond interest is not taxable. Municipal bond interest is not taxable, so that's really out. It's not taxable. And any interest related to that, because I think we have interest on loan used to buy municipal bond, and this is not deductible. So this is not taxable. That's good. Not deductible. If we're not going to tax you, we're not going to give you the deduction. So those two kind of basically, they're silent in a sense. They are not taxable, not deductible. A dividend from GE 400? Yes, dividend is taxable. So dividend is taxable. 400. I believe this is our total income. Total taxable income. Total income. We're going to get to the taxable income. So we're going to take 30,000, 43,000, the salary plus the dividend, plus zero. Just kind of remind you it's a zero. So this is our think of it as, you can think of this as, since we don't have any adjustments, think of it as adjusted gross income. Adjusted gross income. Now, we do have other deductions. For example, we have interest on the home mortgage. Well, guess what? Can we deduct interest on the home mortgage? Sure we can. On schedule A, we can deduct this. Now, so interest on home. Let me just make this little bigger here. Interest on. Remember, we have interest on home mortgage and we have interest on rental property. So interest on the home mortgage, that's deductible. So that's, I'm going to put it negative just to indicate it's deductible, 8,400. That's minus. We can deduct this. So we're done with interest on the home mortgage. Let's skip the vacation for now. We'll come back and do the vacation with remainder of the vacation. We said interest on the loan is out. Property tax on the home. Yes, property tax on the main home is, that's also deductible on schedule A. I'm going to put main home to differentiate this from, to differentiate this from the rental property, 2,200. We're done with that. Property tax on vacation home. We'll come back to that. State income tax, 3,300. Sales tax, 900. Well, you have to choose between the lower of the two, obviously. So the state sales tax is out. What we have is state income tax. State income tax. And that is 3,300. We're done with that. Cheerable contribution. Okay. That's deductible. That's 1,100. Let's put it in the right place. 1,100. That's done. Tax preparation fee. Tax preparation fee is a miscellaneous itemized deduction. That's no longer based on the tax cuts and jobs act. That's out. Utilities and maintenance. We already took half and the other half is not usable. We cannot use the other half because that's personal depreciation or rental property. We already took care of that. So now all that we have left really is the interest in the property taxes that we did not take on the on the mortgage from the rental property. So remember on the rental property. Let me go back here. Let me get my pen. Okay. Remember on the mortgage mortgage on the mortgage on the vacation home and the property tax on the vacation home. Interest on the vacation home. Those two. Let's compute those two in total. So if we compute those two, it's 4,758 plus 1,080. Those are the total. Now remember, this is the total amount of which we used up 963 for the business. Let me just. 963 was used up. Therefore, what's left that we can use on schedule A is 4,893. So this is going to be mortgage and taxes on rental property. That's the left on rental on rental. Okay. That's going to be amount left, which is 4,893 because we could not use them. You could use those deduction on schedule A and put it as a minus because everything else is a minus. Okay. So those are practically, not practically, those are your deductions, the allowed deduction because we believe we covered everything. Now we could compute taxable income. We can compute taxable income. If we take this amount, well, just if we sum, because it's going to net, if we take including 0, what's that? 06. If we net them out, 07, 07. Our taxable income is 25,506.63 rounding 507. So all I did is I took, you know, the income minus all the deduction, and this is your taxable income. Now this individual is single. You have to look at the total itemized deduction, which is amounted to 19,893. You have to compare this to the standard deduction. If the standard deduction, whatever year you are in is higher, you would use the standard deduction. Otherwise, you would use the itemized deductions because it's a greater than the standard deduction. If you have any questions about this topic or if you'd like to access the Excel sheet or additional exercises and lectures, please visit my website where I have additional resources if you're studying for your CPA, EA, or just studying for your course. Good luck. Stay motivated and study hard.


Welcome everybody back to Segal Talks here at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Graduate Center CUNY at City University in Manhattan in New York City. It's week 11 of our talks and it's 11 weeks. Every day we talk five times a week with theater artists from New York, from America, but mostly, you know, from around the world globally. If you look at our announcement on the website, you will find out that it's been a very eye-opening to see how our colleagues and friends around the world are experiencing this time of Corona in their own country, in their own four walls, and how vastly different it is country to country, how significant politics and political leadership is, how significant the changes and support for the arts are, what a difference it makes over that. Yes, though, we are looking now at structures in a way, everything is being barely put to the open in front of our eyes and the light of the sun through this Corona virus, a catalyst that kind of like an x-ray shows what is what and as some say, like on the ocean and the flood recedes and we see who has clothes on and no, not what's working and what is not. And yes, there are systems that do work better. It's still catastrophic in the US over one million infections. The next one is Brazil and I think even Italy is to 300,000. So and we do not know what will happen. Will there be second, third waves? Numbers are not good from countries that we opened infections are showing up again. And of course, for us who are in the world of theater and performance, it's a devastating news. We do not know when we will open. We've been hit hardest and first people are out of work, out of jobs. The next nine, 10 months, everything has been canceled. And and theater artists have been freelancing so much, often also do work in the service industry in restaurants and other. This also doesn't exist. So it's a terrible situation. Unemployment in the US is close to 50 million unimaginable and social unrest on the streets for good reason, erupted this kind of a match that was put to the gas lines for confinement and mishandling of this crisis and the killing of George Floyd. And in this week, we have been have been focusing on this. We heard from the National Black Theater, from our friends. Hope from our friends yesterday, I will get tempo and and and we love Woodard James Scruggs so many. And today we have with us in Japan, they would say a living legend. This is Woody King Junior, someone who for 50 years, actually, it's exactly 50 years around the Black Theater and New Federal in New York, he is called the King, which is also his name. But this is how he's called and he has seen the decades and over and has been deeply involved in in what has happening. So Woody, first of all, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Where are you right now? I'm in my apartment in New York and I'm sequestered. I like everybody else. I go out with my gloves and my mask. When I go out to get essentials to exist within the apartment. But it's the first time I would say I've had a chance to deal with all the essential things that I have in the apartment and the things that are not essential at all. I got over, you know, six or seven hundred books. And I said, let me go through them and see what hardcovers are first editions. And lo and behold, I have about 150 first editions. So I said, wow, what can I do with these? So I just put them in a box and perhaps when the pandemic is over, I will take them out again. And then there's so many things that you can get rid of, including articles that, especially when you are 50 years old, reviews that you got in 1971, covers of magazines when you got in 73. You said, well, what use are they now? Those are focus questions. You focus in on the rest of your life. And I said, wow, I read this play, but I read this play in 1997. Let me read it again, because I don't, you know, you don't remember. You remember, you didn't do it. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you produce this play in 1997? That's what sequestering really means. It come to mean that within the structure you find yourself, you work it out. It's like Zoom. I think I was talking to my wife. I say, wow, man, four months ago, no one inherited Zoom. And now everyone is talking about Zoom. Yeah. Yeah, the world has really, really changed. What is your neighborhood? When you look out of the window, what street are you on in there? Riverside Drive. Riverside Drive. Yes. I look out of the window and other people living on Riverside Drive. I do exercises daily. And I look out my window. And I count the number walking past on the other side of the street with masks on and children with masks on and those who do not wear masks. And I say, well, it's always in that hour, 15, 20 minutes, it's like nothing happened. Yeah. This was a very emotional, tough week, a hard week, galvanized movement. How did you experience this week, George Floyd, the killing and the demonstrations? What came to your mind? Well, I've lived through other periods of time where our heroes were killed. And but George Floyd is a hero because it was televised. It was seen by a camera. And everyone witnessed it. And so therefore, there could be no excuses. Aphyxiation, it was very clear. He was aphyxiated and he couldn't breathe. And that enraged us all. Breonna Taylor's killing was when you break in someone's house without a permit. And I understand they made a law that fast. That can no longer happen. You cannot break in without a search warrant. You must have a search warrant now. So and George Floyd's murder, that's the best way to put it, has caused across the world reactions. And these reactions has caused a kind of looking at reality. And they are all very angry, very pissed off, very concerned. And so changes are made. Unemployment happened. Unemployment as a result of the pandemic, coronavirus. And all of these things are happening. I just read about Darren Walker at the Ford Foundation and how they are making drastic, drastic changes in dealing with all of the unemployed, all of the small corporations and nonprofits just to keep people on the payroll, if you will, and alive, if you will, during this crisis. So I look at the George Floyd murder as a mother, a brother, no, no, as a family having lost a beloved son. And they are grieving. And that grieving is not unlike all these other killings. But we didn't have instant replay on things like Emmett Till or things like the murder of Fred Hampton. Or we didn't have that then. The new technology has brought it into our living room. It's almost like, as we are talking now, you and I, this is in people's living room. And they can look at it. And they can say, wow, we want to be informed. And you and the Segal Institute are informing us about issues. And things that we can talk about. You probably do understand. Before there was these kind of talks, it was confined to the black community. Nobody listened. Yeah, you had no ears. Nobody could listen. They had to wait for the black newspaper, which came out once a week. Black radio, which is not listened to by white Americans. So it was very difficult. They would listen to music, hip hop, rap had not come in. But the new media, I think, it's sort of like reaching everybody. And everybody is our audience. And everybody is worldwide. I think the Segal talks, we said earlier, reached something like a couple of hundred countries. Take us back to the moment when you started the New Federal Theater, what was your idea also for a black theater? What was your vision, your dream, your hope? When did that happen? 