Welcome to this video, the Ziegler-Nickels Reaction Curve Tuning Calculations. Please note, it is recommended that you view the learning object, Ziegler-Nickels Reaction Curve Process Identification Procedure, before watching this video. A popular procedure for tuning a controller is called the Ziegler-Nickels Reaction Curve Tuning Method. This mathematically based operation was developed in the 1940s. The method begins by putting the controller into the manual mode, which causes the system to be put into an open loop condition. Next, a step change is made by changing the set point to cause a 5-10% change in the controller output. The feedback signal from the sensor that measures the controlled variable is displayed on the computer monitor to show the rate at which the process responds. Called the reaction curve, three different values are obtained from the graph on the monitor. These include the process reaction rate, the unit reaction rate, and the effective delay. Viewing the graph and obtaining the values for the process reaction rate, the unit reaction rate, and the effective delay is called the process identification procedure. The process identification procedure values are used to calculate the proper PID, or proportional integral derivative, settings when tuning a controller. Three control modes of operation are commonly performed by the controller. These include proportional, or P, proportional integral, or PI, and proportional integral derivative, or PID. Using the process identification values, different calculations are performed to determine the proper setting for each mode. The controller has the ability to amplify the amount to which its output changes in proportion to the change applied to its input. Controllers can adjust the amplification either by a proportional gain setting or a proportional band setting. The proportional gain and proportional band formulas are shown here. When making calculations for the proportional integral mode, the proportional settings are different than the ones made for the proportional only mode. Therefore, different proportional formulas are used. These are the formulas for proportional gain and proportional band when in the proportional integral mode. Two different types of integral settings are commonly used on controllers. Reset time, which is measured in minutes per repeat, and reset rate, which is measured in repeats per minute. When the process is very slow, reset time is used because the repeat is measured over a period of minutes. When the process is faster, reset rate is used as the controller's integral setting. These are the formulas for the reset time and reset rate settings in the proportional integral mode. When making calculations for the proportional integral derivative, or PID mode, the proportional and integral settings are different than the ones made for the proportional only or proportional integral modes. Therefore, different proportional and integral formulas are used. The formulas for proportional gain and proportional band settings for the PID mode can be seen here. The reset time and reset rate formulas while in the PID mode can be seen here. The calculation for the proper derivative setting using the PID mode is seen here. The formulas required for performing calculations based on the modes of operation that are performed by the controller are shown in this table. Congratulations! You have completed this video, the Ziegler-Neckels Reaction Curve Tuning Calculations.


Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Trevor Burrus. And I'm Aaron Powell. Joining us today has been Dominic, founder and publisher of The Federalist, host of The Federalist Radio Hour, and writer of The Transom, a daily subscription newsletter for political insiders. He's also the co-founder of the Red State Group blog. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Ben. Good to be with you. Free Thoughts is usually a show. I think we try to be a show about deep ideas and eternal ideas, not as much politics. Our last episode. Without a large audience. Yes, exactly. That's our niche. And our last episode was about Confucius and Libertarianism. But today I think we should just talk about politics, if Aaron will oblige, you okay with that? I think so. Okay. So we are in the midst of everyone's craziest political year ever with all these things going on. And of course the big name is Trump. You wrote a piece a year ago, we're recording this in August of 2016 that did a pretty good job of predicting Trump. I'm not sure if that's changed much, but I guess I just want to ask, what is your theory of Trump? Because everyone has a theory of Trump, so what is your theory of Trump? Sure. And with apologies for the fact that just about everybody's theory involves vindicating their prior critiques of the Republican coalition or the party or ideas, what have you, everybody likes to blame the people they were already blaming for things. From my perspective, my theory of Trump and the one that I wrote about back in last August was essentially that the Republican Party has been a coalition that combined people who believed in conservative or limited government ideas from what you could generally describe as a classically liberal view of the rights of all people and the importance of limiting government's intervention in people's lives, that that ideological core was what really animated conservatives, and particularly, I would say, the Tea Party, things of that nature. At the same time, a significant portion of the Republican coalition was not particularly ideological and was much more open or thought of themselves as being on the right out of a vision that had more to do with what you might describe as white identity politics.  What it means is that they cared about protecting the entitlements that benefited their communities, and they disliked the entitlements that went to other communities. So you saw this rise in previous cycles via the various candidates who sounded populist notions when it came to economic policy. You saw it with Pat Buchanan. You saw it to a certain extent with Ross Perot. You certainly saw it with Mike Huckabee in 2008, and you saw it with Rick Santorum in 2012, all of whom broke with conservative orthodoxy on economic issues to basically espouse, well, you know, I'm for tax cuts. I might be for smaller government in some senses, but I'm definitely going to protect all the old age entitlements. I don't want to get rid of any of these redistributive things that go to the middle or the working class. You know, I'm going to defend all of those things in opposition to what you might see as the Paul Ryan agenda, which basically says, actually, we're going to go to our own white, older voters and convince them that they should have less Medicare dollars flowing their way. And so those two things were always at odds within the coalition, but you never saw anyone stand up and give voice to them. I think that what Trump was able to do with this cycle was really play the identity politics card to the hilt. And what he did in this way was show that you could succeed in that vein. If you had something that a lot of these other candidates didn't have, what's in common between Buchanan, between Huckabee and between Santorum? They're all basically Bible thumpers when it comes to the culture of war. They all have these socially conservative, traditionalist, Catholic or Baptist views that made them a lot more prone to talking about those issues when it went on, when it came to doing media than the economic side. I actually ran into Mike Huckabee recently in New York and had a conversation with him about this. And he basically said, nobody cared about my economic agenda because they just wanted to ask me about what I thought about, about gays or abortion or all these other issues. Trump didn't have that going for him. He's a very secular, maybe the most secular candidate we've ever seen nominated. Uh, this is a guy who doesn't listen. He doesn't give any actual, he doesn't make the obligatory God references, even if you're an atheist, I think we've probably never had someone run for president who say that they don't ask God for forgiveness. Like that's, that's kind of a new thing. And so in the absence of that, he was able to play to this economic agenda and at the same time, he was able to play on the concerns that a lot of white Americans have about the changing nature of the culture and the global economy, um, concern that he allowed him to sound this nostalgic, uh, taking us back to when we were great again moment. Uh, and what that really did was show to us, I think that the American political reality is maybe a lot more European than we thought that one where the, you know, the parties of the right sound more, uh, less like conservative, principled people and more like a nationalist, sometimes even xenophobic, uh, people. And, uh, and I think that Trump really showed that there was an audience for that in, in the American electorate. Now, you know, his problem is that the audience for that is maybe a third of the voting population and not enough for him to really form some kind of grand coalition we've seen in recent weeks that he's been, uh, trying to, you know, reach out with an olive branch to all of those communities that he's pissed off for the course of the preceding, uh, months and years. Uh, but I think that that is really my thesis about Trump, that the breakdown of trust, uh, in, uh, in elite institutions in, uh, in the conservative ideology that had been at the core of what the Republican Party at least pretended to stand for, for a long time, the breakdown of faith in that led the, led a portion of the Republican base that had not particularly been active in primaries in the past to come out and support someone with this, this nationalist agenda, um, that really is not about limited government.  Now, a year ago, would, would you have said, you wrote this and you still said you were, he's not going to get the nomination. Um, are you, are you really surprised or, or now that you kind of can figure it out retroactively and say, so yes, this was inevitable. So I, so I, the explanation that I wrote in August, um, since I write the trance on my right every day.  