Coming up on DTNS, who is a modular gaming PC for Rob Dunwood? Share some tips for good home video and AI gets better at rap battles. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, December 4th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane, drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland. I'm Len Peralta and from Columbus, Ohio and Rob Dunwood. And I'm the shows producer. We were just talking about glasses and proper screen management with glasses, as well as TikTok and TV shows and more on good day internet. Get that wider show. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. If you live in Nashville, Tennessee or Huntsville, Alabama, you can now sign up for Google Fibers, two gigabit per second fiber internet service. That's two gigs down, but still only one gig up is still very fast. The plan costs $100 a month and includes a Wi-Fi 6 multi gig router, tri-band mesh extender and installation. The Wi-Fi router supports two gig speeds with Wi-Fi 6 devices. And the multi gig router has a 10 gigabit per second port, though you may need adapters at both ends to get wired two gigabyte speed. The journal Science published a paper from researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei claiming to have achieved quantum supremacy, the ability to do a problem significantly faster than a non-quantum system. The system is called Juxiang, completed in just more than three minutes. A complex statistical test that would take the Sunway Taihu Light Super computer more than two billion years to complete. Juxiang uses photons traveling through optical circuits laid out on a lab bench guided by mirrors. The settings for the problem were effectively hard-coded into the optical circuits that make it difficult to reprogram for other uses, but it did it. This is the first claim of quantum supremacy since Google in October 2019. The Wall Street Journal sources say that the US Department of Justice is discussing a deal to allow Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to return to China from Vancouver, Canada in exchange for admitting wrongdoing. Meng has been on bail in Vancouver wearing an ankle monitor since December 5th, 2018, after the US requested her extradition on charges that she lied to banks about Huawei's business ties to Iran. A few more details came out around Google's former co-head of AI ethics, Timnit Gebrew, no longer being at the company. We talked about that a little length yesterday. We mentioned that Gebrew said that she had been fired over her stance on a paper. Google is characterizing it as a resignation. The paper we now know examined potential bias in a large scale language model. Google's head of AI, Jeff Dean, said the paper didn't take into account recent research to mitigate the risk of bias and block the paper from publication. Dean said Gebrew wanted to know who all had reviewed the paper and their exact feedback, and if she didn't get that, she would set an end date for employment. And Dean now says that means Gebrew resigned. The US Department of Defense added SMIC, China's largest chipmaker, to a list of alleged Chinese military companies. While the list itself doesn't carry direct penalties from the US, a recent executive order will prevent US investors from buying securities from listed companies in late 2021. In September, the US Commerce Department began informing some US companies that they would need to acquire licenses before supplying goods or services to SMIC, citing unacceptable risk that equipment could be used for military purposes. All right, let's talk a little bit more about good news for your phone use on a plane, Rob. Oh man, so after seven years of contemplation, the FCC decided that allowing passengers to make phone calls on planes is still a horrible, horrible idea and it will not remove the ban currently in place. Back in 2013, the FCC proposed removing a ban and it has taken them until today, actually, to say, nah, we're good. We're not doing that. And the decision is strongly based on strong opposition from pilots and flight attendants. You know, there's a lot of safety concerns that they say. A lot of it is probably just they want to cut down on the flights for people saying you're talking too loud because I can just see, I can see fistfights coming from long flights from, let's say, like DC to LA to where somebody is just talking loud the whole time and it gets to the point to where fists of cuffs are thrown. So well, and there's that whole thing about when someone's having a one-sided conversation, it's more annoying than when two people are talking to each other because you're sort of fixated on what that other person that silent might be saying.  Maybe you don't, but you're quiet.  I also forgot that this was a thing. I already don't like it when people chat too much with the person next to them behind me, right? Like just keep it low, keep it low. Yeah, keep it low or, or, I don't know, yeah. Be a quiet texture. I had forgotten that this was even something that was being contemplated probably because I haven't been on a plane in a while and I don't plan to anytime soon. So it's sort of like, I don't know, whatever they rule doesn't have anything directly to do with me these days. But yeah, I'm glad that I don't have to power off all my devices when a plane takes off or lands the way that we used to. And you know, a lot of people were like, but why? Why do we have to do that? And you know, FAA was like, okay, you don't really anymore. But yeah, talking on the phone, no go. I'm happy. I remember when they were thinking about this or when they started thinking about it, because I was flying probably five, six times a month and it would have just made my life miserable if I had to listen to a plane full of people chatting for hours at a time. So I'm glad they decided not to do this. Well, speaking of things we haven't done in a long time, I want you to think back to a long time in the past, January. Oh my gosh. Remember January? CES. Razor, if you recall, was showing off another modular gaming PC system back then. We talked about it on DTNS. Well, just under the wire to avoid being vaporware, Razor announced the Tomahawk, a case that comes with two PCIe slots, one for a GPU and the other for an Intel NUC element. The 210 millimeter by 365 millimeter by 150 millimeter metal chassis is 10 liters in capacity, comes with a 750 watt PSU, uses active cooling, four USB-A 3.2 ports, two Thunderbolt USB-C three ports, two, I'm sorry, they're USB-C Thunderbolt three ports, two gigabit ethernet ports, onboard Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 and even a 3.5 millimeter jack. The case is matte black aluminum with dual-sided detachable glass doors and chroma RGB lights at the bottom to do some fun light-up stuff. The NUC module itself contains a 45 watt core i9-9980HK coffee lake processor, 16 gigabytes of DDR4 RAM, 512 gigabytes of NVMe solid state drive, as well as a two terabyte hard drive. You can upgrade the NUC's memory and storage, but not the CPU. The way you update a CPU in this case is you get a different NUC. So if Intel makes some more than a compatible here, you'll be able to do that. You can use a variety of full-size GPUs and Razor will sell the Tomahawk to you two ways. They both come with the NUC, but you can order the Tomahawk without a GPU and bring your own or you can order it with an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition pre-installed. Now the Tomahawk is $2,400 if you don't get a GPU with it. It's $3,200 with the RTX 3080, and if you're thinking, oh maybe this is my way to get an RTX 3080 while the pre-orders are open in the US, but it's already out of stock. So good luck getting one of these. I think a lot of people think this is cool technology. It makes it easier for you to plug and play and swap and upgrade, you know, to a new GPU and a new GPU comes out. But Rob, it seems like a pretty narrow difference between the people who want to DIY and build themselves and people who just want to buy an off-the-shelf machine. Yeah, I hate to be that old guy that says, you know, just wants to poo-poo everything, because in essence this sounds cool, but I don't know what business critical issue this is solving for me. I am someone, I don't build PCs today, but I did back in the day. And one of the biggest reasons that I built, you know, there were two main reasons that I built my own PCs. One, cost, you know, you could build something significantly less expensively than what it costs to buy it, you know, pre-built. And two, oftentimes you wanted to have the bleeding edge, so you literally need to, you needed to have the ability to pull something out and then put something else into, get your machine to be the fastest on the block. This doesn't really do either of those things. It's, you know, like for the person, it's like, well, I want to build, but I don't really want to build. I guess it's for them, but you're not saving money and you're not necessarily going to have the best of breed. So, like I said, for me, it's cool technology, but I don't know that there's a use case for, you know, for someone like myself. Yeah, it's a good, you got to be for somebody who has enough money that they just don't want to go to the trouble of unscrewing the case. That's a pretty narrow slice, I think. Razer also announced the Hammerhead True Wireless Pro earbuds that feature active noise cancellation or THX certified and IPX4 rated for water resistance. The buds can reduce audio latency to 60 milliseconds when you're gaming. Hammerhead True Wireless Pro is available right now also for $200. I like the look of those. All right, Thursday, Warner Mita Studios announced all its 2021 films would go to HBO Max and theaters at the same time and Chaos ensued. Apparently, they did so without consulting the theaters themselves. AMC CEO Adam Aaron said in response to the announcement that, quote, Warner Media intends to sacrifice a considerable portion of the profitability of its movie studio division to subsidize its HBO Max startup and, quote, we will do all in our power to ensure that Warner does not do so at our expense. Regal Theater's owner, Cineworld, released a statement saying it plans to reopen cinemas in Q1 of 2021 and believes, quote, WB will look to reach an agreement about the proper window and terms that will work for both sides. Meanwhile, in an interview with the Washington Post, AT&T CEO John Stanky said that this could be a lifeline for theaters. He pointed out that once people go back to theaters, you may see all the studios release a bunch of movies at once creating a bubble where the movies don't make as much as they would be expected to otherwise. Stanky also added that the company realized, quote, we're going to have some really good content here that's spoiling and can be used for