1970. I came from five years at a company called Mobilization for Youth on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And we trained young people in the arts, dance, theater, and film. And when the director moved to a company called Henry Street Settlement, I moved there with him. And they had just a building called the Henry Street Playhouse. And we started programming plays that have into the theater because he was a new director. He was starting a new. And the first thing was he wanted to build on to the center and he built another small theater, two other small theaters. And I was the programmer. And in 1970, he named me the director of the arts. And what did I want to call the theater? And I thought about it, reading Orson Welles and John Hausman and those kind of contributors to the American theater scene. I named it the New Federal Theater. And it became a tag that stuck. And what I wanted to do was I think what I wanted to do was sort of like integrate into the American theater. So it was people of color and women to sort of like integrate them into the American theater. The difficulty I saw almost immediately was if I did the play and it won awards, then the whole play could go in to the other theater, whether it was the New York Shakespeare Festival, Chelsea Theater Center, the American Place Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, or, and then it spread. I could go to the Bermuda International Theater Festival, the Pan-African Theater Festival, if I took the whole project, and the interference would be minimal. And these people who were in the play from Denzel Washington back then, or Elizabeth Van Dyke back then, it was just so many artists, Garrett Morris, people you see on television now who are older, was there at the beginning. Samuel Jackson, yeah. Yeah, Samuel Jackson, Latanya Richardson Jackson did plays with us. And Tizaki Shang is for colored girls who can consider suicide when the rainbow isn't up. We did her play. And so, and we can move the whole play because people like Bernie Gerstin, Joseph Papp, Lynn Meadow, Robert Kauffin, they, if they had won all the awards, they didn't come in and change it. They stayed intact. And so, if a critic came to see it, he said, wow, this is the same play I saw at the New Federal. It's wonderful. It just reaches now an audience that they didn't have there. It was only black people there. But as they died off and that system said, oh, we got to change. We got to start doing plays by our white writers. Did you feel that at the time you started out where you're part of the New York theater scene, or was it kind of separate? No, no, no, we weren't a part of the New York theater scene. I was a part of it because I came in with all these degrees.  I came in, you know, it's like you couldn't tell me I couldn't do anything. You know, I did the voodoo Macbeth. That was 20 characters. The conjure man dies. It was a huge place because I had the backing of the great Henry Street settlement. And it wasn't long before, as a result of that, I was working for on special projects with the Rockefeller Foundation, special projects with the Ford Foundation. That just spreaded my, in a sense, just spreaded my visibility. And my use of theater surveys led me to other writers, other productions, the Free Southern Theater, theater in other cities, theater artists who wanted to be in New York and would send stuff and they would come into New York, you know. And that's the real, it's applicable to today. Today, our latest, for example, a year and a half ago, we did a play called Looking for Leroy. That just came to me in the mail. And we did it as a production. Because from the inception, we worked with the Actors Union, Actors Equity Association. And that's because I was a member so early, you know. So I just felt it was something that we should do. A lot of companies do not do that. And so later in life, artists, actors, if they are not a part of that system, they're not integrated into the American theater. I mean, do you see right now in these weeks that the DIY Broadway manifesto and people say Broadway is racist? Do you feel things have changed? Was it the same at that time? Is it better now? Is it worse? It's changed. At one time, New Federal might be doing seven or eight plays a year. We had three spaces. And at that time, it did not cost as much. To do a play on Broadway now, a regular play may cost a million and a half. You know, we don't have those kind of investors on Black theater. Musicals may cost three or four million. You know, maybe more. There's a play on Broadway that the pandemic, of course, closed it down. Call ain't too proud by the temptations. And all of the temptations are from Detroit. Motown Records. And I'm from Detroit. I grew up in Detroit. So it's like, guys, you would see in a restaurant. Guys, you would see at the gym. Now. You have actors playing them. You know, but back then. The change is. They're part of history. Like New Federal will be without a question. Some sort of part of history. And we have to have hopefully. Discussions like this to. Help correct that history. We're in the National African American Museum in Washington. We're in the Schomburg in New York. You name the music museum. I work. And our history is included in that. And Frank, you know. This medium. And I hope you recorded this is. Something that is collectible. It is useful in. Research. Young people cannot say. Well, I didn't know that existed. It does exist. And they said that young people. You know, 71, 72, 73, 74. 1976. Could say I did not know that. And then we started winning awards. Prior to that. The drama desk award. For black girls. So the white world knew about black girl. To the American theater in the United States. The Taken of Miss Janie. Drama critic circle award we won. And those kind of awards had not been afforded to. African American theaters. Before. It was a raising in the sun and then the big leap forward. And there was a gap between. say we might do two plays a year because of the cost when we would do the same amount of money would do four plays a year. But the cost is director's cost, set cost, all the material, it's not just actors cost. While a full character play, you could do with nine people. That may take 15. They got to get paid. It's like, I don't want to say it's like, but if you look at a Zoom show like this, you need a producer, you always need something else, someone else to assist. You can't do it all. You cannot. And you try to find people who are experts in that field to work on it because they want to integrate into American system. And my search found women set designers, women like designers, women sound designers, and they would come in for those six weeks and you have to house them, pay their transportation in, but they would get the visibility that they had not had before in small towns. So the change, I don't know, the change, as far as I'm concerned, has been about, is going to continue about George Floyd. The change has not been like this worldwide ever. So in the beginning of the new federal theater, you produced shows that would be on Broadway, you right away with your means, you had shows that you could put up. I produced shows that could be produced, integrating into the American theater was not on Broadway. You started at the Henry Street settlement and then it would go over with your friends and the No, they were my friends. Joseph Papp will come over and see the plays. You remember Joseph Papp? Sure. Of course. I like this. And he would say, wow, I don't have to do anything. Just move this to Lincoln Center. That's all I have to do. And pick up, start the payroll then. That's all he had to do. What happened to the Black Theater movement? I think if I remember numbers are down in America. Theater is dedicated to Black writers, Black theater work. Do you confirm that? Is less attention being paid? How is your funding situation? Yes, less attention being paid because these foundations, federal, city, state, and private, now can go to the signature theater, can go to white nonprofits, and they are all over New York. They're all over America. The Goodman Theater in Chicago, the Seattle Rep, they can go to them because they may have a marketing department of 15, 20 people in that marketing department, in the audience development department, in that subscription department. And they could get more bangs for their book. And they were asked to buy more sophisticated fundraisers. But the Black Theater movement, as far as I'm concerned, still exists. Who are your colleagues in the Black Theater movement? You exchange words in the American landscape. Well, Black Spectrum Theater, we're all part of something called a coalition of theaters of color, National Black Theater, Mine Builders, the St. Louis Black Repertory Theater, Eileen Morris at the Ensemble Studio Theater, Plough Shares in Detroit, Michigan. These theaters all exist to produce African-American works. And then there's the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that's run by Jackie Alexander and the wife of the Larry Leon Hamlin, Sylvia Hamlin, they run that. So those are people we relate to at least monthly or weekly. It's like, how are you doing? How's it going there? Or what have you? Billy Holiday Theater. These are just the name components and people who view these theaters as part of the Black Theater movement. Do you feel America has done enough to support the Black Theater movement? No. No, it's like, but neither has, well, America. Yeah, America consists of Black Americans, white Americans.  