And I started saying that Trump could be the nominee, um, or that I thought that he would be the nominee, uh, in, I want to say, uh, after Thanksgiving in December. Um, and part of the reason that I thought that or that what changed my mind was seeing the response to, um, activity, basically the, the terrorist activity and, and general sort of concern about the world, seeing those voters go to him as opposed to maybe a more stable, uh, or someone, someone who stood to benefit for, for the entire month of, of November, I felt like every single pundit was coming in every day and saying, well, this is why this news story is good for Marco Rubio and none of it was happening. You know, none of that was, was going on. And what I think that reflected was that when, when voters talk about wanting somebody new wanting, wanting a fresh face, what they really meant this time around was somebody who was completely outside of politics. Um, not just someone who was, you know, a fresh face governor or a young senator or something like that, they wanted somebody, uh, dramatically new. And then as soon as the Republican party became clear that the Republican party was unwilling to become the party of Ted Cruz, the party of, of a kind of, you know, strong conservative ideological ideas, uh, and it became clear that they just weren't interested in that, uh, that's the moment where I, I, you know, really changed my mind. And, and I think that that was happening basically in December. How much of a role did media coverage play in him winning? Because you have a field, at least earlier on in the primaries of, I mean, there's a lot of people, um, they can't, it's a lot of people to pay attention to, especially if you're someone outside of the Beltway who cares probably the right, vanishingly small amount about this stuff compared to us crazy people here. And Trump is a highly entertaining trainwreck. Um, and so the media is just talking about Trump all the time. And that's how most people hear about the candidates anyway. So do you think he would have had anywhere near the success he did if the other candidates had been more even coverage? So I'm going to blame it. I'm going to spread the blame a little bit. Um, the, the media coverage of Trump was pretty critical from day one. It's, it's actually a myth to say that they weren't critical. What was different about Trump is that he got direct access to the voter at a far higher rate than any other candidate. The ability, I mean, nobody was doing the equivalent of setting a camera down in front of a podium when Bobby Jindal is doing a rally in Iowa and just letting him talk on air for an hour. And that's something that just is, is separate. That's not media coverage. That's just giving him access. And so that was the part that I was critical of. I mean, I felt like they were asking critical questions of him in interviews pretty early on, you know, they, most places didn't only treated him as a sideshow until the point where he made the immigration proposal. And as soon as he did that, people had something to ask him about that was different. And I think that they did start asking those questions. Um, but I think that there, you have to split the media baby, basically that their, their access to him, I think was significantly beneficial and was not, was not given to any other candidate. But then there was also the role that right wing media played in this process. And I think that we need to understand that, you know, you don't want to paint with a broad brush. Not everybody dealt with, with Trump the same way. I did sign on to the against Trump cover that National Review ran along with a number of other people. And, and my real argument against him just came down to Donald Trump doesn't believe in the Constitution. I don't think we should have presidents who don't believe in the Constitution. We've had too many of them already. But, but the, the, the conservative media complex has a lot of different flavors.  The federal list is obviously one of those we turn three next month. The, and then you have the kind of the intellectual journals, the places where the smart people kind of get together. But then you have the mass media side of, of conservative media. And I think that there's a distinction people need to, need to make mentally that I'm not sure everybody does, which is that there are very intelligent people who work within conservative media. I think that I think Rush Limbaugh is a very smart guy. I think he's very good at what he does when it comes to radio, whether you agree with him or not. But then there's also a, a form of media on the right that is as much about entertainment and as eyeballs as it is anything else. It's the same as ESPN's coverage of the NFL or something like that. They're not going to be all that critical of the NFL because they have Monday night football. The, the difference I think that you saw here was if you go down the, the, the, the Fox sort of hole and you look at who was critical of Trump and who wasn't. The people who were in DC, the Krauthamers, the George Wills, the Britt Humes, you know, they, they were critical of Trump almost from day one. You know, they were, they were criticizing him as people who know politics, who know someone who doesn't know politics. It was the New York contingent of commentators, many of whom have no political background, who were from day one backing Trump, defending him, saying a lot of things in, in support of him. Sean Hannity, Eric Bowling, you know, all of the kind of midday commentators and that kind of set. And it was actually very few of the people on Fox from New York, Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld kind of being exceptions who, who were critical of Trump and, and sustained it in a way. I think that made a significant difference in this cycle. And I think that it had a lot to do with the fact that Fox people, people who watch it are voters, they are Republicans, they're very active. And I think that the most critical moment in this cycle was actually came after Ted Cruz won Wisconsin and had some momentum. He was actually in internal polling. He was ahead of Trump in California. He was, he looked like he had some momentum. And then there was a two week period there after, after that Wisconsin victory, where every single day on Fox and on a lot of these and a lot of these different venues, there were people pounding their hands on the table and basically saying this is over. He's going to win New York. He's going to win Pennsylvania. It's over. Ted Cruz has no hope.  You know, he needs to drop out. And that drumbeat had a significant effect in internal polling. Ted Cruz saw his numbers turn around significantly. He really dropped. And I think that that speaks to the power that this media really has to frame what's happening in an election. It seems that your theory partially of Trump relates to this sort of idea of transactional politics. And it kind of reminds me of J. Costs spoiled rotten, which is a, we had Jay on to talk about Republic, Republic no more, but his book before that spoiled rotten discusses how transactional politics, meaning vote for me and I will give you things crept into the Democrat Party in the thirties and that's sort of where it remained. But if the Republican Party was trying to be classically liberal, which is sort of against transactional politics, at least in theory and principle, and that that's just not going to fly. And this brings up the question of what libertarianism, that part of republicanism has to offer an electorate anymore if we're going to say, we're not going to give you anything except for the possibility of a richer world that is not a check in your pocket. And so it's a repudiation.  The libertarian position is the same as Michael Corleone's and Godfather too. I'm here. I'm offering you nothing, not even the fee for the life. So but but here's the thing about that. My argument has been and this goes back a couple of years now that that this this populist rejection of the elites was going to happen one way or the other. Like it was already you could see it rising and people like Tim Carney and myself, you know, have been writing, you know, for a while now, hey, guys, you kind of need to get behind this or find a way to to help it move in the right direction. Otherwise, it's just going to go.  But when a force fire happens, you have to do controlled burns around it. You have to dig trenches. You have to do you can't just let it burn. Otherwise, it just consumes the whole forest. I think in this in this case, you had you had a number of politicians who are themselves transactional working in working in a way that ignored this this populist fervor, the rejection of the elites and this distrust of established institutions that was rising. And instead, the problem that they had is they were just interested in transacting with other people. So what what do you have? You have situations where the biggest priorities for for, you know, the Republican Senate when they were running for office was we're going to be a hedge against Obama's radicalism. We're going to push back against Obamacare. We're going to prevent him from doing his immigration plan. And then they get in and their priorities are, you know, the Keystone pipeline and getting rid of the medical device tax and all these other things that that K Street lobbyists and corporations want. And I think that the people really rejected that and not so much because of what they were doing, but that their priorities weren't lined up with what the people were. I don't think that they were rejecting it out of this principled argument that like this isn't something government should be doing. It was more about rejecting it from the perspective of you're not paying enough attention to us. And my real concern is that historically, that's not really been the animating factor for the majority of American politics. It's been a portion of coalitions and it's been something where, you know, we were talking before the show started about the prescription drug benefit. That's that's certainly an example of transactional. We want to reward our older voters with this entitlement benefit that's going to redistribute stuff toward them. So this is not new, but it hasn't been the driving animating force of a party. You know, the party has always been in or at least pretended to be more about ideas, ideas about what, you know, the life well lived looks like how government should facilitate or get out of the way of allowing people to live in that way. And that's a debate that has really been absent from this cycle entirely, because basically what Trump has done has become the same kind of candidate that the Democrats have fielded over the course of the past several years, which is basically saying, I'm just going to fight for you and I'm going to get you the benefits that you deserve and you look across this country and you see lots of people who you don't think are working hard and don't deserve the benefits they're getting, I'm going to change that. And that turns out to be, you know, a very powerful message in America, a message that speaks to a perhaps more sizable portion of what we thought might have been a group of people who voted the way they did because of ideas or because of policies instead, they're voting that way because they just think this person is an avatar for me and for my group. So on the one hand that seems distressing from where Trevor and I sit as working day to day to advance libertarianism because we're kind of constitutionally opposed to that sort of politics and think that, you know, that the very basis of government is in doing the opposite of that sort of politics. But on the other hand, I wonder how depressing the overall picture is because so the among the Democrats, the person who seemed to campaign the most on I will protect your interests was Bernie Sanders who lost and Trump, well, yes, he won in a crowded field, looks fingers crossed on his way to a loss and likely a fairly large one. And he certainly didn't represent the majority of primary voters. So is this populism? Is it a large threat in the sense that it could realign one or both of the two parties that we seem to have fixed in this country? Populism flares up in ways that can have a significant impact, but it usually does so temporarily. Historically, these movements can't sustain themselves.  