other purposes. Huh. Yeah, so the top line here is we were wondering yesterday when we talked about this, did the theaters sign onto this? And the answer is no. No. Warner Media is playing hardball, just announcing this and making the theater scramble to negotiate something later. It sounds like John Stanky is saying, look, theaters are going to get more money out of having us do this than they would if we just held up all our releases until 2022. And that seems to be the negotiating position of AT&T. Sitting on movies, like theaters don't get anything out of that. They get nothing. Yeah, and I feel bad for the, you know, for the movie theaters as much as you can for corporations. I feel bad for the people who are displaced out of work. But, you know, these companies are not going to just sit on all this content and let it get stale and then not be able to make any money on it. So it's like, you know, this is what we're going to do. And I just don't know that there's a lot that the movie theaters are going to be able to do about it. I mean, they'll probably come to some type of agreement. But, you know, for the next year or maybe even more than that, you know, movie theaters are just not going to, you know, be the place where people are going to watch content. Yeah, I do think Warner has him over a barrel. I don't think it's impossible that maybe we end up with a couple of small windows. My best guess, though, is we're going to see revenue shares come out of this. We're going to see Cineworld AMC and whoever else tries to negotiate getting a cut of some digital revenue the way they did with Wonder Woman. But it's going to be less of a cut because WarnerMedia just went ahead and said, we're doing it. You know, so the horse is out of the bar. And in fact, John Stanky said in his interview with the Washington Post, the horse is out of the bar. And like this is, this is not going back. Hey, folks, if you want to join in the conversation about this or anything else in our Discord, you can do so by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. Well, Rob's been putting a lot of work into his video set up and agreed to share some of the tricks he's learned and a few of the products he thinks are worth knowing about if you're setting up your video from home. What do you got for us, Rob? So like everyone else on earth, I am doing a lot of video conferencing from the house.  Now, I'm an engineer that has been doing, you know, teleconferences for literally a year. Since you've been able to do webinar type stuff online, I've been doing it. But you never really showed your face. You just showed your product. So it didn't matter what you looked like. But now that's really changed. You know, people want to see your face.  And, you know, I was doing everything. I was using a actual Logitech camera, not using the camera on my laptop. But I didn't think about lights. Lights were the lights that I had, you know, you know, turn the light switch on, turn the lamp on, whatever it was near me. But I started to play around with just, oh, well, if I put this light here, or if I actually sit in front of the window as compared to sitting behind the window, I'll look a little better. And, you know, what I've done for my setup, because I'm actually building an office down in my basement, since I'm going to be working from home for the foreseeable future. And I said, okay, well, I need to get some artificial light down here. So instead of just buying lamps, let's actually buy purpose built lights to do this. So, you know, what I'm doing right now, I know I'm jumping a little across the screen because I'm, I've got this chroma key from Skype, you know, kind of not making me look as good as it can look. But in OBS, setup I've got actually looks pretty good. And I'm using a $100 set of lights. These are Moondog, you know, softbox lights that I bought. Now I'm in my basement. I have an enormous amount of room down here. So I'm able to use these giant light boxes that I'm able to light myself with a hair light and a key light and actually put a backlight on the background behind myself.  A lot of people, the first thing they say is all I need to get a ring light. I wear glasses, ring lights and glasses are not necessarily the way to go because you will see the ring light in your glasses. Yeah, it's great. So I said, okay, well, I don't want to do that. I want to get at least, you know, a left light in a right light. So I don't have the glare of my glasses just being distracting.  And, you know, you get them positioned right. You can turn the heat up and down. They even have filters on them that you can change the color of the light if you choose to do so. And for 50 bucks, you can, you know, you can significantly increase how you look on camera. A lot of people think that I need to buy a better camera. That's rarely the case. You just need to have better light for the camera that you have. So I have been, for the last probably three or four months because my dad called me out on it, trying to figure out how to as inexpensively as I can make the lighting better so that I actually look better when I'm doing, you know, teleconferencing and stuff like that, which I'm doing quite a bit of these days. Yeah, I'm using the same newer. I think they're actually older versions of newer, but the NEWER here, and they work great. And they're nice and efficient, inexpensive LEDs, so they don't use a lot of power and they're adjustable, like you said.  That's the kind of stuff people use for professional shoots. It is the kind of stuff that you use for professional shoots.  The soft boxes that he uses are significantly more than what I've got here. I tried to keep the cost down to, you know, all I'm doing is just lighting myself while I'm doing a, you know, a webinar style call. So these lights, literally when I got them, they were a hundred bucks. I think the price has gone up a little bit now that they might be like a hundred and ten bucks.  Like I said, you can get, if you just need two desktop lights, you can get those for as little as 40 bucks, 41, 42 bucks. And if you want to go with the nice Elgato, like the key lights that you can control with apps and all that kind of stuff, you can spend a little bit more. You can spend as much as $200 a light for a still a relatively low end or medium range light. But it's, you know, the light is everything when it comes to doing video. It's not always the camera. In fact, it's probably rarely your camera as long as you have a camera that is not the one built into your laptop. If you if you actually got a like a logic tech camera or anything that you spent, you know, a hundred bucks on as far as a camera, those are going to do just fine for, you know, for webinars and, you know, for go to meetings and for zoom calls and all that kind of stuff is just get your light right and you'll look a lot better. I think a lot of times too. Oh, go ahead, Tom. No, no, no. I was just going to say those Elgatos, yeah, as as pricey as they are, they really aren't that different from the newers. It doesn't seem like. No, they aren't. And like I said, they have a application that you can control everything from within the app. So they get some stuff built into it. Like I said, for me, I was just trying to go as cheap as possible. And since I've got the space, I've got these giant 24 inch, but I think they're 24 by 28 inch soft boxes that cost me a hundred bucks.  Yeah. What I was going to say is I have the ring light glasses issue, which is, you know, it's an ongoing saga, but we'll figure it out eventually. But when I, because I'm in a garage right now, my studio redwood, surprise, it's a garage. And I've got these fluorescent overhead lights that at first I was like, Oh, they're awful, you know, it horrible lighting. But I've actually learned to use them as kind of fill and back lights because I've got my ring light and I have it on a really, um, a warm setting, which offsets that sort of fluorescent stuff. So, Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned the window as well. You know, are you frequently near a window in the middle of the day? It's like, you can use the light that you've already got and supplement it and, and turn out was something that looks really nice. Right.  I couldn't move my desk when I couldn't move the window. So I literally just took a plant and put it in front of the window to just diffuse the light a little bit. And if I remember, one of you guys asked me, he's like, Rob, did you get a new camera? He's like, no, I just changed the lighting a little bit. So it was me because I was like, it looks so good.    You want to get your light right. Well, Tom mentioned a rapping robot at the top of the show. So let's dive in, shall we? Music technologist Gil Weinberg of the Georgia Institute of Technology has adapted a musical robot called Shimon to compose lyrics and then perform them in real time. Shimon can collaborate with people on compositions or even engage in rap battles, which is all the rage if you're on Instagram anyway. Shimon is believed to be the first robot capable of composing its own rap songs. Shimon can identify keywords in an opponent-spoken lyrics and then generate new lyrics based around those original lyrics generated from custom data that sets Shimon has trained on using deep learning. Shimon is capable of rhyming by using a phoneme data set. Phonemes are distinct units of pronunciation that make up a word sound. So it kind of learns what you're doing and knows how to replicate it. To keep Shimon responding in real time, the response vocabulary was capped at 3,000 words and limiting the amount of time that it listens. So the robot can wrap a comeback in less than seven seconds. Shimon also improvises head gestures and eyebrow wiggles. And it's really darn cute. The solution is passing by. We are the servants of the world for the world's showing aim because you're trying to make a claim. I want to be a human.  