While $10,000 would mean the world to me, it doesn't mean anything from Lincoln Center. They want a hit. They want a huge hit. But the pandemic is sort of like bringing a light to all of this. Now we're all in the same boat. We're all in the same situation, if you will, that we found ourselves in when we started up. And how is that? When we started up, we had a kind of energy, a kind of need. And out of that energy and that need, I could get a job at Henry Street. And out of that need, we could get someone into the New York State Council on the arts, Ms. Venet Carroll, the late Ms. Venet Carroll, or into the National Endowment for the Arts with a man named Vantel Whitfield and A.B. Spellman. And these people were simply a phone call away. So that helped tremendously. But they had very small budgets within the foundation, within Federal City and State. And you cannot make these calls anymore. There's nobody on the other line if you would make these calls at the moment. Nobody can make these calls to who know you, who know your work. You have to send you know, something else. You know, first it went from three or four page proposal in detail. Then it went to VHSs. Then it went to, you got to send this and they may look at it, they may not. So there was no structural support. It was support for projects and for individual plays, but not a sustainable support towards your organization. No. The Henry Street Settlement supported New Federal Theater as an organization, which meant a secretary, me, and a coordinator. That was it. And they had trouble raising money for all their social programs. But we prevailed. We prevailed for 11 years. And now we are on at 543 West 42nd Street, where we rent space, have use of three theater spaces. And 543, back in the day, was where Lee Strasburg of the Actors Studio classes. And then it went into, oh, it was just a terrible, ratting-festive building until Castillo came in and remodeled it and redid it. And that was done through, he's going now, God rest his soul, Fred Newman. Fred Newman, yeah. It's in Hell's Kitchen, right? Yeah. Yeah. Your idea to get involved theater, did it come out of the Civil Rights Movement? Were you a part of that? No. No, it came out of Detroit, out of the university. So what was your idea? Why did you say, I'm going to do theater? This is what I will, Black Theater, this is my mission. I was enacted. And I started a theater in Detroit. And I will come to New York once a year and see plays. I will write letters. And these letters were answered sometimes, sometimes they weren't. But I will write to people like Ozzie Davis and Ruby Dee or Fred O'Neill, who's the head of the Actors, he was the head of Actors Equity Association. Lloyd Richards I will write to because he went to Wayne State where I went. But I was an actor. I came in and I did plays for a while and TV commercials at the beginning of that. And I would take my money and produce plays, took my money and bought property in Harlem, and moved my family there. So when you were in Detroit growing up, what was the moment or what was when you said, I'm going to become an actor? What did you see? A Raised in the Sun, toured. And it came to a downtown theater. And I had found a way that you could see plays if you wrote reviews of them for the small black newspapers around. So I would go in and see a play. And I got to meet the cast then of the Touring Raised in the Sun. And they were just wonderful. I would walk them from the hotel, I mean, from the theater back to that hotel, from the theater back to and it was almost like you again, you again, you're here again. And yes. And then I started looking for theater schools in Detroit, outside of the university, because you couldn't get any plays at the university. Why couldn't you couldn't get in because you were black. They were doing, it was no chance. You could not get into plays. It'll be a white director. It'll be a white player. It will be his interpretation of that play, you know. And so I went to a theater school, a very famous theater school. And at that theater school, a woman named Teresa Way Merrill was a grandom, who was in a wheelchair at that time. And she was the founder of Willoway School of Theater. And it was in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. They would train me, but they told me right up. We don't have any African-American actors here. You are it. And you can be in these plays, but you cannot do intimate roles with white women on the stage. They told me and they gave me a scholarship. And for that was my first foray into this theater thing that trained me to be an actor. But I got the four years. I got a certificate. And she would give me talks. And in those talks, she would let me know who's coming in this year. Ilka Chase, Harold Klurman, Basil Rathbone, all these famous actors. And they all urged me to check out New York. And how would I do that? How would you get to New York? And they had something called Detroit is an automobile city. And you drive cars into Pennsylvania for these companies. And the closer you can get to New York, usually it was Pennsylvania and a bus from there into New York for two or three days back to Detroit. We found ways to exist. You find ways. Did you ever play when you started for four years? Did you get a main role?  No, these are all scenes, all scenes, among walls or scenes. You know, Harold Klurman was a contemporary of so many New Yorkers. And he talked to me about the actor studio, you know, which I'm very in sync and a member now. Back then, nobody knew them. Yeah, right. Harold Klurman, some people say talk the group theater into being and actually also taught at CUNY and where we are. When you came to New York, did you feel the only chance to do your theater? You have to do it on your own. You have to be produced and you have to be the creative force behind it. Was there anything, any openings in what people now say?  Were there openings at that time of the late 60s, middle 70s, where we think of a time of change? Well, I didn't think of time with change, but I was very close with Wynn Handman at the American Place Theater, very close. And that was the and I, after that, I became close with Joseph Papp at the Public Theater, you know, and after that, Robert Kalkin at Chelsea Theater Center. But they're wonderful producers, wonderful producers, you know, but they had their agenda plays and they wouldn't, you know, they're going to do one or two plays a year out of 10, 11 plays. They weren't going to jump in and do a lot, a lot of plays by black authors. What did you learn most of those 50 years of producing, which is an incredible amount of time, I really want to congratulate you and show all of our respect for being such a pioneer, for having carried that, that wagon, you know, through the fields for so long and also so successfully. What did you learn? What did what did it teach you? Well, I would say each play that you read must stand on its own and deeply rooted in literature. You must be deeply rooted in literature. And see, and before coming to New York and in the early years of New York, literature, whether it was Chekhov or James Baldwin or Ralph Ellison or John A. Williams, I am equally fond of all of them. Tuginia, First Love, I love that piece. Fantastic, yeah. Novel, Novela, yeah. Pardon? Shorty, short tale, First Love, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I love that piece. Then I started reading African American women literature. Louise Maryweather, Maya Angelou, her early, early work before, because she was a dancer at first. And I thought that was fascinating. And of course, early work that I adapted and did at the Likon Center for the Performing Arts, Likon Center Museum for the Performing Arts, was Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues, a series of poems and all that. The Great Margaret Dana, my best friend was a novelist, and Ron Milner. And the librarian in Detroit was a German guy named Kirch Meyers. He introduced me to Theater Arts Magazine. I don't know if you know Theater Arts Magazine, but it was... He's beautifully printed, printed, beautifully typeset. Yes, yes. Yeah, I have some copies, yeah. And they published a play in every issue. And they will have these short articles. But it was that kind of world, Frank back then, that one becomes engulfed in. That's your life.  And the deeper you go, the deeper you have to go to stay there. And if there was a book party, I was always invited. I was deeply rooted in literature, African literature, Willie Kosacyli from South Africa, writers from other states, playwrights, I would find a way, or find out what they had written because they could only get a reading. There was no theaters in that town. And then the universities started really hiring African American to run theater, to work in theater, work in theater departments. And I became friends with them. And they were women, and they would graduate women and people, and they had no place to go. And so the new federal theater was a place they could go after graduating, if they could not get a teaching job. So it's a struggle, yes. It's still a struggle, yes. We are doing conversations Tuesdays in June. These are conversations with people who are now well known in the world of acting and directing that started at New Federal Theater. Did you define your work? Is it political? What do you do? Are you a political theater? No. Each play is about, I guess that's everywhere. It's about its content and how it touches people. If it's a political love story, then we look at it as a love story, and that's what we deal with. If it's a political drama slash drama, we look for the dramatic structure and conflict in the play, not any political statement. So I don't know, when you say political, I would say the murder of George Floyd is political, but the story is his brother and family. It is not about the cops. It is not about anyone other than, say, his girlfriend, maybe, his child, his son, that must grow up without a father. Those are the plays that we look for. Political, no, I don't get involved in that. For example, I don't think a play about I don't want to say Bush. I'm Democrat, so I don't get involved in political plays. In this time of corona, where you said you look through your books, your articles, and your writing plays, in this time, did something in you change? Do you have a different awareness of having been confined at home for almost three months? Do you feel for you, also as a person, something has happened?  No, no, something has changed. I can look around my apartment and whoa, I've got in my office here, I had, I think, three boxes of first editions. I think I said that earlier. I never knew I had that many books, those first editions. I had maybe one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten shelves of books. My wife may have five or six shelves, so you go down the hallway. It's books, it's books. And in the years that I've been in this business, I've read almost all of these books. So I've come to a conclusion that there are so many, a book is only a series of ideas by one person. And if you absorb them and listen to them, they will tell you a direction. They will give you an indication that this has happened before. This pandemic might have taken another shape or form, but it has happened before. So you better, I don't want to say better, you better be aware of it has happened before. The worst thing of all is if you are not aware that it has happened before. And so being at home, being observant, going through all this work, and your wife, my wife really has to do it. And we've never been confined for three months. We've never been in one space, and we talk about everything. We may talk about politics. We may talk about an artist, and we may talk a great deal about the discussions of rapping with artists, the Tuesdays in June, about the wonderful journey of S.C. Pater Murkerson, the wonderful journey of Ruben Santiago-Huckson. These are journeys, and you said, whoa, man. And we'll talk about that. And they started off in New Federal. What did you think? You really made a great contribution. Do you think, I mean, in the moment we experience as theater makers, we are not essential. Everything is shut down. On the contrary, we would now contribute to the virus, to the spread of it. Normally, we don't have money. We don't have space now. Now it is even more obvious. Do you think when everything opens, theater is really needed? Do we need, I'm not just asking it rhetorically, but what are you saying? Why do we need theater? Well, we need art. Art nourishes us. Whether it's a sculpture by Otto Niels, a painting by Camille Yarborough. We need that. That nourishes us. We can look at that and it makes you feel something. When you go to a play, we need to see ourselves somehow reflected in the statement of the images that is projected on stage. We need a raise in the sun. We need to know that Claudia McNeil, oh, she's very similar to my grandmother.  