And one of the things that I think that should give people hope is that we've seen a couple of small imitators of Trump, but Trumpism is so attached to him and his brand that it's hard to see it taking on as something that as a phenomenon within the Republican coalition. It's transmittable to other people. It kind of reminds me of the story I saw that Hillary's having a really hard time finding a person to stand in for Trump in the debate prep because no one can just give the verbal vomit of just like ideas. Caleb Brown doesn't do a decent job. Caleb Brown actually should do a good job, yeah, but the inimitable, irreplaceable, that's not the right word, irreproducible Trump. Yes, I agree. The other thing is that I think that I think that actually the way that Trump moves the needle in a couple directions is interesting. And I'm wondering if he actually serves to discredit some of the ideas that he advocates for. For instance, you know, I think that let's let's take let's take two issues where where libertarians are clearly at at odds with Donald Trump. OK, the border clearly this is a this is a candidate who has gone through all sorts of different twists and turns when it comes to his immigration policy. Just the other day, Ann Coulter, one of his most dedicated supporters was was, you know, expressing a lot of concern that he's moving away from his hard line position. But I actually have heard a lot of concern among smart people who are more closely aligned with Trump Trump's position, that a loss at the ballot box and that the nature of the way that he's made the case for this actually discredits their ideas and and maybe hurts the case that they've made for much harsher approaches to immigration and keeping people out on the issue of trade. I think clearly we have an issue in America where where people don't have faith in their in their elites to cut good deals for them and nobody really understands TPP. They don't understand the trade policy unless they're in it. But I actually think that his his giving expression of the idea, well, you know, this is an unfair deal. This is this is something that we we can't trust because it's something that Obama and Clinton cut with with these other trading partners and that we can't have faith in it. I don't think that that's actually a policy critique. I think it's something that is just it's a distrust of the people. And so again, I don't think that endures after Trump in a way other than something that we probably would be OK with, which is skepticism of, you know, our elected officials to not just be corporatist, you know, not just have a corporatist approach to the way the trade policy works. On the other side, on foreign policy, I think that Trump actually reveals how much of the Republican electorate rejects the general foreign policy consensus that has been a part of their hawkish leadership over the course of the past two decades. One of the downsides to not having anyone from the Bush administration run in 2008 or 2012 or anybody closely aligned with Bush was that we never had a great working out of what we learned from Iraq and what we learned from Afghanistan, what we learned from his approach really to foreign policy generally. And so that conversation was really delayed and didn't really happen, I feel like, until this year. And when it did happen, you have a candidate who openly broke with the idea that the Iraq War was a good idea and used it repeatedly to, you know, against his opponents. Now you can go back in the records and find that he's not really accurately representing his position. But still, I think that that gave voice to a lot of people who had generally been ignored by the consensus foreign policy position of the Republican Party. And so it's not all bad in a way. Like, I think it's, I think this is, you know, it's a revelatory thing. It tells us more about what this coalition is and what it isn't, that it's more secular, that it's perhaps less hawkish, that it, you know, is more that it is less wedded to conservative economic ideas than perhaps we would like. But I think as a whole, what you can step away from it and say is now we know more and we know this thing now. What should we learn from it? And I think the biggest error that would be made by conservatives or by anybody who cares about the future of the Republican Party after this election would be to say, well, we just think the same things that we thought in 2012. Let's have the autopsy for the party again and just update all the dates in it and just think the same thing. I think what they need to do is look look long and hard at what this coalition told them about, you know, what they believe about government and what they don't believe. And then, you know, it's the responsibility of leaders to try to translate that populist rage into things that are actually good. How do we use skepticism for the elite, skepticism for these institutions, skepticism about the deals that are being cut to actually further the cause of liberty as opposed to just promising that I'll be a strong man for you. If this is a sort of like a Republican Party colon and cleanse, which I kind of see. And if and if if Trump is sort of unique in the way you've said, it might be therefore you kind of seem like you're saying that it's the the reports of the death of Republican Party have been greatly over exaggerated. What is that trend? Yeah, but yeah, that maybe the Republican Party will be better after this. That really depends on the people who are part of it. I mean, the Trump reveals things about the country that I think we have been ignoring for quite a while. The Republican Party establishment and leaders, the donor class was very good at keeping this tap down. You know, they nominated John McCain. They nominated Mitt Romney. And it was a situation where they really did kind of push push this populist rage to the side. Now they've nominated the guy who was one of the original burthers and is clearly someone who plays this very aggressive tabloid kind of game. But I think that the error would be to think that this was just about the media or that this was just about the black swan effect of a guy who can communicate one of these few rich people who who has the capacity to to connect to the working class and be kind of a trader to his own class. The lessons that I think they ought to take are ones that really tell them things about their coalition that they may not have wanted to pay attention to for a while. And parties do die. But what's more common is for parties to realign in ways that that make them be very different things. The the Democratic Party of JFK, you know, is not the Democratic Party today. OK, in fact, I would argue the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton is not the Democratic Party. Absolutely. You know, Clinton could run against I mean, Bill Clinton's more Mitt Romney. I always wanted Clinton of 1992 to run against Mitt Romney and basically the same candidate. Yeah, yeah, you're completely right about that. And the thing is and the thing is honestly that that's the problem. That's the kind of future that I think the Republican Party has. I think it's going to go through a period of realignment. It's going to become something different. The the concern I would have if if I were a member of that party or if I was in its leadership is that they're there's going to be there's going to need to be a lot of leadership from some young voices that that directs this fire. Otherwise, it will consume the party and it'll turn it into a rump nationalist party along the lines of what we've seen in Europe from the far right. So when I have looked at when I paid attention to the Trump campaign and when I have been critical of Trump, there's a the concern that I have is not just about the policies that he represents or the shift towards we're going to prop up entitlements and we're going to build walls and we're going to kick people out and we're going to harder even more people overseas and so on and so forth. But but there's like there's an ugliness to it. And that seems like the kind of thing that it's harder to realign around like the thing that seemed to rocket him to fame initially was his the Mexicans are sending rapists.  In fact, he's often one of the most profoundly confusing things to me is how people can be excited as rallies because what he's saying literally doesn't make any sense. Like it's like a it's like a space ghost rant. Yes. But but that they there there seems to be this like just really repugnant ugliness to the rhetoric and the way that he talks about other people and the way that he talks about out groups from the perspective of his supporters. And that seems like so, yes, something that to say the Republican Party should embrace that like if that's a large portion of his impealed and they need to figure out to embrace that would seem to be a problem. And it seems like that might point even more to the death of the party because of how disfavorably he's seen by all of the growing demographics. So a couple of things about that. First off, what we are seeing to this point is that as much as the Democratic Party would like to paint all Republicans with the Donald Trump brush, they haven't really been successful with it this cycle, particularly you see that by looking at the Senate races where across the country, virtually every Republican senator is running 10 points ahead of Trump. In some cases, it's much as 13 or 15 in some states. In fact, at this stage, I was talking with CBS's head of polling on Sunday and he says that he sees three or four net losses for Republicans in the Senate, which would not turn it over to Democratic hands. So I think that tells you to a certain extent that they haven't they're not grouped in with him in the same way when it comes to the perspective that Hispanic and Black Americans have on Trump. Trump at his best sounds like a politically incorrect New York City cop who's sitting at the bar at the end of the day and ranting at the television. And that's basically the way that Trump lives his life. There's something that actually can be refreshing about that in the day and age of scripted politicians. And you think of how scripted Romney was in particular and particularly politicians who are just willing to take it when it comes to the media criticism and not fire back. And I think that given that our media entities are so unpopular, Trump's activity and doing that is something that really paid dividends for him this cycle. And I think that that's not necessarily a bad thing for Republicans to take on in their relationship with the media going forward simply because the media is let's face it in the tank for Hillary. It really is. And it's not so much. It's it's more true this cycle. I think that it's been true any other cycle. It's not just that they view Trump as like this extinction level event. They just from day one, they've been kind of shocked, I think that the people responded to him in the way that he did. That's not necessarily bad. But I agree with you on the ugliness side. At his worst, he's joffery from Game of Thrones. He is he is he is literally the guy who likes to go and pull the wings off of insects and and just, you know, do you know, just he'll just pick people to go after on certain days for no rhyme or reason, you know, and and do so in a very active and personal way. And that to me is is something that's that's very disgusting. And I think that most politicians will never do that. You know, the very few politicians will go will go down that road. But I do think that when when you just as a matter of the way that he approaches things, people people will say things about him like, oh, he tells it like it is or he or, you know, he doesn't play their game or he's not politically correct. I think there's actually some virtue that in this day and age in in in recognizing that the media no longer plays by the rules that it did 20 or 30 years ago in the way that it treats these candidates. And I think particularly that's true of of outlets that have really risen up to a degree where they they particularly will target and try to ask Republicans difficult and crazy questions in order to get them to stumble. And I think a perfect example of that is actually was from a Trump press conference a couple of months ago where he spent the entire press conference bashing the media and talking about how terrible it was and, you know, he's doing it right to them. And then the last question was from a Yahoo News journalist who asked him what he thought about Harambe and Trump actually gave like this five minute answer about what he thought about Harambe.   