That's a rap battle with Dash Smith on the official YouTube for this. They say they made Shimon's sound computer-y on purpose, which I think was because if they made, if they gave it a more natural sounding artificial voice, it would have even more of an uncanny valley. So they're like, we want to make it clear that it's a robot. Rappers out of work everywhere. I don't know. I mean, it's got a long way to go. But in the video, the YouTube video, which we'll have in our show notes, it's really cool because it is sort of this adorable robot kind of, you know, Dappin' to the beat. And what can't we do? We heard what it sounded like today. In three years, battle rappers, they better watch out. It's only going to get better. Yeah. Versus in three years, we'll be featuring Shimon against somebody. You do a collab with stuff. Yeah, right. It's going to show up on my iTunes or my Apple music, I should say. Yeah. And as goofy as that sounds when we play it back, in some respects, it's impressive that that wasn't programmed, right? It's easy for you to go like, well, that's easy. I just, you know, type into any kind of speech synthesizer and make that happen. That was created on the fly. Like you really got to listen closely to the entire rap battle with Dash Smith to understand that it's taking things that Dash says and incorporating them. Within seconds. There's some real semantic processing going on there, which is impressive. It's hard to do. Well, I've got a story that may make you laugh or cry, depending on who you are. Taiwan News reports that Taiwanese Facebook user Jin Wu says that he purchased a hard to get Sony PS5 from a reseller on November 20th from a woman who seemed to know little about gaming and was selling the PS5 for a particularly low price when we arrived to collect the PS5. He was met by a middle-aged man who seemed to be an avid gamer. When we asked the man, why are you getting rid of the PS5? The man said, my wife wants to sell it. It turns out that women can tell the difference between a PS5 and an air filter. So the implication here is that his wife told him he couldn't buy a PS5. So he secretly somehow got a hold of a PS5 and told her it would try or at least tried to tell her it was an air filter. It feels like he could have thought a little more about that. Right. The whole thing, because she's probably looking at the receipt and being like, wait a second. No, you said it was an air filter. He might have been able to get away with a giant Wi-Fi router. Right. Yeah. Yeah, he has an air filter. Keep the receipt away from her. And she goes, what is that? And be like, oh yeah, that's just to store a Wi-Fi router. That's for our network. I just love the idea of these two men meeting each other somewhere and the guy saying, why are you doing this? And he's like, my wife made me. She's not even here right now. She clearly made the sale. Like she was the one talking on the phone. Like, yeah, come and get it. I don't know anything about it, but I'm selling it for face value. I'm assuming she sold it for face value rather than profit because he said it was affordable. I can't imagine she sold it at a loss. That would obviate the whole point. But she made the husband give it up as I believe extra punishment for doing.   You tell him what you did. Oh, air filters. Good times. Yeah. I like, Rob, you're onto it. Something about Wi-Fi, something that it's an internet appliance, internet of things. Yeah. When I first saw the design of it, it's grown on me to the point where I actually want one now, but it looked like a Wi-Fi router. It's like, man, can that thing sit flush? I mean, it just, it just looked a little weird.  It would be a giant Wi-Fi router. And then she's like, I'm doing some trace roots on this new router and it's throwing some really odd packets, honey. We need to talk about this. All right. Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. So Martin wrote in and had an interesting story about, you know, movie theaters versus the option of watching at home and the more options that we have now. Martin says he and his fiancé each had a center world unlimited membership. They're in the UK, I believe. And Martin says they'd make a trip once or twice a month and they'd see four to six films in a single day. So it was like, they're kind of fun movie days. It says in 2018, I saw 85 films in the cinema. This year I've seen 13 all pre-lockdown and we didn't feel ready to return when center world opened back up but since closed down again but they haven't been since. So Martin said they looked at adding a movie package to their TV subscription. Martin says we're fairly confident we still be able to see the big releases with only a couple months or less delay. However, when we went to the cinema we would use smaller films that sometimes we'd not heard of to fill up our day, you know, to get our money's worth. Although we hadn't heard of them we'd enjoy seeing them and sometimes see really good films we would not have considered seeing otherwise. The downside to having the TV or on demand service is we probably will miss out on those smaller films we might not consider watching them because we're not in the theater wasting time. Although we have to consider the issue of distractions and going to the cinema forces us to put our phones away.  It's not the same and you might be saving a lot of money but yeah, it's you are building a new experience not really replicating the old one.  But I think Netflix and HBO Max and those streaming services and are going to be very good at showing you independent films that you wouldn't get exposed otherwise, Rob and I were talking about this before the show actually. Yeah, it's, you know, there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't get made or you just never see it because the studios they want to make profit. I mean, that's what they're there for so you're going to see the big blockbusters they know we spent a quarter billion dollars to make it we need to make a billion dollars on it as compared to if we spend 10 million to make it then we need to make, you know, then we need to make 40. That's not necessarily making a move so you just on oftentimes see that kind of content but if it's on these streaming services as as field content, you know, you see a lot of good movies that I mean are really quality, you know, stories, quality scripts, you know, good writing, all of that stuff that you would normally not be able to see by just going to the movie theater to see big box movies. Well, if you have emails for us whether it's a personal story as Martin sent it in or a question or a comment, please send it along. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We also want to shout out our patrons at our master and grand master levels today. They include Justin Zellers, Miss Music Teacher and Mike McLaughlin. Len Peralta has been busy illustrating today's topics. Actually, one of the big topics of the week, Len, that you drew here. Yeah, I am super excited for this, the big announcement about Warner Brothers taking their whole slate of movies to HBO Max. This piece is called The Warners Are Here and it depicts an image of someone opening up his door and all these huge monsters and the dune worm and Wonder Woman are all waiting to come on in. I for one am all for it and I hardly endorse bringing The Warners into my home for 2021. So yeah, so you can get this right now if you're a Patreon subscriber patreon.com for it slash Len you can download it right now or you can go to my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com where I'm also selling custom Christmas cards. So you can check it out, check that out right on the front page. Very cool, LenPeralta. Do you check those out? Also thanks to Rob Dunwood for being with us today. Rob, where can people keep up with your work? I am all things at Rob Dunwood on whatever the platform is but you can definitely check me out over on the smrpodcast.com website where you'll hear my weekly show. We want to send folks a holiday card if you're a patron and you've given us your address by December 10th you'll get one. You can check if we've got your address by going to Patreon dot com slash pledges finding DTNS and then looking in the right hand column you can either edit it to make it right, update it if it's not there or just look at it and go nope, there it is. If you want the holiday card though you have to become a patron now at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Hey, did you know we're live Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC? Well, you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live thanks to everybody who does join us live. It is Friday and guess what? We'll be back on Monday. Talk to you then.


Onsch Drebber vs Egas Fiontech is the second semi-final for Stuttgart for 2023. And both ladies have had to fight to get to this stage. Drebber started the tournament off as a number 3 seed and will get a buy in the first round. In the second round she took on Osta Penko, who just destroyed Rado Karno in the first round and after being down a set and a break, Drebber would fight back to win 167563 to get to the quarterfinals. In the quarterfinals she took on Adajmaia, who'd just taken out Rabakina in the previous round. But this was no problem for Drebber getting through in straight sets, 6-3, 6-love to get to the semis. Fiontech started the tournament off as the number 1 seed and would get a buy in the first round. In the second round she'd take on Zheng, player that she had to fight last year a couple of times in some close matches. This was no problem for Fiontech getting through in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4. In the quarterfinals she'd take on Pliskovac, who'd taken out Sakurin Vekic to get to this stage. And this was brutal for Fiontech starting down 4-love with Pliskov taking the first set, having to fight back to win eventually getting through in 3, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2 to get to another Stuttgart semifinal. These two have played 5 times before, with Fiontech leading the head-to-head 3-2, having won their last two meetings and also winning their only match on clay last year in Rome. But back then, Drebber was coming off a very tough match the previous day, so it wasn't really a fair fight. If Drebber's gonna win this one, she needs to use the variety. We know she can hit a great drop shot and she did that against Adajmaia and also did that against Ostapenko in the comeback, but she also needs to weather the storm with Fiontech, because we know Fiontech can go on a little bit of a run, so like we she did against Ostapenko, try and keep her cool and try and just let the storm pass. If Fiontech's gonna win this one, she needs to get off to a better start than she did against Pliskovac, because if she does that against Drebber, it's not gonna be as good. Also, she needs to probably hit the ball a little bit harder and be a little bit more aggressive because, of course, Pliskovac doesn't have the great defense that Drebber does, so she needs to make Drebber move a lot more and probably play a lot more shots, maybe even come to Net and Volley. This is a very fun matchup and we haven't seen this match since the US Open Final where these two clashed almost went three sets there in that final, so we're getting a rematch, but I'm gonna go with Fiontech on Clay. It's so hard to pick against her on Clay. She only lost one match last year on the surface, so I'm gonna keep picking her until she maybe loses a couple. If she loses a couple, I think she's gonna win this one in three sets, but let me know down in the comments below who thinks she's gonna win this semi-final.