We need a sister like Ruby Dee, who was in that play, or a brother like Sidney Poitier. We need a reaffirmation. Art reaffirms who we are. And affirmation is the key to existing here in America.  You know, peaceful riots happen at night because we don't have art or music or theater anywhere in our lives. We don't have anything that reaffirms who we are. So we will assume, which is a terrible thing to do, that I'm out here alone. So if I knock this window in and break in tomorrow night at this rally and steal a ham or steal something, it's not going to last more than a day. So I say, wow, they don't have a reaffirmation. They don't have an identity. Art solidifies one's identity. You know, James Baldwin is the fire next time. I don't know, and nobody knows my name, if Beale Street could talk. Johnny Williams, Captain Blackman. I'm just throwing these out where I read them and there is a reaffirmation in them. And that's what I try to do in my art. I looked at a film I made that was streamed yesterday from the Museum of Modern Art called Right On, starring the original Last Poets. And with the advent of television, Felipe Luciano, who was in that film as a young man, maybe 18 or 19, as one of the Last Poets, did an introduction. And I looked at him now and in the film. And he's in Puerto Rico. So Art, again, Frank, to answer your question, I hope I got it. But I think Art is a reaffirmation solidifies one's identity. And in terms of identity in America, one could say, and James Baldwin said this, if you don't know who you are, and where you are, and what you are, you will root for all the Indians being killed by Gary Cooper. If you know who you are, you will realize, wait a minute, I'm the Indians. I'm, you know, I wouldn't be rooting for Gary Cooper. But the story is about Gary Cooper.  Some white guy wrote this story. And that's what it's about. And that's why I'm involved in the arts. It's told by me and some black writers. And people come because they see a reaffirmation. Now after, I guess, 1971 or two, that film I made and produced is just as fresh as it was then we did it then with the last poets. Yeah, no, you made a great, great contribution to American art and American theater. And I think you're your advice, you know, about that art, actually, in a way, since everybody talks about defunding police, yeah, take some of that money and put it into art. It keeps us a healthy society and good society. So now, of course, we do need a police, you know, domestic violence or other things, you know, we need some kind of a civic force. But not how it is now on that art makes a contribution, especially also in New York City, that makes the city what it is. We are coming closer, you know, to our end. I mean, two more questions. One is your colleagues now, let's say Nigel Smith at the Flea, Thomas McCrory at the National Black Theater, the Classical Theater of Harlem. How are the young writers or the next generation, the Susan Laurie Parks, Len Nodig, Katori Hall, Thomas Spretcher and everybody, how are you in contact with them? Do you feel this is now the next generation doing their thing? Are there crossovers? Well, Jonathan McCrory at the National Black Theater, we are, I was very close with Barbara and Tyr, who founded the National Black Theater. I think the Flea, I'm not in contact with them because they do, they did mostly quite plays. Who else did you say? Nigel Smith, who's now took over and the other one is the Classical Theater of Harlem or others. Also the contemporary Black playwrights and all of it. Do you feel you are part of, is that a living structure, you know, of Black theater in New York? Or is it because the city is so big and so vast that there are also islands producing their work? Well, I think there are islands producing their work. I think you're right. Ty Jones at the Classical Theater of Harlem to produce outdoor theater at Mount Marsh Park, I think is wonderful. I just think it's absolutely wonderful. What does he do in the winter? His summer theater program is awesome. But he's always looking for a space and funding for his theater. I don't think the Flea is in our league. I think we are about something else. Playwrights want to get that work done. They just want to see it. They just want to see the play up there. A lot of times the ego is not ready to be put up there. A lot of times it's ready. And they don't have the personnel.  They don't have a producer who can talk to them about it. Art takes conversation, you know, whether it's over coffee. In the old days it would be in the coffee houses. In the new days it's over beer. In the new days it's over dinner. But it takes conversation. You got to talk about a piece of art. You got to talk about why this play really works. But I don't have the money to do it. So the writer don't leave thinking you hated this play or her play. You got to tell them. And I think that's what's missing. And sitting across from them is very difficult. It's very difficult sitting across from them when you really want to do a play and don't have the money to do it. And it's very difficult to do, say, Ty Jones doing a piece about the classical theater of Harlem, a piece of Shakespeare. And it's really wonderful, but he doesn't have the money to do it. A classical play, a Shakespeare or some classical work. Yeah, no, I think you really point out that there has to be a funding structure in places about our Black National Theater, so who made such a great contribution. There's an expression of arts of people who of course live here, but also in the world, you know, theater, the innovations and the contributions, they have made a unique way to see what we call life or to experience life and to create meaning. But also he said, yeah, we need to talk. It's about conversations. And I hope all this is over. And there will be many, many talks. There will be no ways of funding, also structural fundings of places and organizations, less projects oriented. And then we all look a little bit closer in how the distribution of resources for making art are made at the moment in America. And as you point out, and so many others, and also this DIY theater movement and all of it says, no, it's not just, it's not right. And it represents what is actually what's wrong. As a closing question, we often do that to the young artists, the people who might not be listening or to yourself when you were a young man coming from Detroit and coming to New York. What would you say to artists now at the moment if they are thinking about creating art, they're getting through Corona, through confinement, so in the lockdown, what do you think is of real importance, what is meaningful, what we all should be keeping in mind? Reading, reading. You must read. Young artists must read. I would advise reading American Theater Magazine that will tell you what's going on in the theater across America. Read, read, read. And a young artist, a young black artist, he's got the Schomburg here. He's got Lincoln Center Library. He's got all these places with nothing but books in history. You got to be aware, you got to know in which direction you want to go and books will lead you there. You can't come in and wing it. You can't wing it anymore. You got to have a direction and I think you can get so busy working and doing something and end up saying, oh wow, this was wrong. I should have done this differently, but it's right there in the book. It's right there in the act of prepares by Stanislavski. It's right there in any of those books, you know? Yeah, and it is something what we can do and what we can control at the moment and reading and perhaps also writing will become something that we also have again a closer look. Well, do you thank you so much? We should do that every day and here we are scratching the surface, but I think we get an idea, a full idea of what you did, what you stand for, that long history, that significant history and also making New York what it is as a center. So your contribution is tremendous and I do hope that there will be ways to make funding for Black Theater easier and to recognize it as a significant normal part of the landscape of American theater and that we get away from the highly, highly commercial theater. And as I sometimes say, even the great chefs, who have the $300 menu restaurants, they now know we should have a bistro restaurant where it's so great food, but it's affordable. People can come together, families can come and enjoy. And I think that great, great big industry of Broadway that also produces so many jobs and has five, six, seven billions of revenues. Also, we should find a way to distribute it also money from the US government. There's no ministry of culture here. It's a shocking. We just learned that the first thing that was a narrow in Brazil that the new president, he dismantled the ministry of culture and destroyed any funding for potential critical voices or voices that as you really can say, they affirm, create an affirmation of who we are, where we come from and where we are going to. So this was a most significant contribution. Really, really thank you for being with us. This is the end of this week's talk. Next week again, we take a flight across the world. We had this week four New York artists and Jean-Luc Nossi, the French philosopher, who talked to us about why we do need art. But next week, we go back to our format and we have Peter Schumann with us as an American representative, the great, great Peter Schumann from the Breton Puppets Theater in Vermont. We'll talk to us about theater, about protests, about puppets, about life and the meaning of it all. We will have Govren Rubin and Terrence Colorado from Malaysia, a theater company, a great theater company, partly also working with Australians who also have once been here and hear about how they experience Corona. Brilliant Tanya Bruguera, performance artist also, an installation artist from Cuba. Very, very strong politically engaged artist, Tanya Bruguera will be joining us. Hope Azeda from Rwanda, who did important work also after the genocide in Rwanda, the reconciliation work. And so Hope Azeda will talk to us how it feels, what it means to be the working artist in Rwanda at the moment in Africa. And then Saman Amini, a refugee from Iran who landed in the Netherlands and went to an acting school and then created a work of his own, a place, a table is one of his works. So he will tell us what it means to an Iranian refugee to come to another place, another town, and to create art and also in the in the time of Corona. Thank you for howl around for allowing us to have our Seagull Talks with them each day and in the week. It's a big commitment. So we thank VJ, CI, Travis, and my Seagull team, Andy, and San Young. And again, Woody, really thank you for joining us and it's something everybody should listen to in the community and also reach out to you and help you to also get back. How is the outlook? Will you survive? Will the New Federal Theater survive? We'll see. It's not clear, right? It would be tragic. There are some estimation that a third perhaps of all non-profits might close. We don't know what will happen. It's a time of uncertainty, but as we all know, it is significant access to the arts, access to health, access to education, our human rights, and this is what a society has to do for its citizens. So thank you all and I hope to see you all again next week. Thank you for our listeners for taking such significant time out of their days. Thank you, Woody, and bye-bye. Good reading. Bye-bye.