And, you know, I understand how the concern of like he had clearly thought through, you know, what he thought about Harambe. But the thought that I had was, you know what, ask that of any of the other 16 and they would probably have stumbled on that question. You know, they might not have known how to answer it. They might not have, you know, what do I say in this sort of scenario? They might have given some very typical politician answer like, well, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, you know, subsidies today. I think that Trump's response actually in that point, that type of thing does work and it works because in this day and age, you have journalists who are asking not just got your questions, but got your questions about all kinds of pop culture things. I don't know if Trump's gotten asked yet, but I'm sure he's going to get a Ryan Lochte question. You know, and it's just like the one thing that I wish I could take away from Trump and give to more politicians generally is just be more engaged in the culture, be more aware of these things.  Now we do have this third candidate in the mix. Yes. Jill Stein. You don't have any Wi-Fi around here, do you? Exactly. It's in the fryer brain. No Wi-Fi, no vaccines. But Gary Johnson is interesting to libertarians and possibly an opportunity of some sort to at least get more of the message out there. How do you sort of see that fitting into the rubric you've described? Is this an opportunity for libertarians to have a hand in reforming the Republican Party along a more principled aspect or the libertarian party may be going to be a significant element in the future? So I think this is an opportunity, obviously, for libertarians. Personally, I wish that they had a different candidate running the cycle. And it's not that I dislike Gary Johnson personally. I think he would be a better president than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. I know plenty of people who are Republicans or who have been Republicans who are going to vote for him. And I think that that's and I think that that's a good thing. I hope that he I hope that the level of support that is indicated in polling actually comes through on Election Day, which is something that is always, you know, a problem with the third party people's kind of underperforming that number. And I hope that he gets on the debate stage. My only problem really is, is that when I look at Gary Johnson, what I actually see and even more so when I look at Bill Weld, I see kind of a 90s era liberal Republican, you know, which is which is not as much about, you know, eliminating eliminating departments, cutting back government, you know, limiting government in aggressive ways. It's more about, well, you know, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, that kind of thing. The difference is social liberalism in the 90s was, you know, the ACLU was still signing on to the Religious Freedom Protection Acts.  They they are aggressively anti free speech in a lot of different areas and not not just in the campus. And I'm very concerned that that's going to be an issue under a Clinton presidency that gets ramped up even more since she's never been a fan of free speech and has plenty of enemies out there that she'd like to see have to deal with all sorts of problems. I wish that the Libertarian Party had nominated someone who was who was more aggressively pushing libertarian ideas as opposed to kind of being a middle of the road moderate Republican candidate, which is basically what he is this cycle. I understand, though, that that I mean, this is a guy who who had a very good governorship, you know, I think is is someone who, you know, it certainly doesn't have the criminal problems of Hillary Clinton or the insanity problems with Donald Trump. The only thing is I wish that it had been maybe a younger voice who represents more of a 21st century approach to libertarianism. I would have really liked to see when it became clear that Clinton and Trump were going to be the nominees. I would have liked to see somebody like Justin Amash get in there just in the sense that I'd like to see some of these younger faces because you want someone who can not just be a face for libertarianism this cycle, but can be a leader going forward. And I think that that's that's going to emerge, I think. I think that there are going to be a lot of people after this cycle who kind of take a hard look at, you know, am I really a Republican? What do they really stand for? If the Libertarian Party really stands for things that I believe in, you know, that maybe that is something that I can build, you know, a more meaningful approach around, you know, for myself as a voter going forward. So I do think it's an opportunity. I just would have liked it to be a little bit more, shall we say, radical. I like to be having those good fights where Libertarians are really right and Republicans have been really wrong. And instead it's like, you know, it's more, hey, look, we're way more normal than these other people. I like your 90s comparison because he does, Gary Johnson sometimes reminds me of the guy who used to host Double Dare, Mark Summers, because he always used to wear sneakers with a suit. It was like, whoa, you're still crazy, Mark Summers. What are you doing? Yeah, and he's kind of awkward and stuff. Yeah, this is, I think it was the week before he was, Johnson got the nomination. I had a piece in the Washington Post about my fears about nominating him and Weld that it was when a lot of Republicans were saying, I mean not a lot, but there were prominent Republican pundits and other people saying, I'm gonna switch, I'm gonna vote for the Libertarians, I'm gonna switch my party affiliation and so on. And I had this fear that the Libertarian party, which I should say because we get lots of confusion about this, like Libertarianism.org that this podcast is a part of is not in any way affiliated with the Libertarian party. Kato is not affiliated with the Libertarian party.  And if Johnson and Weld represented that kind of moderate Republicanism taking over the Libertarian party, that unless they were going to win because obviously they're better than the alternatives right now, that you risk that if the Libertarian party and Libertarianism kind of represents like America's founding conscience, like the principles of the American founding and the principles of real constitutionalism and giving that a voice, even if it's not going to win, it's still gonna be a voice out there saying like, hey, you guys are drifting from like what you have pretended to value at least, that that's going to hurt American politics over time. But at the same time, it's hard to say like because even the kind of moderate Republicanism that they've advanced looks so damn good compared to the other choices. Yeah, I mean, it does look, it does have that 90s moderate Republican flavor to it. The thing, I agree with you. I wish that this was more, I wish that they were more running about free speech about your right to self-defense about the fact that government shouldn't even be doing these things is something that I would like to be hearing more from them as opposed to as opposed to this kind of alternatives. But I do think that there's in the war of ideas that we've all been fighting in and dealing with over the course of our career, this is I think an opportunity, regardless of whether Johnson and Weld can be the people who actually expressed those ideas consistently. I think this is an opportunity to kind of say, what does the party stand for? What is it about? What should a coalition be about? What does this look like? And I think in this context, the clarity that Libertarians offer, that small L Libertarians can offer to voters in the wake of something this crazy is something that I think is gonna have more appeal to it and is going to get a response not just from those looking for someone who's not a criminal and not nuts. Do you think that there will still be the alignment with libertarianism in the right because some people say, oh, this is now the middle, which is a little bit different than people have said but it works in this context. But can the left ever really come over to the libertarian side at this point anymore or are we gonna have to look to the right? I think that the anti-war left can come to be in favor of some libertarian ideas but I think that the rise of the type of social justice speech crushing approach among younger liberals, it's one of the most depressing phenomenons I've seen in my lifetime but it's also something that I think really closes the door to having libertarians be kind of more at home on the left in the sense that that's just such a fundamental issue that you can't really cross that line and I think that there was actually more hope of that type of alignment. Again, back in the 90s when the ACLU and libertarians saw each other as being a lot more aligned and people who cared about those issues were a lot more aligned. I think now that you basically have a democratic party that is corporatist, that is more hawkish, that is entirely in favor of the surveillance state that doesn't particularly care about civil liberties for individuals and that having sort of achieved what they wanted to when it came to most of the culture wars is now moved from arguing about whether abortions should be legal to arguing that we need to get rid of the Hyde Amendment and everybody needs to pay for everybody else's abortions. Like they've moved so far away from where they were before that I think that has really kind of closed off and I think libertarians actually may end up in the middle just by default if we end up in a situation where you have one party that's basically corporatist, one that is