Good day my dear investors. I hope you're doing great today. Last week I asked you to give me some tickers so that I can go through them, analyze a little bit and give you my opinion on it. However, be careful. Today we will analyze 10 stocks but not analyze. I will just give you my view on the companies, on where you should dig deeper and a little bit on the market outlook for the companies, the longer term perspective. I haven't gone into depth in any of those companies because I'm simply not attracted and I have a lot on my research plate so that I cannot devote that much time. But in the screening process I'm always screening companies. I'm always looking at companies so I will screen also the other 40 companies you recommended. Don't worry. Nevertheless, I will just give you an opinion which sometimes I think just an opinion, longer term perspective, perspective on the sector can be much more valuable than a 40-page report that I usually do on stocks. So let's start and you will see how I think a little bit in the screening process. That's the key of this video. Now the first company, Sprint. Highly competitive environment, negative cash flows and when positive those cash flows are mostly used in capex. Price earnings ratio is distorted from one off event, not something I would go in the company because I definitely don't like telecoms. I sense too much disruption ahead. There can be winners, they can be losers, there can be everything but for me to go into a telecom like this blindfolded is not something that I like because the disruption that can happen five years from now could obliterate any positive returns that you get up till then. So telecoms I think it's an asymmetric risk reward in the long term, which I'm not going into and I haven't researched and I prefer to research stocks with better outlooks. Second company on the list was T-Mobile. Unfortunately, again a telecom stock boasting it will be the first to launch 5G nationwide in the U.S. doing buybacks that will give some return. They are a growth story. They are growing 1,500 retail stores, so they are going into retail to compete against their competitors. One off event again distorted profit, so let's say it's nothing spectacular that can happen there. Markets should be valued fairly. A lot of analysts are covering, so what you see is what you get there. However, I don't like as I said telecoms, so I might be biased. I didn't go in depth research, so just my opinion, my view. That's it. Now this is a stock Fannie Mae where again I would need to go into depth. I would need to go into the lawsuits and calculate the probabilities of those outcomes to determine whether there will be value for shareholders or not. So if you want to dig deeper into this company you have to do that. Again, I have a lot on my research plate and such a legal issue legal investment is not on my research plate now. So I say again next. Now this is very interesting gold money. It's a Canadian precious metals company that allows you to do payments around pressure metals. It exploded in the last quarter of the year because all of those companies offering precious metals started offering cryptocurrencies and it was crazy and then it exploded to above six only to drop like a rock as soon as cryptos went down. Now even with the crypto boom the company reported earnings per share of 5 cents in the quarter which we will dig later and you will see how you dig deeper into a company. I don't know these companies but I will immediately tell you what's my view on it. So without the crypto it would be probably losing money as it was the case in the past. Now I don't know how they measure revenue but if you look at here revenue is 149 million, cost of sales 147. So the gross margin or I would call it the net revenue is 2 million. So it's a company with a net revenue of 2 million. If those are trades and their revenue is 2 million then that's not revenue. That's their business. It would be like American Express taking revenue on all their trades. It would be the biggest company in the world. So that's one question to dig deeper. I don't know I'm just guessing here. Further the fourth line gain loss and revaluation of inventories. So they have inventories probably precious metals or perhaps even cryptocurrencies which went up and they have revalued their inventory. So the bulk of everything that's going on is the revaluation of inventories. Nevertheless what they did as soon as the cryptocurrency craze hit the stock they immediately went for private placements and issued stocks. They got 48 million in financing thanks to the crypto craze. So very very well played by the management. Let's immediately issue stocks, dilute, get the money to survive longer. Very interesting how that worked out for them well. Now if you follow Peter Schiff on YouTube you can see here with this company a little bit in-depth what is the point of his YouTube channel and what's he doing with all of the marketing. Now on November 14, 2016 the company acquired 100% of the voting rights and outstanding shares of Schiff Gold from Peter Schiff in exchange for 700,000 common shares. That deal was valued at 2.7 million. Further in addition to owning the company, the same time the company entered into a consulting services agreement to receive marketing and client referral services from Schiff. So your emails or emails of the clients, contacts, number and everything in consideration for the consulting services agreement. The company will provide consideration of shares, warrants, warrants and etc etc. So they need customers and if you are dealing in precious metals Schiff is the person to go to and he is dealing making money on those transactions. So that's the back end of the YouTube business let's say. That's just so interesting how much you can find in annual reports and annual reports are the key to analyzing a company. Number seven high max technologies they're betting on sales of a 3D camera to double sales. They're finishing a new building. However Citron research make a tweet which destroyed the market capitalization. So December 6 they said that it's a fraud and the stock dropped like a rock since then. Companies like this which are in China and people saying are a fraud can even not be a fraud but then the market can consider them a fraud forever and you can never get to healthy pastures which are stocks. So really in-depth analysis of whether it is a fraud, what is the potential, what is the yield if it's not a fraud etc etc. So a lot of research to be done here. If it's a fraud if you can find it's a fraud then it's a short. So interesting put it on my short list to research in depth and see what are the possibilities there. Very interesting. Healthy market cap so a good good play short for the long a little bit less but if it is a fraud if you do something like that then you can research in depth. Thank you for the pick. Now Bank of America and this is something very interesting. Everybody is now crazy about bank stocks because interest rates will help them increase their profits and everything. Yes but aren't you bit too late to the party. The stock was below 15 what a 10 just a year and a half ago and now it's at 32 and now everybody's rushing in. Okay the price to earnings ratio is now 20 forward price to earnings ratio is 13 but that's always a bank. As interest rates increase the defaults will always increase so also that's something to take into account. Nevertheless as always what you pay is what you get highly followed company think Buffett owns it. So if you're happy with the dividend if you're happy with the risks why not. I would have bought it a year and a half ago go if I was interested in such companies. I'm just going to close here on the Bank of America risk is the function of the price you pay. So you can see that it can go to 15 and below because it was there just a year and a half ago so it might go there two years three years from now and that's the risk. It's always the function of the price you're paying. Another financial that's very interesting again similar as Bank of America exploded in the last few years and I see a lot of positive things about Goldman Sachs higher volatility to make profits and so on and so on. It's possible but this is what you have to do you have to go through every each one of those segments that they operate see what are the revenues what are the profits and how will the profits be affected by higher interest rates and by the new environment. When you do that you get the model over the long term you take put in the cyclicality and then you get to a price for Goldman a long term price. As you can see the stock is very volatile so the long term price might be much higher or much lower. It's something you have to see about that. And the international generics high leverage and declining revenues and prices somewhat like TAVA. I have no visibility into how that's going to pan out I have to do more research on that if I do you will know about the generics that's something I plan on doing in the future. Patriot 1 technology is safety scanning arm scanning so that it unfortunately exploded after the Las Vegas shooting and what happened in Florida which is an unfortunate way to invest. However this company still needs financing they are issuing units and warrants they are hoping on an international expansion they are issuing units and warrants as the bad things happened and they are taking advantage of the higher price but no price no order no revenue absolutely no idea on what will happen there I didn't find it in the investor relation and unfortunate that it spiked after terrible things happening. What's also interesting their products work in 93% of cases which set the business you wanted to work it 100% of cases 93% is simply not enough because those who want to do something will be in the 7% if they have intentions to do something. Enterror resources natural gas 6 billion company the company believes it is an inflection point but the market doesn't as the stock is really beaten down. Now if you look at what they want to do they present the five-year cash flows on the basis of oil at 50 oil at 60 sorry and gas at 2.85 so it's a play on oil and gas if they hit that numbers in the next five years okay if oil falls to 30 if gas falls below 2.85 then then it's a completely different story and that's why the price and the risk is in the price so be careful with it might look too cheap because it was much higher in the past but it is like that for a reason. Now CD Projekt Red a polish stock let's see very very interesting they make online games other games video game publisher distributor in warshow founded in 1994 so very interesting if you're in the game industry what I see here is sales have dropped a little bit in polish lot is however the net profit is huge and if their new games continue to do well they will also probably do well however the price earnings ratio is already at 45 and you have to understand the gaming industry the cycle quality of games the companies the how they grow how they crash what's the risk reward when investing in debt it sounds like an interesting story polish company small cap on the polish stock exchange also traded in stuttgart if you're interested very interesting stock however I have no visibility in the polish gaming industry and how that goes on globally and what will be their next hit if there will be the first 10 companies hope you liked my thinking and I'm looking forward to your comments where should I think deeper or do you agree with what I think thank you for watching I'll see you in the next video


When we look at footage and pictures of the Apollo command module returning from the moon, it looks like the spacecraft is just falling through the atmosphere towards the ocean. But it didn't. Though it didn't have wings, the Apollo command module could sort of fly. The command module was, at least externally, a symmetrical colon shape, about 11 feet tall and 13 feet around at its widest point. But internally, everything inside the spacecraft was arranged such that its center of gravity was slightly off-center towards the astronauts' feet. Space meant that the spacecraft leaned in one direction as it fell through the atmosphere. And when it fell supersonically, or faster than the speed of sound, that slight lean translated into lift. The crew could direct the spacecraft using their thrusters. Small bursts of propellant could roll the spacecraft, changing the lift vector up or down or side to side. This gave the blunt-bodied spacecraft some cross-range capability, and it's actually the same capability that the Mars Science Laboratory mission used when it delivered the Curiosity rover to a slightly elevated landing location. So when did this cross-range capability come in handy on Apollo missions? Well, when Apollo 11 was about 12 hours from splashdown, the weather in the primary landing location was starting to look back. NASA needed to bring the crew down in a secondary landing location, some 215 miles away. It was close enough to the primary site that the spacecraft was able to actually make the distance using its lift capability. The crew never had to make an extra burn before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Questions or comments? Leave them below. For weekly Vintage Space updates, don't forget to subscribe.