Wow. Look at all of that. Look at this guy here with a brand new studio. Very echo. I apologize. I ordered acoustic foam to hopefully dampen some of this echo, but it hasn't arrived yet. But I'm not gonna wait any longer to make videos. I'm already way too late at making this video. Let's just get to the topic, shall we? I know you're all trying to look at the new... I didn't realize you had so many Switch games. That's gonna be the comment.  Don't worry. I feel the same. When I was putting everything on the shelves, I thought everything was going to fit on these four. That was just the Switch, and then I had to buy four more just to put out everything else. I'm just bragging at this point. Let's get to the topic of this video. Nintendo, if you clicked on this, I hope you're still paying attention because this is directed straight at you. And your recent game, Mario Strikers, as well as your other recent sport titles while we're at it. I know what a lot of the comments are going to say. I am not salty with Nintendo in general. That's not why I'm making this video. In fact, if you look online, 95.7% of people I made that statistic up probably agree. Mario Strikers is not worth $60, and Nintendo really aren't putting enough content in their recent Mario sport games. I don't think that's an outlandish hot take for me to say. I think it's just the general consensus of the Internet. So no, I'm not salty. I love Nintendo. In fact, Nintendo Switch Sports that just released, I didn't say a single bad word about it.  And at least it was $10 cheaper than normal. But Mario Strikers was the full $60 price tag. The big question being, will it have enough content to be worth that $60? The reason why we were worried about that is because we had just gone through Mario Tennis and Mario Golf while Nintendo did try to add a story mode to pump it up with a little bit of extra content and then even supported it with a couple DLC packages later down the line. They still weren't really full of enough content to justify the price. I really didn't want to have that happen with Strikers. Speaking of Mario Strikers battle league, you know what? I'm always in a constant battle striking down day to day Internet hackers. Well, actually, no, because I use express VPN. I never have to deal with Internet hackers ever. Yeah, look, I just moved states. So technically, my actual IP address has officially changed for good. But I still want to be able to change it constantly to my heart's content for a multitude of reasons to start with privacy. Yeah, I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember postcards, but you would put a postcard in the mail and it was just the thing. So anyone that was handling it could just read everything you wrote on it. And that's essentially using the Internet without express VPN because express VPN creates a secure tunnel between your device and the Internet. I put in the postcard in the envelope. It'll help protect you from hackers who are trying to steal your private information and prevent them from gaining access to your passwords, financial details, or even your emails. You might be sat there thinking, I don't care about my privacy. I want the whole world to see everything I do online. All right, good for you.  Many websites or apps are blocked or restricted, depending on where you are in the world. I'm sure you've ran into this before or even like on Netflix where you want to watch a show, but it's not on Netflix anymore. Good chances. UK still has Rick and Morty or Modern Family. So just switch that little geolocation and now you're there watching whatever shows you want to watch. You pay for it. Why shouldn't you be able to watch them? And you can get three months for free right now by clicking the link in the description box below or going to expressvpn.com forward slash beat em ups. All right, let's keep going. Out of all the Mario sports games, Strikers was easily one of my favorites, if not my actual favorite. I mean, yeah, the original Mario Strikers had challenge modes where each of the characters had their own specific challenges you could compete in, but that was about as extra as the content got. But then again, the Mario Golf and tennis games didn't used to have a story mode or any extra content either. And then look at the switch titles. Nintendo tried with Mario Golf.  And then Mario Tennis's story was actually kind of sick. It had its own overworld and cut scenes where Wario and Waluigi unleash a cursed tennis racket upon the mushroom kingdom.  They really tried. So what were they going to do with Strikers? I was wondering, what extra modes? What would they do with the story? I'll cut to the chase. No, they didn't do, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, nothing. And actually there's less content because there's not even challenge modes at this time. You have the regular game of soccer, which is about three to four minutes long. And then you have Cup Mode, which is just playing that a bunch of times to see who wins over a bunch of games rather than just one and done. The content just isn't there. And Nintendo, why? You can't keep, well you can. You can do what you want. You're Nintendo and I'll keep buying everything that you make. You can't keep releasing these Mario sport games with lackluster effort. It would be fine even if this Mario Strikers, the core game was incredible, right? Like one of the best things you've ever played. And no matter how many times you dive in and you play that three minute mode, it's just as fun as it was the time before. That would be fine. But even that comes with its own flaws. Like when you go to play online, you can play with another friend online, just one, if you want to go in and play co-op. And that's it. There is a way to do four player online since there's four characters. But for some reason, Nintendo still can't figure out how gamers actually play games online. This video I'm making right now feels very much like a 2006 rant video. I literally finished sitting everything up yesterday. I was like, I could spend a couple extra days. I could write a script. I could really flesh out my ideas. Or I could kind of just half bake the video and throw something together so that people that are waiting for content can actually get something. Then I realized that's actually kind of perfect because that's exactly what Nintendo did with Mario Strikers. But if you want to play with four players online, you need two separate places. This isn't even, this is hard to explain. Two people have to play locally and connect their switches together, then pair up online with another group of two people doing the same thing. Because we're still in 1995 with Nintendo online. You have to add people on the Switch friend list, then make a lobby, and then they have to manually search for your lobby to get in. It was the same in Nintendo Switch sports. This just seems to be Nintendo's way of doing things. There are a ton of games on Switch that have voice communication within the game itself, friend invite systems. It just doesn't make any sense that Nintendo refuses to play along with any of the current day online features. Especially now when they have a pretty expensive online premium system getting way, way, way off base here. Let's pull it back and talk about the game. This is the last time I'm going to say it. The game has no content. You can pick it up. You can play the base game for a couple hours and an hour. In fact, technically for four minutes, you can play this game and experience everything the game has to offer. Nintendo, I don't think you should go down the route of putting out something that's bare bones minimum and then relying on DLC updates to fix it later like what Halo and Microsoft are doing. I know Mario Golf had a couple of DLC packages, but it really didn't add that much.  It's crazy to me that they are the same company that will spend five, six, seven years making a Zelda until it's perfect and delaying it at all costs because they know that Zelda and Metroid and Mario needs to be perfect. But with their sport games, they literally have the opposite sentiment. Just get it out there and we'll just DLC update it later, which they're not good at. I guess Nintendo make enough money from these sport games for this not to be a problem. Drikers sales haven't exactly been incredible. And right now as I stand here on Twitch, it's got 500 viewers right now. It is tied with American truck simulator for views on Twitch. That's pretty telling. It's a sports game. It's perfect for Twitch. I hope I've made my point on the content really quickly. I'm going to talk about the game itself. Just like in my cyberpunk review, I trashed on the game and talked about in specific detail why the game at its core was bad. And then I didn't talk about all the glitches until right at the end of the video because I didn't want people to get confused between the glitches making the game bad and the game just being bad. So I don't want to make this the focus because I think it's more important that we focus on the fact that the content isn't there. And that's why this game is bad because this part is just my opinion. And my opinion is that the game itself is actually pretty, pretty mediocre, pretty bad. Not bad. Okay. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. I take it back. I take it back. I take it back. The first thing I'm going to say is on launch day, I posted a clip on Twitter of me uninstalling the game. People did not like that. A lot of people thought that I was uninstalling it because I was just bad at the game. That's not the case. I sat there and I went through all the tutorials on stream. And even in the tutorials, I was not having a good time. And then I jumped into some online games and I won some and I lost some. But at the end of the day, even when I was winning, I wasn't having fun. And for me, even when I'm losing in a game, I should be having fun. When I play Mario Party for 40 minutes with my friends and then I lose at the end because I didn't get enough stars, I guarantee you I had an amazing time playing that game regardless of the outcome. A good game should be good even if you're losing. So when people say you're just bad at it, that's why you hate it. That is a terrible argument because even if I was bad at it, if the game was good and fun, I'd be having fun. You can still enjoy the game just because I don't like it doesn't mean that you can't like it. So it has 74 on Metacritic despite the fact that someone, the Daily Star gave it a 10 out of 10. They gave it a 100. I think we can all laugh at that, right? This game is perfect. This game has nothing wrong with it. I'm never trusting Daily Star with anything. But the review I find interesting was actually the very last one. GameRadar gave it a 50 and I would agree with that. I actually already had like an average five out of 10 score in my mind, but their review is perfect. Though occasionally likable and basically inoffensive, which is not what you want to hear about anything. Let's say back in my high school days, right? I was dating a girl and I was going to break up and I started by saying, look, although you're occasionally likable and basically inoffensive, that's not a compliment. Mario Strikers Battle League struggles to build on its ideas and ends up feeling pretty undercooked as an experience. Yep. That's exactly it. I loved Mario Strikers on GameCube. It was a blast 15 years ago. They did not build upon or improve the core formula at all. It's still just Mario characters on the battlefield, tackling, passing and shooting. And while the animations are pretty sick, once you've seen Donkey Kong's finisher animation three times in a match, you're just going to want to start skipping. And thankfully, all the animations can be skipped and are skipped by anyone you play online. You will never see an animation. There's not really much to say about the gameplay. Some people have tried to say it's complex. I think the most complex thing about it is just getting a hang of what the heck is going on at any given time.  