kind of nationalist and protectionist, the middle position is going to be the one that's okay with advancing in the global economy and economic progress and technology and isn't just trying to engage in either Keynesian expenditures or in some kind of redistributive project that more favors people of a certain race or a certain background. So handicapping the future here, since you did a pretty good job a year ago, who's gonna win and then what's gonna happen a year from now? Could have you back a year from now and we could just continually do this, this sort of notion-domist thing. Bring Ben back everywhere. Oh gosh, so I will say that I'm not always good at predicting things and I certainly thought in this cycle, even though I outlined how I thought Trump could win and why he could, I still thought that it was unlikely when I wrote a year ago. So here's what I think is likeliest at this stage. I think Trump is going to lose, but I think he's gonna make it closer than people currently think. I think that he'll probably end up with a loss that looks nationally probably like a five or six point loss, but he might actually win a state or two that Mitt Romney didn't win simply because of the demographics involved. He might lose a state or two that Mitt Romney won. Ultimately, I think it's going to be kind of a wash, not the blowout that I think some people see in the national polling, but also I think not close. The thing that I think it should be concerning when it comes to this whole context of like what's moving forward and what we're looking at a year from now is let's just say for the sake of argument, Trump loses by six points. The Republicans retain the Senate by one or two seats and Hillary Clinton is elected. And a year from now, Mitch McConnell is on the Senate floor saying, well, you know what we really need to do to solidify the party and to wash the taste of Trump out of all of our mouths is we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform with Hillary Clinton. Something that would just be a giant finger raised to the base of Trump supporters and would probably animate them all, all the more within the Republican primaries. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm just saying there's a possibility, something like that happens. Or name your deal, name your other sort of thing that they're going to do in terms of transactional politics with Hillary Clinton. There's a surprising number of Republican politicians, I think, who think of Hillary Clinton as the way she was when she was in the Senate in much earlier as opposed to the way she is now, which is, in my view, much more wedded to the progressive culture war and to all of these different promises that she's made along the way to get to where she could be right now. And I expect that her presidency is going to offer something that looks a lot more like Obama and a lot less like the triangulation that Bill Clinton did in the 90s. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Free Thoughts, please take a moment to rate us on iTunes. Free Thoughts is produced by Mark McDaniel and Evan Banks. To learn more about libertarianism, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.


Hi, I'm Denshi and this is just like a short little video to talk about some options I recommend for FFMPEG when converting audio, video, just basically whatever. I've made a video guide on FFMPEG. This is more of a, just a random tech video to talk about some options that I like to use that I want to compress video or something. So here I have a video called Friends House and all it is is some footage at a friend's house. This has got a cool bird, as you can see. And what I'm gonna do is I wanna take this. This is a 98 megabyte file, 98.8 megabytes, quite large and it's only like 30 seconds long. I wanna take this and I wanna compress it to something I can share for like eight megabytes or seven megabytes. So I'm gonna do FFMPEG-I Friends House right there. So you've selected it. I want to use the libx264 codec, so dash dash C for the codec, colon V for video codec and libx264. I spelled lib incorrectly, whoops. So that's libx264. The thing is you don't have to specify that because that's already selected as a default codec so we can just skip directly to the dash CRF option which is the quality. I'm gonna set the quality to 30. So the higher you set the CRF, the lower the quality of the video. So 30 is quite low quality for this, but I only wanna share it with friends and I'm not like interested in super high quality or whatever. Then I'm gonna set the scale, so dash S to 1280x720. So 720p because once again, I just wanna share it with friends like a chat room or whatever. So it's not gonna be a super large resolution. They're not gonna expand it to their monitor or take a look at the fine details. That's also why the CRF rate is 30. Actually I might wanna turn that down to like maybe 27 or so because that may be a little bit too grainy even for a chat room, but it's okay. Then I want to set the audio codec. I like lib opus. It's called lib opus. It's a new relatively compression codec. It's quite good, quite good quality, especially good when it comes to music. And it's a pretty excellent compression. Now I'm gonna give the output file a name. I'll call it friends.mkv. I'll package it up in an mkv file. Or actually, you know, I'll do mp4 since that's more common. Just make sure I'm not using the same name because I don't wanna override the existing file. Gonna press enter and off it will go converting it. Now it will not take a super long time because x264 is quite quick and it's only like a 30 second video. Just give it a second. All right, so it's done and the resulting file is 7.4 megabytes which is definitely small enough to share in a chat room. It's a smaller resolution. It's 720p. The quality may not be super high. I mean, this is basically the same since the original video. They didn't really have this super high quality either. So what about the opposite? Let's say I wanna import this into an editing software and work with it as an uncompressed file. Well, I actually have a script for that. It's called the uncompressed, this one. And I'll talk about the options I use in this. So ffmpeg-i friends house once again. I'll do friends, you know, apostrophes are so annoying and unix systems. ffmpeg-i that. I'm gonna select the codec. I'm gonna set it to mpeg-4 because DaVinci Resolve and other editing software will prefer uncompressed, well, you know, more uncompressed editing formats like mpeg-4 for video because they're more uncompressed. They're easier to work with. And on Linux, it's all that's basically compatible. I don't want it to look like garbage though. So I'm gonna do dash Q v zero. So that means there's as little possible quality is kept as much as possible in the uncompressed video. I wanna set the pixel format. So PIX FMT to UVE, I believe actually what I've chosen up there is outdated 422p. So I'm gonna set it to 420p because 420p is a little bit better. These are basically the color format. So that means like how it stores the color information and other, you know, pixel properties of the actual video. So this is important to make sure it's a very uncompressed and easy to work with video. And the most important thing of all, well, the second most important, the audio has to be set to PCM underscore S16M. Not exactly the most memorable codec, but this is what many editing softwares will prefer. I'm gonna call the output file. Okay, I might have accidentally, wait a second, what have I done? PCM S16LE, that's okay.  Okay, whatever. Okay, so now it will work. They'll have that copy pasted in the description anyway. So this is for uncompression. So as you can see, it's taken less time because uncompressing text less time. There we go, it's done. So you have friends.mov uncompressed. And as you can see, it's 102.5 megabytes, which isn't super far off from the original one, but it is still uncompressed video. And the quality is basically the exact same. Except this time, if I were to open up DaVinci Resolve, you'll notice that this file, I cannot import. That it doesn't really import, it just imports an empty file. But this file I can import. And I can work with its audio as well. I can do things like, you know, it comes out with audio and I can scrub through it and I can actually work with it. And this format of just uncompressed video is easier to work with because it's easier on your CPU because it doesn't have to uncompress the video as you're editing it. So doing that pre-uncompression is actually quite useful if you're editing. And especially if you don't have a CPU that really wants to be dealing with that. Or if you just wanna be, you know, resource managing, resource restrictive, resource minimalist, I don't really know, but it's called. Anyway, on to audio. As I said before, I really look quite like Libopus as a compressed audio format. So if I wanna take one of these files, like let's do friends.mov right there. And I want to take this and I wanna convert it to audio. So let's say friends.mp3, for example. It will automatically assume the encoder I want to use. So you'll see that over here, it identifies that we're using a PCI-MS16LE. So that's what we specified when we wanted to uncompress or turn this one into this one. But now it's turning the thing into Libmp3 LAMES, the LAME encoder, which is what is normally used in MP3 files. The audio quality, obviously you can't hear it, but the audio quality is essentially the same apart from a couple of things. So if I wanted to just take the existing audio in this and convert it to something I can use in DaVinci Resolve, I'd take this and then I would convert it to friends.mov, which is really, really quick as you saw, but it's highly uncompressed. It basically just has no compression at all. So what you can do is, well, you should probably take that file, so fmpg-friends.mov, and then convert that over to friends.flac, which is, you know, just takes basically the exact same amount of time because it's super quick, but it ends up with a more compressed file. So see, this is 4.8 and this is 2.2. And flac is also lossless, but it employs compression, lossless compression. So it cuts part of the audio which is genuinely unnecessary while not damaging any of the high quality audio. And it basically you turn out with a smaller file size in the same quality. So flac. Anyway, that's pretty much it in terms of the recommended defaults I give to most people. If you want to have a more compressed file, you can always use this amazing libx265 codec. So, you know, cvlibx265 and then convert to friends.mp4, and you'll notice that, as you can see, it's much slower because it's a lot more compression, at least it's normally a higher quality of compression, but you'll end up with a higher fidelity file and something that is genuinely lower file size to the regular one, although not all things can actually read x265, so I don't really recommend it for a lot of websites. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video about these default recommended tips for ffmpg. If you want to see more ffmpg tip videos like this, then feel free to ask questions and give suggestions in the comments. And I know I've been Denchie, goodbye.