Winner Home on Afternoon Express with 3 design contestants are turning 3 empty properties at Valdivia State in the Cape Wildlands into Dream Homes using finishes provided by Cesar Stone and Plaskon. Vote for your favourite and you could win. What an exciting season it has been and it's a brand new week for Winner Home on Afternoon Express but for our design contestants they're still tackling their master bedrooms. It's halfway through their third challenge and with less than a week left to complete the challenge I went over to Valdivia to see how they're coming along. It's fine okay and then you can drop it all the way to here. Rudolph. Sorry to interrupt. How's it going? Good. Very good. Thank you. So this place is looking pretty interesting. I see different colours on the walls. I see paintings. I see new finishes as I came to see you last. How's it going? What have you got planned? No, it's all good. We're busy with the lighting here in the bulkhead and we're going to carry through with the paint that we've used in the bathroom on the opposite walls and the side walls but this is going to be a feature wall and it's going to have some panning on here and as you can see we've measured it out already this morning so we're ready to start with that. So these are the different colour options that we're going for? Yeah. Have you got a thought process of which one you're going to choose yet? I'm not sure yet. We've already made a selection with the curtaining colour and as you can see we have the artwork here so it's literally, I still need to put on a second coat. I don't want to make the same mistake I made last time with the bathroom so I'm really going to make sure these all taste the pot and then as soon as we've made a decision we can go for it. So we want to try and make this room look a little bit bigger and I see you've gone with the sort of wood finishings that you've got here and less mirrors I don't know if there are going to be any mirrors in this space? Yeah, no mirrors but what I really like about this is that it adds luxury to this space as you can see it really it has warmth to it dressing room is something where you really want to feel comfortable in and make the right choice for the day. It kind of feels like you've gone with an elegance with that it almost brings like an age with it a wisdom with it which I'm excited about because your bathroom is quite fresh it's got that real foresty feel and it's light as fresh and friendly and this has got that slightly more sophisticated feel. What are you thinking bed wise? Bed wise, unfortunately we can only fit a queen size bed in here so that I still have enough space on either side for bedside tables. It looks like it's coming along very very nicely are you going to be done in time? Yeah definitely we'll make it. Cool, well he's confident I hope our other contestants are too. Paul seems to be well on his way and I'm really liking his vision it's time now to catch up with Minense halfway through his master bedroom. Minense, the man who I'm putting my money behind how's it going? Good to me as well, better than last time. Very good thank you, better than last time we hope so it seems like a little bit more effort there's actually paint on the wall I'm very happy. Yeah, yeah. What have you got planned for this master bedroom? I'm still going with taking the outside into the inside so I'm still going for those very earthy colors but I'm very I'm definitely going bolder with just to make a statement behind the bed because I feel like I played it too safe in the guest room just using one color. I chose to carry the theme all around the apartment so I went for timber floors and that will act nice with the earthy colors that I bring into the room. So my main feature is still going to be the back of the bed where I'm going for this very bold headboard and I'm having the rest of the room in a very light color which I'm going for clean and bright. So just to bring in some laughing to the room I'm going to still be bringing in some plants and I'm taking through the elements of that modern frame it's going to be seen in the furniture that I bring into the room so viewers can can expect that consistency between the guest bedroom, the bathroom and the master bedroom. The details are going to be very important in this room with the bold statement like your back wall so what have you got planned with Caesar stone here? With Caesar stone I'm bringing it as shelving so I'm just I want to show the potential of Caesar stone how it works with other decorating items so I'm going to bring it in to the on both sides of my of my of my bed as floor sink shelves and I'm also having a dirt shelf that I'm going to decorate just to show the versatility of Caesar stone. So naturally it's called a bed room what's the plan with the bed here? For the bed I'm keeping up with the very modern look that I went for in the guest bedroom having that frame bed which is very contemporary and very modern which is my type of style so I thought it would work perfectly in this room because there's very high ceilings so as you enter it gives that sort of double volume feel. The viewers all want to know I want to know have there been any hiccups or will we finish on time this time? Ah yes definitely the summer and I learnt a lot from the previous experience so yeah it should be done on time. Good well I'm glad to see you excited about this project we've seen what the two boys are up to let's go find out what the lady of the home has got planned. Good luck. Cheers man. So welcome to my half way bedroom. Wow it's actually looking pretty much done from a painting perspective it seems. No my painting done. Compared to the other guys. The only thing I've noticed that's different is that you've got a hole in your wall. Yes I decided to think a bit out of the box and I went for a hole in the wall for my headboard so it's going to be a bookshelf storage space above the head bed.  So I went for a very white neutral palette as I did in my guest bedroom I used in the mood once again here I really love the colour it reminds me of nature and it fits with the timber flooring so I'm going to put the wooden bed right here with two bedside tables and with lamps on them. Oh it should be absolutely amazing have you seized a stone in the space? I used to use a stone in my cupboard it's going to be an exposed cupboard as I did in the guest bedroom but with a bit of a twist. With this colour scheme it seems like it's going to be nice and spacious and open but what is going to be the wild factor? So I decided to print up and blow up one of my own photographs against this wall and also I painted my trusses to expose the architecture the structure that was used I really like the colour. So we should trust you that it's going to look amazing? Yes you should. Okay fantastic and it will be done on time? Yes definitely. You know me? Okay to the lady of the home? Thank you. Thank you. Oh the laughter doesn't even leave when we head over to Val de Vie. I'm so jealous of one of you get to win one of those apartments validated more than three million grand it's going to be such an exciting addition while our design contestants were hard at work on the Val de Vie properties I took a moment to check out some of the other facilities on offer at the estate take a look. When you say wine you've immediately got my attention. Val de Vie is home to some of the best wines the Western Cape has to offer and that is why this development is so aptly called the Vines where you can find a starter home or something slightly bigger. Divine isn't it? Already boasting a vineyard equestrian facilities and more the newest addition to the Val de Vie lifestyle is the neighbouring Pearl Valley Golf Course. Golfing enthusiasts boy do I have a treat for you or if you're just somebody who likes the rolling greens and the wide open space this is the Jack Nicklaus designed golf course on Pearl Valley Estate. The championship Pearl Valley course is among the top golf destinations in the country and attracts local and international golfing enthusiasts. Well Pearl Valley has recently become part of the Val de Vie estate which means that all of this could be your new backyard. Spectacular isn't it? And last but not least the polo village where our three win-home apartments are based. This is the perfect combination of lock up and go and estate living. So here to tell us more Reg Neatling marking director from Val de Vie. Hey Danilo. How you doing? Very good to meet you. Very good thanks. You're welcome. I fall in in love with the place it is absolutely incredible and there's so much on offer. How do you guys cater for different types of lifestyles? Yeah for us it was really the secret to our success you know like along with security when we bought Pearl Valley we knew that it would be a very big draw card for all the golfers and people that love that kind of you know lifestyle. Here at Val de Vie we've got the equestrian side and we've got the wine farm. We've got miles of trails to run and bike. We've got gyms indoor and outdoor pools indoor and outdoor with tennis courts. So there really is something for everybody here and so four people love it and you can just see it in the cell. So they say diamonds are a girl's best friend but Val de Vie's new friend is Pearl Valley. Well done on the acquisition. Thank you very much. It was it was a dream of ours for a long time. You know fortunately things worked out and I mean they are next door neighbors and it just really made sense and I think the combined amenities that we can offer now to our residents and our future residents is just really unmatched anywhere in the world. We've we've traveled all over the world looking at these types of the states and we couldn't find a place anywhere in the world that has a golf course with the quality of the Pearl Valley golf course and the question facilities at the open areas and you know you can't create that anywhere. So it's close to Cape Town. It's close to the University in Stellenbosch. We're very excited obviously. We've invested a lot of money time effort and passion not just into Val de Vie and Pearl Valley but also into the into the greater community and we really believe in this valley and I think when people come here they see that passion. Sure.  So what is the future hold for this incredible neighborhood? Well that's our vision to make this really a secure place you know for families and people to really come live their dreams. Just like us all the all the shareholders live here permanently. We're very passionate about it and yeah we just want to create the secure environment for people. With all these amenities we've got schools as welcoming hotels but it's very important that we keep that you know community feel. We also believe in you know like the greater community and yeah and to keep it safe. Unfortunately in South Africa you know security is a big issue and we really proud ourselves in our security and the safety is definitely our number one priority here at Val de Vie. So it is such a beautiful neighborhood. I really really can't wait for one of you to win the home. If you haven't entered the competition yet head over to privateproperty.co.de check on the win a home link and enter now. But I have to ask you something because I always wondered this if I live on Val de Vie estate am I called a Val de Viennian, a Val de Vonian, a Val de Knight like what do you call it? You're called a legend and a very smart man. I like this guy you can stay. Well remember that you can experience the beauty of Val de Vie for yourself. If you're the lucky grand prize winner of one of those three completed apartments make sure you head over to Val de Vie of private property in fact .co.de and vote for your favorite design contestant's bathroom, or room or house to stand a chance to win. Vote for your favorite design contestant's bathroom on privateproperty.co.de and stand a chance of winning plastic on paint to the value of 5,000 rand. You also automatically get entered into the draw to win one of the three finished apartments valued at over three million rand. Win a home is proudly brought to you by private property and association with netbank.