That's literally me trying to follow the ball and Mario Strikers Battle League. I got no idea what's going on. It looks to me like a mini game in Mario Party.  You're supposed to time kick the ball to each other, but the distance between characters are like a nanosecond. And when you're passing to yourself, that's not too bad. But when you're playing online, you not only have to be constantly expecting a pass, but on top of that, the lag is pretty brutal online. Sometimes you'll get into decent matches that aren't too bad, but some are like seconds of lag. Bob even posted a clip to Twitter of him pressing A a few times, then letting go and doing something else. And then after a few seconds, the input lag catched up and his character Waluigi kicked the ball yet again, that goes into Nintendo's online system being kind of trash. And for anyone saying it's not that hard to see, you're just getting really old because you're like over 30 and a boomer. Yes, that's true. That is true. I am struggling a lot with my cognitive abilities as I grow old. But like one of the only options in the settings menu is to turn on assist mode so that you can see things easier because at any given time, you'll be number like one, two, five or eight. And when you pick a team, it makes you all the same color already. So I've got a red one above my head. I'm wearing a red Guernsey as Luigi. Everyone else is red. My buddy has a red number. And I'm supposed to know what character I am and who I am while also trying to follow the ball and the other characters who are just constantly tackling and throwing endless items at me. OJ Essence put this best when he said it's not a soccer game. It's a fighting game. OJ loves the game. So that was actually a comment in the game's favor, but that's kind of my problem with the game. No offense because OJ is a great friend of mine. Maybe the fact that it's out of chaos is what makes it fun. But for me, it's just too hard to track what's happening.  He'll have shots hit him right on his shoulder and he'll darier it and just decide to write as the ball goes by. That's if it's my boom, boom because the other player's boom, boom is always the kind of guy that would just fall on, save the president, dive no matter where the ball is going. The whole experience to me is just very frustrating.  I wish I could get better. I've got tutorials, which no one likes doing, and then I've got the game. That's all I got. I can't play online because I'm just going to get smoked repeatedly and that's not fun, so I can't learn there. And then the offline mode is just the same thing as the online, but with NPCs. What I'm saying is if there was a story mode to play through or even a challenge mode or something that ramped up in difficulty or really anything that Mario Tennis had, it would at least give me an opportunity to play something that's fun that feels like it has progression while I learn how to get better at the game rather than my only option being just to get smoked online. Also, I was pretty early at posting that tweet, uninstalling it, and uninstalling it is mostly a meme. The only reason I posted it was to get a reaction, of course. People don't even have the game yet. I got it early and they were telling me my opinion on the game they haven't played was wrong. And then once the game came out, the comments on that post started to change pretty drastically. It's not just me. Usually when a game comes out and I don't like it and I have nothing good to say, I don't make the video. I've told you guys that so many times. The reason why I'm making this video is because I am pretty sick of these sport games not getting the love and care that they deserve and $60 for a bare bones game is not something we would let any other company get away with. Last of us getting remade caused the internet to go into a fury. That naughty dog would dare to charge $70 for that. But Nintendo does the exact same thing. Essentially charges $60 and releases it. And you have people defending that. Then the game dies off in a few days. Then no one talks about it anymore until it gets a DLC. And then they talk about it for like a day. And then the game is gone. And that Mario Strikers that we all fought for that we all wanted so badly. This is that. To me, that's super sad. I don't think there's anything we could do about it. We can't change it. Everyone's either bought the game or not bought the game. Maybe Nintendo will prove me wrong and release. I don't even know what kind of DLC you would need. Tons of extra modes, a story mode, a whole new game, essentially, for free to make it worth the price. If other companies can't get away with it, why does Nintendo always get away with it? Nintendo treat the sport games like you treat the Zelda games and they would be incredible. That's just my thoughts on the game. I appreciate you and I love you. Like the video, subscribe. I will be going back to scripted content as well as random stuff that I make and the, you know, whatever it is I usually do on this channel. Let me just get in the groove and feel it out. And I hope in the meantime this video was sufficient for you guys. I wanted to say something about the game. So that was what was in my heart.


Today I want to talk about this sentiment out there that Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild, etc. have killed the Zelda franchise. I think it's a little overblown, but we're going to have a conversation on this because I just saw this article over on Metro.co.uk a few days ago that I think is just worth talking about. Now, notably it was posted on April 1st, but it doesn't appear reading through it that it's like some April Fool's prank. It's really honest feelings I think from this author, and I've seen these feelings represented by other Zelda fans as well, so I want to talk about it, but before we do, I want to remind you that we're on our way to 100,000 subscribers. We're almost there guys. If we happen to get there before Tears of the Kingdom, we'll be giving away a Zelda Switch OLED, we'll also be giving away a Collector's Edition of the game, and much more. Now, looking at this article it says the Zelda games I love are dead, and Tears of the Kingdom killed them. Again, the premise is really interesting because I don't understand how we can say that the old school style Zelda games are dead. We did get Link's Awakening remade. I know we haven't had a new Zelda game in between, but I don't think we're just going to be waiting five, six years between Zelda games. There's going to be more, but let's just be fair and give the article a little read here. It says, a reader is unhappy with the new gameplay footage of Tears of the Kingdom and worries that the original formula for the series is gone forever. So he says, I get it. I really do. Zelda Breath of the Wild was the most successful entry by a mile, and so naturally Nintendo would want to make a follow up that was similar and not go back to the classic Zelda formula. From a business point of view it makes perfect sense, but as a long time Zelda fan I watched the new 10 minute Tears of the Kingdom gameplay video and it was everything I didn't want to see. I can appreciate the whole fusing concept is very clever and difficult to do, but for me it just seemed to double down on all the parts I didn't like about Breath of the Wild. I know people will say I should embrace the changes of the last game, but the problem is not only is Breath of the Wild's formula completely different to classic Zelda, but Nintendo is not making any new games in the old style anymore. It's 10 years since the last brand new Zelda using the original formula. With a link between worlds on 3DS, I can argue Triforce Zeroes, but we'll let it go. It's 12 years since the last big budget 3D game with Skyward Sword. We've had a few remakes and remasters since then, but nothing actually new. And now I'm worried that if Tears of the Kingdom is also a big success, that we never will. Everything I love about Zelda is being marginalized or removed completely, and I can't help but be upset at it. I've seen people complaining about breakable weapons this week, but my problem with that is not that it's annoying, although it is, but that it feels so un-Zelda-like. The Master Sword is Link's main weapon, and while he does use others occasionally for specific purposes, that's his Excalibur. I don't want Zelda to turn into a survival game where I've got to constantly be picking up resources and cooking meals and making arrows. For the majority of its life, Zelda has been about 3 things. Exploration, puzzle solving, and combat. And none of those work well in Breath of the Wild. I highly disagree with that take. I think Breath of the Wild has some of the most brilliant puzzles, some of the most breathtaking combat, and exploration wise, maybe the best exploration in the entire series. But again, personal opinions. The new games certainly have exploration, but it's very aimless, and because of the open world design, there's never any guarantee of a reward. Korok Seeds and Shrines are kind of the rewards, the scenery, learning about the history of Hyrule, finding runes, there was plenty of rewards in my opinion, but again, this is a personal take. You might find a new area and an interesting bit of treasure, or you might not. It depends on where you happen to go, and that's the point of exploration. Literally, that's the point of exploration. If you always found something all the time, then what is the point of exploring? You're just guaranteed to find things all the time. Going to this corner of the map and not having anything there, that's also part of exploration. We'll just leave that alone, moving on. Combat in Breath of the Wild is very different from the norm.  