Keir Starmer has followed up his conference speech with a tour of TV studios in an attempt to prove to the public he's not left-wing. And on BBC Breakfast that meant, once again, arguing against nationalisation. Common ownership can be cooperatives, can be all sorts of different models. But the principle being you take it out of private ownership, is that right? Before we go any further, I honestly don't think that nationalising the energy companies right now in the middle of a crisis which is the government making is the right way forward. But what we've got to focus on for the next few months, and I think most people viewing with me, is the energy supply going to be good for the next six months? And how's the government got us into this ridiculous situation where the energy, we've got an energy crisis, we've got a fuel crisis, we've got no drivers for lorries, we've got empty shelves. I think most people say, well rather some philosophical discussion. We want to know in practical terms what is the government going to do to keep the lights on, keep the energy there and get our fuel pumps back in action because lots of people are going to be scratching their heads and say, how am I going to get to work next week? How am I going to get to a hospital? Or how am I going to visit a sick relative, a teacher or a nurse getting to their job? These are the issues that we need to address head on and they are all banded together and characterised by a lack of planning, by a government that campaigns in slogans and is learning that governing in slogans just doesn't work. That was Keir Starmer arguing against nationalising failing utility companies. Just to remind you, this was Starmer during the leadership race. First of all, raise your hands if you're into scrapping tuition fees. That's everyone. Renationalising water and electricity, yeah. They need to show that clip anytime Keir Starmer says, I said common ownership, not nationalisation. I didn't mean nationalisation. You put your hand up when they said nationalisation. Aaron, I saw you reacting to that BBC Breakfast clip online. I suppose, aside from the dishonesty of it all, what did you make of the actual argument put forward by Keir Starmer there? Well, it's a typical lawyer's answer, isn't it? He's saying, well, look, common ownership doesn't necessarily mean nationalisation, somewhat true. Does that mean he now supports a model like workers' co-operatives for the big six energy companies? Well, that may work for some things. It won't work for public monopolies. And no, I don't think that's what he means. This is a man who lives by rhetoric and elusive lines, which he can backtrack on later in a court of law that works in the court of public opinion. And more importantly, in the world of public policy and actually solving real world problems, it absolutely doesn't work. It's a catastrophic failure. My question to you, Michael, and our audience is, what has to happen before it calls for nationalisation of energy companies? Will the lights have to go out? Will we all be freezing cold? Because it clearly is one potential answer. You know, in 2008, we had the financial crash. What was part of the response from government by Gordon Brown, by a Labour Prime Minister who wasn't particularly left-wing, was to take banks into public ownership. Does that mean that Keir Starmer won't do something similar with energy companies? And he's saying, well, it's an academic exercise. You can imagine 1945, Michael, we just come out of the Second World War. People are calling for a national health service and to bring energy and utilities and water into public ownership. And Keir Starmer says, now is not the time for vain and vague intellectual exercises. What we need is pragmatic common sense. We would never have got the national health service, Michael. When something doesn't work and it's broken, is actually the best time to talk about, well, systemically, what do we need to change to restructure it? It's the best time, Mr. Starmer, not the worst time. So, yes, what does this tell us? If you think the fact that he's a mendacious man who actually has no idea about the kinds of policies he'd want to enact as Prime Minister, that's one thing. Secondly, it tells us something quite troubling, which I think actually confronted with the facts, the Tories are more likely to nationalise things than the Labour Party. Over the last seven days, we've seen another rail franchise brought back into public ownership in the southeast of England. We're seeing it, I think, in the next couple of months, likely with energy companies, too. I think that's it's looking increasingly probable. What are Labour going to say? He's saying, we need planning. We need a plan. The government should get their act together. What does it mean? What does it mean? You're not offering an alternative. You're not offering anything substantial. And look, positioning for the next general election is fine. Maybe that's all you care about. But in the meantime, we've got two years. And particularly, we've got this winter, I'd quite like Christmas. I'd quite like to not be freezing cold on the 25th of December here. So please, please offer some substantive solutions. How Starmer did Brexit, how he did COVID-19, won outliers, won anomalies. That's how he does politics, Michael. It's about winning some sophisticated debate in a courtroom, rather than actually addressing people's problems and trying to infuse them behind what you're arguing for. He's not a politician. God knows how he got this job. He's uniquely ill-suited to be leading a political party, particularly at this moment. God help us. I think the point about the Tories, you know, they would nationalise the utilities before Labour is a prescient one. Because Quasi Quarteng has made it clear that if one of the big six fails, they might have to nationalise it. Because the alternative of bringing it into public ownership is to bail them out with public money and say, oh, okay, we'll cover your losses, but you can still run it as a private business. Even the Tories admit that would be an unpopular thing to do, whereas Keir Starmer's saying, nope, no, no, in the crisis, we won't change the ownership of anything. Does that mean you'll give them a bailout? No, it might have been sensible to explain that sometimes nationalisation is whatever your political ideology, the most sensible thing to do in that situation. I want to talk about the internal politics of this. The nationalisation issue seems like it could tear the Shadow Cabinet apart. In particular, it's creating tensions between Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband. Miliband argued in favour of common ownership a couple of weeks ago on News Night, and the Times are now reporting that Starmer is being urged to sideline the former Labour leader, Aaron. Do you think this could actually happen? Do you think he could be next to go?  I mean, that's basically... We should call it Starmer's Law, which is a scientific law, whereby the worst possible decision that could be made by the Labour leader is the one that he takes. I think, generally speaking, whatever happens to Miliband, I think he will go. Whatever happens to Miliband, I think, in the medium term, is that we won't see any of the Templars which is informing party policy in 2024, or at least the leader will try his damnedest to stop it. And I think that's an important background variable to consider when you think he's got the GMB on side, he's got Unison on side. All the things that they tell their members they want, the leaders of these unions, or we want a higher minimum wage, 15-pound minimum wage for care workers, we want to end fire and rehire, we want to end outsourcing. Very little of this would happen under a Labour government. Now, you might think that's great. It means a Labour government gets elected. I want the problems to be solved, Michael. You know, in the last couple of weeks, we've heard a lot about the Labour family. My party's back. No, 95% of the public doesn't care about my party's back or the Labour family. Can I afford to pay the rent? Can I get on the housing ladder? My mortgage payments? The future for my kids? My kids going to university, university that gang in loads of debt, elderly care, climate change, law and order, sure. These are all big issues. Nobody cares you've got your party back, nobody cares.  It's not just about getting the Tories out, it's about getting a party in, which will do something about those problems, actually address those challenges. And so, yes, it's all very good talking about, oh, we need to get the Tories out. Well, if Keir Starmer is literally pitching to their right when it comes to public ownership of energy, what for? This isn't a game of football. This is about whether the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years of your life will be better or worse, where the life chance and opportunities of people will be richer or poorer for the presence of a Labour Party in power. Right now, Keir Starmer's not making that case.