Welcome, everyone. We are recording this meeting of the Public Arts Commission for the Town of Amherst. I'd like to welcome everyone and let you know that this recording will be uploaded to the Town of Amherst YouTube channel, and it can also be accessed on the webpage for the Public Arts Commission. At this time, I would like to recognize the chairs, Terry and Tom and thank everybody for their service to their town. Happy holidays, everyone. Thank you, Angela. Thank you. Okay, welcome to December Amherst Public Arts Commission meeting. My name is Terry Holt. I will be your leader. Okay. Here we go. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, then Governor Baker issued an emergency order on March 12 2020, allowing public bodies greater flexibility and utilizing technology in the conduct of meetings under the open meeting law. In Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner. By clicking on the Zoom link, this recording gets uploaded to the Town's YouTube channel promptly after the meeting. No in-person attendance by members of the public is permitted, but every effort is made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. And then they are unable to do so or regardless, we will be posting this to the Town's YouTube channel shortly after the meeting. Okay. Roll call. We are all here, but Mikey, so how fabulous. Good to see you all. I don't have treasure report in my agenda. I'm sorry, Robert. Shoot. That's okay. I don't really have anything to report at the moment anyway. Okay. All right. So, let me look at my agenda here. And I'm going to share my desktop, hopefully this one. Share. We've got agenda right here. Okay. First things first, approval of the November minutes. Did people get a chance to look at the minutes? Thank you, Tom, for doing those. Did they, I just tried to find them, but I I don't know what I can share. Yeah, I can see it. Yeah, you can see it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Terry, for one thing. The attendance is wrong. Because Jim did attend the meeting. So he should be moved up. Okay. Move approval as amended. As amended. Okay. And then Mikey was not here last week. Okay. Okay. Is that correct? Okay. So. For those of you who did not make it, Catherine Stryker presented her proposal. We had some questions and we were waiting for her to get back to us, but I haven't really gotten that information back yet. Jim, do you have a question? Yeah, we didn't vote on the minutes. I was going through them since I don't know if everybody got a chance to go to read them. Oh, I was just going to pick out some key, some key things, mostly. We got to see that. Um, I can send this out for people who haven't seen it. Robert, do you need to copy of this? Yes, please. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? I do. I'm going to just do a share right from here. As long as you guys have Google docs. I hope I think this works. If I do this. All right. Let's take a, see if that works. So let's hold off on approving these minutes until we get a chance to look them over. So we're going to hold off on that. Let's go and talk about the for want of a nail. And I think we've all got something to talk about here. I'm trying to get my view here. She did.  Um, That were sent right of the list of. Her. Who she talked to and all of that that we'd asked for. So that was sent by Angela. That was kind of a, an overview of what she has done so far. Uh-huh. And it's kind of a timeline. You'll notice that. Right. Started this project in October, 2022. And then she went through some other steps, but she didn't get to us until October. So, um, we really haven't had enough time to really go through this and ask all of our questions. So, um, That's the one, the statue, right? Yes. So there's two. Project. Not to mention the fact that we asked for a number of documents. And got zero. Yeah, not yet. So, um, There are two parts of this project. There is an exhibition of the, uh, artifacts that she found along with a narrative. And I guess an interpretation of the history of blacksmithing. And that's all supposedly going to go into the library. Um, so I think, you know, I don't, I didn't really have a problem with that. It's not really under my purview. But, um, the statue is under the public arts preview. So we do need to look it over and do our due diligence. I did ask them to reach out to the DEI. Um, I talked to Pamela from the DEI and she says she has not received anything. She couldn't find any emails or information. About this. And then I talked to Gigi. Barnhill at the Amherst historical society. And she said, she really, no one's reached out to her, but she says, she doesn't think they have any say in it. And I just said, we're trying to bring more people in to get their opinions. So. So that's where we are on that. Do you already got a question? Oh, yeah. Um, I don't really understand why the North Amherst library people. Haven't commented on this. Have all of you gone and looked at the space that is. Being talked about for the, where this would go. Yeah. I've seen the space. And it's, it's tiny. It's almost on the road. It's not a very big statue. I don't think it's not going to be. She talked about how big it had to be to be tall enough for people not to get hurt by it. Right. So we don't even know the dimensions of it really. I don't think, do we? Tom, did you get a good sense of the dimensions of this? Only what I could surmise by looking at her pictures. So I'm guessing that it's something like maybe at most three feet high. But she said when she was in the reference to my comment about. It being an attractive business, then she said it was going to be four and a half to five feet high. Yes. On a pedestal. Yeah. Including the pedestal. Right. Well, I'm just, I feel really. Steamrolled on this. I think we're listening to somebody. I don't know. I think we're listening to somebody who may be very well intentioned. Yeah. To do something nice, but doesn't have the substance to do it. If she gets the substance, then I think that we should consider it. But right now I don't think that we have anything to consider. I think that we still are lacking information and. Feedback from the DEI. I have. Written up a draft of a letter I'd like to send, and I've shared that with Tom. And it's basically saying, I can read it. I mean, it's right here. If you'd like to read along with me. I just came up with this. I don't need to read it out loud to you. You can read yourselves. So this is just basically a. Hey, we need more time letter. I think that that is the appropriate response at this time. Until we hear back from about the stuff we've asked. Her to give us for consideration. So I talked to Angela Mills about it too, to get kind of context of town hall. And she agreed that like, if we don't, we can't come up with any kind of decision because we don't have enough information. So we need to delay our decision making. So. The second sentence where you say we all admire your research, your passion at work. I can't be a part of a sentence that says that because I don't feel that way. Okay. We can just. I would just strike the sentence. Yeah. That's fine. Also, I think that I would like to have a very explicit. Request for the information that we requested, including the contracts for the construction of. Including, but not limited to, excuse my language. For include the contract for construction of the. Of the work and financing. And I don't think you can say we think this project could be. Because it says, though, we all voted something unanimously and. That's not okay with me. Wait a minute. Let me see. What does it say? That's the second paragraph. I don't think that either. Necessarily it might be, but I don't know that right now. Yeah. Not now. So can you take, get rid of that? We are change rewrite that. Oh, that's. Okay. Tower. I don't know. I mean, I, I don't think wording it like that is. Solves the problem really. Because. That's not okay with me. Wait a minute. Let me see what is it. That's the second paragraph. Oh yeah. I don't think that either. Necessarily it might be, but I don't know that right now. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you should make any commitments in this. In this. I think you're risking getting a black eye.  Supportive in some way. But. This has always been presented to us as a foregone conclusion. And that's not okay. How about. Beginning. Striking the beginning of that sentence and just. Starting it with this project. Could be. Yeah. Let's. Let me see. No, I think that you're too positive about beautiful edition. And stuff like that. And public art collection. I don't really. I don't really. I don't really think we've even talked about the value of why that is going to be there. Or what the North Amherst library people think about it. It's not okay. What if you said something like we appreciate the opportunity to. Consider your work.  That's good. We could do that. However, there are, you know, for us to. Move forward with it. There are. There's more information that we need. More time and information. And that would be a good place to say we were ready. The request for the documents that we. Ask for at the last meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Consider your work or consider this project. And that would be a good place to say we're ready to move forward. With the documents that we asked for at the last meeting. Would it be useful to list those again? So it's all in one document. Yeah. You want. The big ones I mentioned a minute ago, the contract for the construction of the. Of the, of the sculpture and all documents relating to the financing of the sculpture. The financing. I thought she was going to do the fundraising. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not necessarily correct. Since she is fundraising all around already. She says how much she's fundraising. I think Dara and I are thinking along the same lines. Yeah. What do you want me to say here? Well, I think the point is that. That. We would. As part of our consideration, we'd like to see that this thing is going to be a good place for us. I mean, I think it's going to be a good place for us. And I think it's going to be another steamroller step. Where, where she says, you all approved it. Now I need some help. Finishing the financing. I think. Why don't you just say we cannot approve this project until we can. We review the contract and they're satisfied that funding is in place. Well, not just that. You also have to approve the art that artwork for that spot. Correct. Oh yeah. Right. I didn't mean to. Yeah. I think it's going to be a good place for us. I think it's going to be a good place for us.  And, and it's right at an intersection that takes a whole lot of concentration of looking at. One, two, three, four, five different. Directions, traffic's coming. And it's not necessarily a really good place to put anything. Much less. Be told why it's important. Just based on one person's thought about it. Anybody else have any thoughts about that? I agree. I agree. Yes, I agree too. I think we, maybe we can separate this a bit. You know, the, if we concentrate on reiterating what are the documents we need to see. And keep that separate from making any implication that once we get those, we're giving a green light. As we still have the question of whether we think this is, this is a good idea or not. Yeah. See, because it says, um, we understand you're on a tight schedule at the end, last paragraph. We understand you're on a tight schedule. And I'm afraid we just cannot approve the project before. That sounds like that it's going to get approved once, once these things are satisfied with like documents or timing. And that's just not right. Yeah. I think the other problem with it is it kind of ratifies the fact that she comes in at the last minute and says, I need this done in a week. Yeah. I don't like that precedent very much. Not okay. Okay. Well, this was a draft so I can take your, what you have to say and add to it. And Tom and I can work on this and kind of an asset. But the big things is because I. Frankly. I think the contract has been given to the artist. I'm not going to say that's due to the form. We don't have them. My lawyer's mind is saying, do they exist. And that is contract with the contract with the artists is a big, big deal because there are certain rights. That. That need to be waved. And if they're not waved, you're going to have a real headache. With that statute, particularly when it starts to rust. Yeah. artist yet. Well, it hadn't been given to us.  I'm not even sure that the person is considered an artist because they are being commissioned to do a design that somebody else designed. I think it's his design, but it's it's her idea and his design. I think that's what it that was my understanding. I do have that written down here. So, okay. That was my understanding too. But I don't think that she's contracted with him at this point because she doesn't have she hasn't done the fun rate she hasn't raised the funds to be able to really contract with him. Although she could do a contract based on, you know, raising the funds. I don't want to take anything that she says and incorporate it as a fact that we say of our own personal knowledge. That's right. Right.  I don't know why there's she set on that as being her spot. This just reminds me the time that a man came to my high school and awarded my brother awarded a scholarship that wound up to my brother for I don't know how many dollars and left town and there was no scholarship and there was no award and there was nothing but a speech. I just think we, I mean, we, I know that everybody here wants to see either the commission begin to have more proper like, you call it due diligence or or means or policies in place and talk about wanting to do things like that and this is a good example of why we need it. Right. Absolutely. This is why this is why we need guidelines so that we can check things up and say does it meet this doesn't meet this doesn't meet this we don't have that right now. And also, I think that it will, it is a good idea for us to think about what we each and then what we can agree on together. If we can and I think we probably can. What public arts about and what it's for. That's part of the work we're doing with strategic planning. Yeah. It's a real discussion and it's got really valuable content in it when you really get into it the history of public arts amazing. The reasons people use it and want to use it as amazing. And it would be really good for us to get to talk about it and I don't think we need a consultant. I think we just need to do some homework. We actually started Tom has started doing some of that work and also Angela Mills has sent us a lot of files on past Amherst works. So we have those to go through. And so we have we kind of we're starting that phase of like trying to collect the information so that we can know where we are right now we barely know where we are, you know. The thing I want to ask you one other question that made me concerned about things. But at the same time you're, you're in talks with the cultural council about folding the public art commission into the Arts Council. Yep, yep, something like that. Yeah. Well, what, what would you say, not just something like that but what is it really. So, the fact is that there's a lot of confusion about which organization does does what in this town is Amherst cultural council and there's us Amherst public art. We do we have some similar goals. If we joined together we would have these kind of we'd have the support of the cultural council and also the they they get a they get money to use toward local, local art events and public art and etc. It's all one kind of one pot. So my point is that we would have a little more budget and more voices, and we'd be able to bring in more voices with the cultural council behind us. Well, but the cultural council exists to with the same mission that the Massachusetts cultural council exists for. Yep. And, and that's mostly to support art tests and art organizations. And the public art commission has a pretty different kind of mission than that really. And you don't want to take money away from the art commission, I mean from the cultural council before. All this commission is at least saying that it intends to have more presence than it has had. So I'm confused by the mixed messages I'm hearing. I think we what we might want to do is, you know, as we, when we open our discussion about public arts, you know, purposes and ways and means that we line that up against, you know, side by side with the cultural council and test whether there's, kind of a symbiotic relationship or whether there's conflict or uncertainty I think we, we can determine that for ourselves and that would tell us whether the thought of some kind of merger. You know, make make sense. I think we can test that and not have to, you know, just just conclude from where things stand now that either there is or there isn't an overlap I think we can take a look at that and together determine who did you who did you call by name in the beginning of what you were saying you caught name somebody named Mike. No, I think I said maybe said might. Okay, okay. So, there's an evolution across towns on one second I'll get to you I'm so sorry. There is kind of an evolution of art organizations that's happening in towns where they're kind of their, their public art is kind of joining in with an art commission and forming one entity so that they can engage more and fight the siloing and the fighting for money that happens because we're asking for money and so is cultural council and it helps with fundraising and so this is. It's, it's a thing that's happening in other towns and so that's what we were looking at as well I don't mean to have any messages I don't have agenda. But the cultural council gets its money from the Massachusetts cultural council, not the town. Yes. Yeah, and that can you know that's, I don't see that as any kind of problem what I do see as a problem is the siloing that Terry mentioned so Catherine went to cultural council. A year before talking to us and the cultural council apparently didn't tell her, we don't know this. I'm surmising. I don't know how or hey you better talk with public art, which leads me to the thought of how many times are we sort of forgotten, or are overlooked. Going around. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, Robert I'm so sorry please, your turn. No that's that's okay. I guess I was just going to make the point. Okay. Have we concluded the conversation on for want of the nail, just looking at the agenda and if so, I mean I think the, the digression is an important one, and certainly, you know merits perhaps a whole meeting. And to determine, you know, going back to the idea of strategy, but sort of our our role and and how to work with the other organizations that seemingly have complimentary missions but I guess I guess my point was just, you know, it's an important and we should probably just work our way through the agenda items but definitely make time this meeting and subsequent meetings to talk about this because it seems like it's been and continues to be kind of an obstacle for us really moving forward. Yeah, I agree.  