It's not that different. I can argue the slow-down bow mechanic is different, and obviously all the various abilities are, but basic combat beyond breakable weapons isn't that different if we're completely honest. Let's just fight for a moment. Even with all the different weapons, which begs the question of why have them, because they break and they want to give you variety in your combat, but that's not the end of there, but the boss battles are terrible. I could agree there. Two samey. They're all basically the same. I will note the one in the Gerudo Desert. That one's a... I want to say that samey, visually samey, but a significantly more difficult fight, anyways, going on. Unlike all the varied and imagined bosses of previous games, that is a very fair criticism. The biggest issue for me, though, is the puzzle solving and the lack of dungeons. This whole aspect of Zelda is just a shadow of itself in Breath of the Wild, with very brief shrines, but there's 120 of them. Like, there's a lot of... There's almost more puzzles in Breath of the Wild than any other game, but anyways. Half are just mini-bosses, and four very subpar mini-dungeons for the Divine Beast. The dungeons should be the beating heart of a Zelda game, but now they're just a minor aside, most of which can easily be left out entirely. Breath of the Wild just isn't a Zelda game, as far as I'm concerned, and here's the kingdom looks even less like one. I'm sure the fusing is all very clever from a technical point of view, but it seems like it's going to be very fussy and fiddly in practice. I didn't like this stuff in Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts. Nobody did. The game was a big flop, and I definitely don't want it in Zelda. I think this is way beyond what happens in Nuts and Bolts, but I actually played Nuts and Bolts. I don't know how many of you have. It was a pretty limited feature in the game. It was the obvious problem is that now there's no proper solution for any of the situations you find yourself in. They aren't puzzles you have to figure out. They are an obstacle you have to fudge your way around, seeing how you can manipulate the physics engine in your favor. I haven't played the game yet, obviously, but it's the way these physics-based sandbox games always work. I have no interest in them. There's also an intended solution to all these puzzles, by the way. You saw this in the shrines. There's the intended solution, and then the craziness you could pull off with the physics engine to work around the intended solution. So I mean, okay. Most people consider that to be fun. Anyways, if they had called these games something else, make them a new franchise and carry down with proper Zelda series, I'd be fine. But now they're doubling down on all the things I didn't like, and I don't know if I'll ever see the Zelda I love again. Now, here's my take on this. And obviously, Metro UK chose to publish this article. I think that, obviously, Breath of the Wild is a massive departure from traditional Zelda, as is Tears of the Kingdom. But also, Breath of the Wild is massively popular and sold way more than any prior Zelda game. What they did with this new concept for Zelda is they decided that, you know what, we've been doing the same formula for 30 plus years. And in 30 plus years, we have failed to even get Zelda popular enough to crack that 10 million base. Clearly, something about the way we're doing Zelda games isn't working to hit that next wave in the market. We just keep hitting on the same core fans over and over and over again. I mean, it was to the point that Zelda wasn't even guaranteed to sell four million copies. Let's let that sink in for a moment. Zelda games not being guaranteed to sell four million copies. I mean, that's less than Kirby in the Forgotten Land. Imagine Zelda selling less than that. So when you sit back and you think about this from a logical perspective, clearly they felt like they needed to try something drastic and take Zelda in a new direction. And yes, Breath of the Wild is a departure in many ways. It keeps some of the same elements. You do have some of the same combat scenarios, the enemies, the world. You even have a lot of the puzzles. There's block pushing puzzles and a whole bunch of different types of puzzles if we're completely honest, some of which stumped many of us for a while. I think that obviously, Well, Breath of the Wild is my favorite game of all time and I have a severe bias. I've played and beaten every Zelda game, including the CDI ones. And to me, well, nothing this person is saying is true. I also don't think they're not going to get traditional Zelda games anymore. I want to make this clear just because we haven't had one this generation. I think a lot of that is because they were sort of training Grezzo to work on traditional Zelda-style games. So I think After Tears of the Kingdom, the next Zelda we're going to get is going to be a brand new top-down Zelda game. They proved themselves with Triforce Heroes, which opposite didn't sell as well, but then Link's Awakening, they proved themselves doing that remake. I think we're getting a top-down Zelda game soon. Now maybe you could decry, we're not going to get a traditional 3D-style Zelda game and I understand that, but I also think you need to look at video games to not be in a bubble. Overtime video games need to expand. Overtime video games need to try new things. To stay relevant for as long as the Zelda series has, it has to keep trying new. And right now that new is the way Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have gone and it's worked to massive success in sales. So yeah, they're not going to go away from this for a while. Why would they? Just like when a Link to the Past set up the basic Zelda formula that every game has followed after until Breath of the Wild, Breath of the Wild has now set up the new standard formula for what they're going to be doing for Zelda games for the next 10, 20 years. And I know that that's disappointing for some, but also they had to. Zelda wasn't becoming as big as it deserved to be. You know, they changed up the formula with Mario as well and it's led to massive successes over the years. And they've done this with many other IPs that have needed a shakeup. Look, look what they did with Kirby in the Forgotten Land. They needed to shake up Kirby to hit that next tier of sales. And they did and it worked. This is what you have to do to maintain IP relevance. You can't just always live in the past. Nobody's taking those old Zelda games away from you, but you need to understand that they want to, they are a for-profit business, right? They want to bring the series forward. They want to bring in new audiences. I'll give you an example. My kids had zero interest in the old Zelda games. I tried to get them into it, but they're really into Breath of the Wild. So is my fiance who also doesn't like the old Zelda games. See, hitting on a new audience isn't a bad thing, even if it makes you feel like you're being left behind. But I also don't think you're gonna be completely left behind. I think we just need to have some patience. I think Grezzo is the team working on that next Zelda that you're gonna like and everything's gonna be fine. Maybe you end up not getting your next Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess, your big dungeon heavy game. But I also think Zelda relying so heavily on dungeons might have been one of the things holding it back. Like exploration is so fun in Breath of the Wild and likely even more fun in Tears of the Kingdom. I can't imagine going back at this point. And this is someone who's been a long time a Zelda fan. Like yes, give me some in-between traditional Zeldas. Sure, to fill in the gaps, but I personally can't imagine like when it comes to the big 3D open world Zeldas, like going back to a dungeon heavy game. And a lot of you guys do want dungeons. And by the way, I'm cool with dungeons being in Tears of the Kingdom, but in the past, it really just felt like you were going dungeon to dungeon to dungeon to dungeon. That was the game. I don't want that. I don't want Tears of the Kingdom to boil down to we have nine dungeons and your goal in this game is just to go from one to the other to the other to the other to the end of the game. And I don't think that's going to be the case. The world is so massive, it's impossible for the game to be like, oh yeah, we just got nine dungeons and that's the point of the game. But I would like to see dungeons included. I just, I think that there is this inherent separation that's existed since Breath of the Wild came out between traditionalists and people that are ready for the change. And I've been ready for this change for a long time. And I love, I even love Skyward Sword. It's one of my favorite Zelda games. But even I could admit, you know what? When Breath of the Wild happened, I was there, man. The people who think it's not a Zelda game, I just think are wrong, are not open to embracing change. And in the end, they're free to have their opinions. And I think they're still gonna end up getting their Zelda games. Anyways, you guys let me know your thoughts on this down in the comments below. I am Nathaniel Ruffaljantz and I'll catch you in the next video.


The Montero Medical Mission arrived on the island on Saturday, September 16th. The US Mission is headed by its founding member and President, Dr. Juan Montero. The mission will be providing dental care to patients who have been assessed and registered at the dental clinics around the island via appointment. The medical team will be providing services such as cleanings, fillings and extractions at each of the dental clinics from September 18th to September 20th. During a brief ceremony and a training session on Sunday, September 17th, Dr. Juan Montero described the delegation's experience on island so far as a tremendous blessing for the 12-year-old medical mission. I call it like a unique, ultimate situation in the mission work for all the things that we have received so far, starting during our arrival and that events will get together last night, attended by the who is who here in St. Lucia and the Routarians and the Lions. And so I look forward to the following days when we are here for a week of helping our beloved people here in St. Lucia, which I am now also a friend and hoping to be a friend forever. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, Ms. Jenny Daniel, said oral health is one of the key pillars of health and wellness and reaching the goal of a healthy population requires a support and partnership with public and private entities. Dental care, unfortunately, is often, very often overlooked as a pillar of health care in St. Lucia, not just in St. Lucia, in other parts of the world as well. In the past, however, the examination of the oral health of a person's, well, oral health of individuals was often used as a measure of good health or poor health conditions in an individual. If we use this same measure, then addressing oral health care is actually a pathway through which we can channel an improvement in a person's state of health, even in terms of the, well, the clinical well-being as well as the mental well-being as well. She added that in St. Lucia, as with several other countries, access to oral health care is prohibited by the cost of treatment. However, early initiation into proper oral hygiene could reduce on the need for costly treatment. The mission, she says, complements the Ministry's ongoing efforts in the area of health reform aimed at giving greater access to basic health services. While in St. Lucia, the medical mission will also be engaging all 77 primary schools on the island on a call-get-virtual van tour. The Val Refletcher, Curriculum Officer for Health and Family Life Education at Camdo, explains that the virtual van tour is being executed via the Zoom platform from Monday, September 18th to Wednesday, September 20th. It has been organized in such a way so that all 77 primary schools on the island can be part of it, but every school is grouped. So, hence the reason why we have the three days, and also to accommodate the students, we also have more than one session on the day. So we begin from 10 a.m. online, so we have half an hour session, half an hour lesson, so from 10 to 10.30 we have the first session, and we have another one from 10.45 to 11.15 and from 11.30 to 12. On Sunday, the mission also awarded certificates to the dental assistants who had participated in a four-month online program which focused on radiology, radiation health safety, infection control, and oral anatomy, among other topics. The Ministry of Health, Wellness, and Elderly Affairs supports the collaborative efforts of Rotary St. Lucia, Rotary Grosallye, Lions Club, the tourism sector, and the Mayor of Tasteries in welcoming the Montero Medical Mission as they provide all needed dental care to the public. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health, Wellness, and Elderly Affairs, Tulita Peter reporting.