You are tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Autumn Lab A-Reno and today is Tuesday, January 5th, 2021. We're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm back after a brief holiday break and while I'd love to tell you new year-less COVID, we all know that's not the case. I do have a lot of COVID news to report, but first, let me take a moment to express some gratitude. I'd like to thank everyone who supported Davis Media Access and KDRT during our recent fall fundraiser or through a year-end donation. During today's interview, we'll touch on how arts and culture organizations have been largely left out of relief efforts aimed at helping nonprofits. Each and every donation makes a tremendous difference in the life of this particular arts and culture organization and in our ability to be of service and carry out our mission, which is serving the community, so thank you. My guest today is Shelly Gilbride, Executive Director of International House Davis. iHouse connects people, experiences, and perspectives within a global framework. We'll get to that interview in just a few minutes. The latest figures from Yolo County Public Health for Yolo County are this. 73,603 tests have been performed with a test positivity rate of 11.2%. We've had 8,402 confirmed cases countywide, and of those, 1,205 have been in Davis. Countywide, there have been 117 deaths, a number that's gone up by eight just since last week. Health officials caution that we're still seeing spikes following Thanksgiving and we'll continue to see those numbers climb following the winter holiday travels and get-togethers. Currently, 36 people are hospitalized with the virus in Yolo County. Statewide, those numbers get pretty bleak. The latest data from January 3rd shows 2,420,894 cases, 29,633 new cases reported that single day, January 3rd. And 26,635 deaths over the course of the pandemic, averaging about 100 per day at current rates. On January 2nd, the state extended the stay home order for the greater Sacramento region because the area's four-week projected ICU capacity does not meet the criteria to exit the order. The state assesses the projection for ICU capacity twice a week, so we're looking for an update today or tomorrow. The state also rolled out its phase plan for deployment of vaccines, the timing of which will depend on vaccine availability. Phase 1A is where we are, and in it, health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities are the first recipients. Phase 1B has two tiers, the first for individuals 75 and older. The second for those at risk of exposure because they work in education, child care, emergency services, or food and agriculture. I'm sorry, that's still part of the first tier. Tier 2 centers on individuals age 65 to 74, and those at risk of exposure for work in a variety of sectors, spanning transportation and logistics, industrial, commercial, residential, and sheltering facilities and services, critical manufacturing, and congregate settings without break risk, namely incarcerated and homeless populations. And finally, Phase 1C focuses on those 50 to 64 years of age or as young as 16 if they have an underlying health condition that ups their risk. Also included here are those who work in water and wastewater, defense, energy, chemical and hazardous materials, communications and IT, financial services, government operations, and community-based essential functions. Let's take a quick break for music and we'll be right back with our interview. At the corner of Russell Boulevard and College Park in Davis sits a venerable white building. It's home to International House Davis, a nonprofit that provides opportunities to learn about and experience cultures from around the world while building connections within our diverse local community. Over the years I've rented space and hosted events there, I've attended potlucks, film screenings, and art shows. In normal times it is a vibrant and bustling place. Joining me today is Shelly Gilbride, Executive Director of I-House. A longtime Davis resident, Shelly joined the organization after serving for five years as the Programs Officer of the California Arts Council, where she was responsible for grant programs to support arts, culture, and creativity across the state. I've gotten to know her this past year through Arts Alliance Davis and it's my pleasure to welcome her today. Thanks for joining us, Shelly. Thank you so much for having me, Autumn. Nice to hear your voice. Nice to hear your voice too. Alright, so let's start with, tell us about I-House. How long has it been operating and what is your mission? Well, thank you so much for that introduction to I-House. So I-House is, like you said, it's a community organization. We're a gathering space that is dedicated to exploring the global issues at the time and getting our communities ways to engage with the world through arts and culture and humanities programs. So our programs, we do a lot of talks and lectures and music concerts and art exhibits and dance performances, workshops, language classes, dinners, all sorts of events. And we've been around for almost 40 years. I've been with the organization now over a year. I started eight months before the pandemic started at I-House. So, but the organization has been sort of a long time community organization. We're right across the street from campus on College Park. It's a beautiful mid-century modern building and, you know, we're a social gathering space. And so this has been tough for a space dedicated to social gathering. Normally, we support a lot of the international scholars and international families that are here in our community and provide ways for them to really feel integrated into the community here in Davis and in Yolo County. Yeah, and that's important because oftentimes someone will come to study here at UC Davis, come from another country, and their family is kind of left, you know, to their own devices.  And that's a lot. As you mentioned, I've been thinking about you a lot because you joined I-House, you know, a little over a year ago. And then you plunged headlong into steering it through this pandemic. And it's just, that's got to be extra crazy to be relatively new and to have to get your footing in that way. Yeah, I think I'm probably not, I'm not alone. We've all been going through this pandemic and trying to figure out how to move forward. And it's also given us a chance to really think about what the role of social gathering is and really what our fundamental role is. And so when you mention, you know, we still are providing networking opportunities and gathering opportunities for international families through our international parent network, which is an amazing program that's run by two local community members. They meet on Friday mornings now via Zoom, and they talk about issues about, you know, what it is to be an international family or, you know, try to parents in these times. So that's still going on. We still are, we're having language classes via Zoom. Often our English classes, our English conversation classes are ways for people to practice their English, which is a really great way for people who are isolated and learning English here to meet people. So we are still providing various ways for people to connect to one another. And that is what I think has become really, we recognize how fundamental human connection is in those times, and that even though we are closed to physically gather, and we all miss that, that we need to provide the ways for people to connect with one another to celebrate culture and community. And so we still are, we are doing some virtual programming, not as much as we'd like, but we are still dedicated to making sure that people have ways to connect with one another, ways to express themselves. You know, there's this great quote that while first responders heal our communities, or first responders, what's the quote? I'm looking for it right now actually, that first responders are the ones that they respond for second responders, second responders like arts and humanities. We are the ones that are putting our communities back together.  So that's what we're really still dedicated to, is making sure people have ways to connect with one another and for positive self-expression. Definitely. As you know from your work on the Arts Council and from the work we've been doing together in Arts Alliance Davis the past year, we've talked a lot about this concept of artists and arts organizations as second responders and you're right. It's like they're the people who are right there in the immediate crisis, but the way I've described it to people, I've had someone say to me, I'm only supporting food and shelter right now. I'm sorry, I can't support the arts. And I said, okay, just to offer some perspective, when summer comes and you're looking for camps and activities for your kids, what's going to happen when all the arts organizations aren't there or when you need to get your word out or you need to collaborate on a creative project that brings meaning to your life and could bring meaning to others, you know, where people are going to be. So that's the idea of behind second responders. As you said, we kind of bring those layers of meaning and I would say discernment to whatever comes after the pandemic or even now as we're moving through it. And so we are therefore essential and we're working really hard to change the dialogue and the state recently recognized in the latest round of small business administration funding. They said that arts and culture nonprofits are going to be a priority. We're going to see how that pans out. We are. We hope that it happens. Right. To our listeners, Shelly and I are both moving through that grant application process right now and so far. We're not seeing that reflected in the application itself just to be clear. Well, yeah, and I really hope I mean the governor did say that cultural organizations and places of arts and humanities and culture will be prioritized. And that's because I do think that he really recognizes this need for reflection and recovery and rebuilding and vibrancy and color and music and all of those things that make us feel good and better. And I think we're seeing it too with the way in our how people are relating to one another that the arts and culture and communication. This is how we bridge some of these differences that feel so divided is that we talk to one another and we celebrate difference and we recognize that being different from one another, having different rituals, having different foods, having different music. That's what makes life good. Yeah, all those things are so important. That's what makes it interesting. So it's even more fundamental where we are, we need the arts and culture and words and communication and music and dance to bring us together really. So as nonprofits, we've all had our various pivots to use a word. I'm really starting to loathe, but we've had to