Hello everyone, the topic for my presentation is CT findings in gallbladder carcinoma, a study from a tertiary care center in North India. Introduction. Gallbladder carcinoma is a highly malignant disease. It is the most common malaria tract malignancy. Patients usually present late when the disease is at advanced stage, so it is a very aggressive disease with poor prognosis. Gallbladder carcinoma is more common in females than in males. India contributes to 10% of global burden of this disease with highest incidence in northern, eastern, central and northeastern parts of the country. So early diagnosis of gallbladder carcinoma is the need of the R. Role of ultrasound is limited in the diagnosis of this disease, so CT is a useful modality for diagnosis as well as staging of the gallbladder carcinoma as it provides detailed information regarding the local invasion of the disease as well as the global spread and distant metastasis. So aim of the present study is to evaluate the role of CT as a non-invasive tool for diagnosis and staging of gallbladder carcinoma and to describe the spectrum of CT features of this disease. Methodology. The study was conducted on 40 patients in the department of radio diagnosis and imaging, GMC jumping. Informed carcinoma was taken from all patients. Detailed history examination was done. Inclusion criteria, patients with clinical suspicion or sonographic diagnosis of gallbladder mass were included. And exclusion criteria, patients who had undergone previous chemotherapy surgery or any intervention related to gallbladder were excluded. MDCT protocol, the patients fasted 6 to 8 hours prior to the study. All contrast was given for bauleplacification. Non-ionic, iodinated contrast, IOhexol was used as intravenous contrast agent. Non-contrast CT followed by bi- or tri-phasic CT was done. Same actual slices and multi-planar reconstruction sections were updated. Coming to images, this is the first case showing a heterogeneously enhancing mass lesion replacing the gallbladder. This is the most common pattern found in the present study. Next pattern was asymmetric mural thickening of the gallbladder wall. In this case, actual CT scan section showing asymmetric mural thickening of the body of the gallbladder and in the second case there is mural thickening involving the fundus. And third and least common pattern was polypodal mass arising from the gallbladder wall and protruding into the lumen as shown by the arrow. Infiltration of hepatic parenchyma was the most common associated feature found in the study. This is an actual CT scan section showing a mass in the gallbladder region with contiguous infiltration into the adjacent hepatic parenchyma. Similarly, in this case, this is a coronary formatted image showing mass in the gallbladder with associated polylithiasis and the lesion is seen infiltrating into the adjacent lumen parenchyma. Then patterns of extramural extension. This is a case with gallbladder carcinoma which is showing loss of fat pain with the adjacent entroduteral region. Similarly, in this case, the gallbladder mass is seen infiltrating into the adjacent head of the pantheas as well as into the diodenum. In the third case, similarly, there is the infiltration of the gallbladder mass into the diodenum. And this is another case, coronary formatted image showing asymmetric mural thickening of gallbladder with loss of fat pains with the adjacent hepatic plexus. Then biliria tract involvement was also noted in some patients with gallbladder carcinoma. If this is an actual CT scan showing asymmetric mural thickening of gallbladder, contiguous involvement of common bilita. Intrahepatic biliria dilatation was noted in this case and coronary formatted image is showing involvement of biliria confluence as well as the cystic duct. Then vascular involvement was also noted in this case is mass is seen in the gallbladder fossa with evidence of thrombosis within the right branch of the portal vein. Another case showing gallbladder mass with a periportal necrotic nodal mass causing encasement of the portal vein as well as thrombosis within the portal vein. Similarly, another case nodal mass in the periportal region is seen causing encasement and infiltration into the portal vein as well as causing encasement of the hepatic artery. Then different patterns of lymph node involvement. This is a case showing of gallbladder carcinoma showing a conglomerate necrotic periportal nodal mass causing encasement of the portal vein. In addition, peripancreatic erydeodinol nodes were also noted. Similarly, in this case, lymph nodes are seen along the celiac axis. In this case, nodes are noted along the supramizentric axis. Similarly, in this case, necrotic deiotic, pariotic, retroperitoneal lymph nodes are noted. Then patterns of metastasis found in the present study in patients with gallbladder carcinoma. This was a case with gallbladder carcinoma in which axial sections from the chest showing rounded opacities in bilateral lung fields with neural effusion. Another case with gallbladder carcinoma, there was a heterogeneous mass lesion in the right adrenu gland, suggesting metastasis. Similarly, these two cases are showing presence of hepatic metastasis. In addition, fomental metastasis was also noted in some patients with gallbladder carcinoma in the form of well-defined rounded fomental nodules. In the results of the present study, among the 40 patients included in the study, 65% were females and 35% were males. The most common age group involved was 61 to 70%. 61 to 70 years. Then polylatesis was seen in 62.5% of cases. Then three patterns of the lesion were seen in the present study. The most common was a mass replacing the gallbladder, seeing in 62.5% and another was wall thickening of the gallbladder and the least common was polypartil mass. Associated features noted were hepatic infiltration, involvement of the introdiodinum, pancreatic, colonic, bilary and vascular involvement. Then TNM staging was done according to the 8th AJCC guidelines in which T1 is tumor confined to the lamina property or muscle layer. T2 is tumor extending up to the serosar, T3 is invading the adjacent organs, T4 is vascular or distant organ involvement. N1 is 1, 2, 3 nodal involvement and N4 is more than or more nodal involvement and M1 is distant metastatic involvement. In this study, T1, T2 stage was seen in 10% T3 in 24% and T4 in 66% cases. Similarly, N1 and N2 stages were seen in 25 and 55% respectively, M1 was seen in 25% cases. Histrocathological examination was done in 38 cases, of which 35 cases were proven to have gallbladder carcinoma and the most common pattern was adenocarcinoma. Two cases were xanthogranulomatosporosis status. Discussion, CT scan provides a detailed evaluation of the extent and the staging of gallbladder carcinoma, which is key factor for planning the operative procedure. In the present study, three patterns of involvement were seen. The most common was mast replacing the gallbladder, other was wall thickening pattern and the least common was polyparter lesion. Associated polylethiasis was seen in a large number of cases, which is similar to studies from North India. The most common associated feature was hepatic varenchyme infiltration, which is explained by the fact that there is a lack of the muscularis mucosia and submucosa in the gallbladder wall. Urinal pancreatic hepatic involvement was also clearly depicted by the CT in addition lymphatic and distinct organ lymphatic metastases and distinct organ metastases were also clearly depicted by the CT scan. So from the study, we can conclude that the CT is the diagnostic modality of choice for diagnosis and staging of gallbladder carcinoma, which is essential for the preoperative planning and patient management. These were the references used in the present study. Thanks.


A group of professionals, civil society groups, religious bodies, and other academia are speaking out about the 2023 elections. They are under the umbrella of Oshibajo Southwest Group. The group has appealed to President Mohamed Buhari, members of the National Assembly, and all the state governors to give credence to loyalty, competence, and patriotism by supporting Vice President Yemio Oshibajo. The group at a press conference held in Abiyoku Tadiyogun State Capitol said Professor Yemio Oshibajo remains long-awaited Nigerian messiah. Civil society groups, professional and religious bodies, youth and women organizations all are sitting to the fact that we need to elect a competent and reliable leader with proven track record of integrity, transparency, and honesty. The Vice President must chart a new course to lead this country and move us forward. He must fix and initiate a process to yield this nation by bringing together all state coders within ethnics, without ethnic and religious divide. That will be the first task, and this is a process we must all be involved in.


Early data was this. This is me testing out a 2.1 inch capacitive touch IPS display that uses RGB TCL. It's a 18-bit color display 480 by 480. So it's actually like a high resolution display, which means it doesn't use SPI It uses parallel RGB and usually that's really hard to do on my controller But the ESP32 S3 can do it I'm gonna use the ESP32 if it's got enough PSRAM and then this board this is actually in a valve board called the LCD EV and this originally came with a square display But one fun fact is almost all these 40 pin displays are the same pinout So I had to update the init code and the capacitive touch drivers a little bit different too But I got it working and that Arduino library and then circuit Python is coming up next So this is looking great getting those cool displays working one at a time that life in the age of sector and