adjust staffing. We've had to close our community centers to the public, et cetera. You had to take your wonderful, vibrant IFEST and turn it into a virtual event this year. And that was very different. But I have noticed and I've learned through our conversations that IHouse is continuing. I wouldn't call this a pivot so much as a continuation of your work in multiculturalism and you're moving towards this YOLO anti-racism initiative. So I want to give you a few minutes to talk about that because it hasn't just been the pandemic. We're weathering, of course, but the social and political uprising as well and a lot of ugliness in the last year and out of it, a lot of awareness and forward momentum. So what is IHouse's piece of that going to be this year? Yeah, so when I started at IHouse now a little over a year ago, I did a really informal kind of listening tour and I asked people, both people who had been to IHouse, people who loved IHouse and people in our community, if we are here to explore the global issues of the time, what are the global issues that we should explore? And consistently the two issues that rose to the top were and are racism and climate change. And so those are the two issues that IHouse is going to address moving forward. And so we had already started that ball rolling to address these two issues and figure out what it means to address these two issues and in what ways we're going to do that. And then the pandemic hit and we really saw this reckoning with the Black Lives Matter movement and protests and some work in our own community, the Davis Solidarity Space and the leaders of that space, the community leaders of that space, really creating this wonderful space to reflect and come together to think about the role of race in our community. And so IHouse, we have started embarking on an anti-racism initiative. We started really with IFEST this year. We did a virtual international festival and we really intentionally focused and supported BIPOC, Black, Indigenous, People of Color artists. And while IFEST has always celebrated cultural diversity this year, we were really intentional about supporting those artists particularly because they have very little going on right now, right? There's very little opportunity for those artists to work and be out in the public and be seen and heard and celebrated. So we focused on BIPOC artists through IFEST and we built a part of our website called the Cultural Commons, which is a space, a virtual sort of market site for those artists. We're still building that out, figuring out how to support the artists that are part of our Cultural Commons. And then the other parts of the anti-racism initiative are working with the Davis Solidarity Space, giving some administrative support to those community leaders to make sure that the physical space that is in Central Park for the Solidarity Space is able to continue and also giving them sort of a virtual conceptual space to continue thinking about what it means to be in solidarity with Black Lives. And then the other piece of it that we're really excited about is we are embarking on a training initiative with Advocates for Action, which is a local Sacramento-based consulting company, to work with our nonprofit leaders in the community to do some in-depth training on anti-racism within the nonprofit structure. And we are starting that, we're going to start some listening tours and serving our communities of nonprofit leaders. And by nonprofit leaders, we mean volunteers, boards, staff, people who have decision-making power within our nonprofit community, both all volunteer organizations and some of our long-standing nonprofits to embark on a workshop program. It's going to be five sessions in which we all get together to think about the ways that we can make change and really build an anti-racist community and what that means and how we're going to change our processes and our protocols and the ways that we work in order to build a more anti-racist community and do that here locally. And the City of Davis has invested in this initiative with a grant from the Arts and Culture program, which is huge. That the City recognizes this, recognizes the need and really the opportunity to make some real lasting change. Through this program, and I think the initiative is starting with these trainings for nonprofit leaders and we're hoping that it will then build out from there potentially building a coalition of people that can go and train maybe we'll bring the training to the business community. We're really hoping to work. The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on campus is doing great work in this vein as well and to bridge the campus and community and making sure that's collaborative and really work beyond Davis too in the whole of the county to make, you know, to really, well, we don't know what an anti-racist community looks like. It's never, we never had one. Sadly that is true. You know, if we can be on the forefront of that and explore that, I think we're going to do something pretty powerful and that will be a wonderful thing to come out of this time, you know. Yeah, you know that that piece is so exciting to me because as someone who also runs a nonprofit, we don't have time very often unless we're incredibly intentional to focus on things that aren't 100% mission related or 100% critical in terms of operations. And so it really does take an opportunity and an awareness of, okay, we need to be intentional about this now. We need to come together to do this work and we need support for doing this work because it's not just about, you know, a one hour training once a year on implicit bias. It is, this has to be, this work has to be deeper. It has to be more meaningful so that it can be more impactful as we move on. So really, I've been really excited to watch this unfold and, you know, to hear it, to hear about it from you as you've been developing it and really hats off to iHouse for taking this initiative too. It's really needed. Let me take a moment to also give some props to the all volunteer organizers of the Solidarity Space, which if you don't know what we're talking about, it's that area around the Oak Tree in Central Park near Farmers Market that has been a hub for gatherings, for marches and protests and for artwork. It's been lovingly curated by volunteers. It's been vandalized. It's been rebuilt and so, you know, they're giving them support and just giving them some props right now is important too. Yeah, it's really a special, special sort of grassroots, really organic thing that started and Kate Mellonani Baba and Suleyani Baba really spearheaded it and we're just hoping that iHouse can lend some support so that it has a little bit of backbone to keep going, really. Some administrative backbone to keep going and really, hopefully, the idea is not that it becomes an iHouse program but that we are just there to support the community leaders to continue doing what they're doing. Part of the same fabric. Well, Shelly, let's wrap by telling us how we can get more information about iHouse. Sure, so really right now I'm telling everybody to go to our website. It's internationalhousedavis.org. There you can find information about our virtual classes. We don't have information about our anti-racism training yet, but that is coming soon. But our virtual classes, our language classes start next week. We have Spanish, German, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese. So if anybody wants to practice language and we have a really strong English program, we also have our international parent community meeting. Connections is meeting. So you can find out about everything we're doing on our website right now. Our building is closed and we will be until it's safe to reopen. Well, as Reverend Beth Banks has fond of saying, the building is closed but the church is open. That's in reference to the Unitarian Universalist Church. And I feel that way about, you know, DMA too. Our community center here is closed, but we are very much open and serving. Shelly Gilbride, Executive Director, Davis, International House Davis, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. I really appreciate it. Good to hear from you. Thank you so much, Autumn. And thank you for everything that you are doing for our community and for keeping your community report going. All right. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye, you too. It's always, it's a good reality check for me to speak with other executive directors. And I do a lot of networking in that arena and we're providing a lot of support to each other during this strange time. Okay, a few more items here. One of the big pieces of news reported last week in the Davis Enterprise was allegations that management at Davis Ace Hardware had ignored multiple employees reporting positive COVID tests. I'm not going to get into the weeds there. The story is detailed on the enterprise website. But instances like this are one reason for the recent passage of Assembly Bill 685, which went into effect January 1st. California employers are now required to provide detailed notices to employees within one business day of receiving a notice of potential exposure. A notice of potential exposure means any of the following. Notification from a public health official or licensed medical provider that an employee was exposed to a qualifying individual at the work site. Notification from an employee or his or her emergency contact that the employee is a qualifying individual. Notification through the testing protocol of the employer that the employee is, you guessed it, a qualifying individual or a notification from a subcontracted employer that a qualifying individual was on the work site. You may well be wondering what the heck is a qualifying individual. It includes a person who one has a laboratory confirm positive test for COVID-19 or a positive COVID-19 diagnosis from a licensed healthcare provider or is ordered to isolate by a public health official or has died from COVID-19. I think that last one would be pretty conclusive. You can learn more about AB 685 and both employer and employee rights at ca.gov, the state's website. But I think this is good news in the realm of, you know, protection and just keeping everybody on the right path here. I'm going to wrap this week with information about where you can get tested locally. OptumServe Testing Center from January 5th to January 30th out in Woodland in a portable by the Juvenile Detention Center. LHI.Care slash COVID testing and the county continues its free Avalino testing sites throughout the month. These are the ones that require proof of county residency. YoloCounty.org and finally Healthy Davis Together offering free saliva test to Davis residents appointments are required. Visit HealthyDavisTogether.org. I'll be back next week. And until then, this is Autumn Lab Aranel and you've been listening to the COVID-19 community report here from the KDRT studio.