And the big problem is, we don't have a budget. So this is a conversation that I think we should continue as Robert said, at a different time let's stay on the agenda. I really think this would take an entire meeting to talk about because we have a lot to go through, and it's part of the planning stages that I'd like to start with more. So, let's move along I think what we've got a basic idea for a letter that we're going to Tom and I are going to whip into shape we'll make sure that we don't say anything that says we are supporting it and loving your project so that, you know, I was really just being way too nice so I will, we will work on that. Is that okay when we move on to the next thing. It's going to be signed by all of us we ought to see a final draft before it's sent anybody. Okay. Yeah, you know what. Yeah. Okay, so Tom let's get this will get this whipped into shape and then we will send it out to you. Okay, and I will wait to hear approval from all of you before I send it. Yeah, I definitely want to look at it because I want to make sure it doesn't get us in any legal trouble. Jim, on public meeting grounds. Can we do this as proposed here that we send everybody a draft or do we need to. We need to wait for another actual meeting. The only way for raising that name answer is probably no, because the problem is that's called a serial breach of both. If, if, if Derek talks to me and I talked to Tom and Tom talks to Robert and Robert talks to Laurie and then it goes to Terry. That's clearly a violation of the open meeting law. Well what if I send the final copy to each of you separately and have you all get back to me separately. I, I, I'm not going to definitely say it violates it but it certainly is a minimum on the line and I'm not comfortable with it. I'd have to, you know, I take, I have to go and spend like 30 minutes looking at the various authorities and I predict I would say no but I'm not saying that definitely because I need to look at the authorities this is so right on the line. Okay, so this is why we can't get things done because it takes a month between. So, so hard to get things done. I think we have no alternative, but to we do the draft and then have the habit of having it available for discussion at our next meeting to be to be safe about this because we are the group here is asking that this be able to get to approve. How about if we, we, we do everything except talking to each other so you do the draft you send it to everybody to make that little notes and stuff and we have a meeting with only that on the agenda. December is real tricky. I don't know. Yeah, you're right. All that together. Okay. Yeah, you're right. I guess that you could just say to her that we haven't had time to do it yet and that will show get will show here from us in November in January. Okay. Everybody agree. Well yeah because actually one of the things I was thinking about as we see us have a little bit more spade work done before we even start to discuss these things because we spent a lot of time on this and I'm predicting it's never going to come to pass I hope I'm wrong but it doesn't look good to me. It feels like it's moving forward without our approval so I don't I really don't know what the nail thing. Yeah. Well, how do you what do you mean by that Terry. Well it's approved by everybody and they're they're ready to sign a sign a contract with this artist and I just feel like we're, who's they thrown in at the end here. Did you read the thing that was sent to everybody the next steps and all that did you receive that letter. I did. It just doesn't seem to me that there's anything that makes you think that it's all a done deal already she's just calling it a done deal. I mean there's no evidence that she has any money there's no evidence that she has anybody to to build it there's no evidence of what the contract would be with that person. And then North Amherst library people. How do they feel that they approved it. I mean I don't know say it they approved it says that the, oh the john side that don't people approve it. Yeah, very different bunch of people in a different location. So there's a lot of things that are being glossed over in the, and for the sake I guess of getting as quick approval as she can because she wants to, but her wanting to doesn't give you any. That's not enough reason for us to act like we agree with everything she says. So it sounds like I'm going to send her an email saying we cannot. We cannot decide on this until you'll hear you'll heal back from us you're healed back from us here back from us in January, does that sound okay. Yes. Okay. So that is what I will do, but I think we need to remind her that she promised to get documents to her and we haven't received anything. Yep. Yeah, I think that's safe enough. Okay. Oh, and yeah documents. Okay, moving on to the next thing. Thank you very much everybody. Both would get a boltwood gallery next steps. I have more information about that in my chair report which I could move up to give you all the information. Would that be okay if we skipped forward to chair report and then we can come back to this. Yes. Yes. Okay. Can you hang on just one second please. Yeah. I have this in your minutes you did you send this email did you get that email. Yes. All right. Jim, can I get started. Just give me another minute please. Behind. Okay, thank you. Okay. So, after not rest after that, I've sent an email to Dominique. We're on boat with gallery on the boat with gallery. Yeah. We had to go back and forth with the contract I work with town hall to eliminate some steps that she was concerned about specifically the need to have workers compensation as an artist. I took out of the town hall. It took Paul Bachman a while to get back to me. He had to talk to the lawyer for the town. So, after I finally got the edits done for the contract I sent it to her in November 14. And I have not heard from her since I've sent out two more emails to her about a week apart that I followed up with a phone with a text message, and she has not returned any of my communications. So I've been a little worried about her, but I found a November 13 article on the arts foundation of Cape Cod website that features her. And there she is. And she's doing good. She's, she's okay. So I'm glad to know that. But it says that she had a piece installed in the almost. Yeah, is that true. No. Well, then that's a real problem. So there is one piece one one of her pieces is in one window, but the other four windows are blank because she never installed because she was waiting for the contract and so this is a bit of a mess. So let's review. We're talking with an artist that we cannot contact that made a false statement to a newspaper. Right. What does that tell you. So I think that she was having a housing challenge. And so she returned to Truro where maybe her family lives. This is my, my guessing here. I'm not, I don't know why she hasn't responded to the emails doesn't explain the false statement to the newspaper. So at this point, I did extend the trust to her to I gave her the shadow boxes in the windows so that she could install her art in them. And I should not have done that without a contract. So that's on me. I'm sorry. Trusting soul. Are they very expensive. They're custom made. So the custom made out of wood to fit the windows perfectly so you can put a piece of art in it and then kind of slide it into the window so that you can see if the outside. Okay, so that are they inexpensive or expensive. I don't know they're custom made. We have to get those back from her. Yes. She lives in Truro. I don't know what to do about that particular problem, but we need to return the funds that were promised that were given to us from the Amherst cultural council, because we did not follow through on this and so we're, we have to give them back the money. Well, we're doing good with giving back money. Wow, we're doing good with giving back money. It just feels like a lot of misses I'm, I'm very frustrated. I understand. I wouldn't worry about those, those things that you gave her unless they turn it to be very, very, very, very, very expensive. I really don't know. I want to talk to you all about the possibility of putting out a new call for artists to fill the boat with gallery using our own funds in the spring and invite the past applicants, because it doesn't feel right to just to go to the past applicants and say, oh, let's use you and said that doesn't seem quite right. So I wanted to ask if what you all felt about that is no saying we have to have this going from September to September, we could have it going from April to April there's no reason. We can't do that. Yeah. So, that was my, I'm trying to, you know, make lemonade out of these lemons so what do you all think about that. Well, I can't know it's that we on the discussions we had when we arrived at Dominique peachy. And there were a couple of other people whose work we thought was pretty great. So I don't know if I don't have a strong opinion about which way it ought to be handled partly because you have to rescind her offer, right. Well, she never signed a contract so I will be telling I already let Matt know with the cultural council, and I'm waiting for them to get back to me. I recommend that if we are saying it's over with her that it would be appropriate to send her very polite. Yes, letter to that. She needs to return. Yeah. Angela Mills, advise the same and said, you know, can send that in an email but follow but also send it snail mail so that we have covered all our bases registered so she has to sign for it. Oh, there you go. That's an idea. It's a peel box though so I don't think that's that's gone. Unfortunately. So yeah I just it feels like another miss and I'm very disappointed and frustrated and I'd like to make lemonade out of this so I if we do a new call for artists I would invite the past applicants to even just resubmit this their same applications from September and Yeah, go from there. Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. What do we think about that Lori Robert. That's not like an idea. Fine. Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's move along. Town Hall gallery. Mikey's requesting more help with gallery she's looking for a co coordinator would anybody be interested in that position. That would be helping find new artists, help hang the art or organize the hanging of the art and help organize artist receptions. Yeah, I'll do that volunteer for that. Terry. Yay. Tom. Great. Also, Pamela Nolan young the director of the department of diversity equity and inclusion would like to use the town hall gallery for February to do a black history month pop up museum. I've already talked to Mikey about it, who I said, you know, what, what can we know is this is this month available and she said, Oh, I've already got somebody, but she talked to the artist and the artist is fine with giving up February and doing a March April instead. So we have this opportunity to collaborate with the DEI on sounds like a really cool black history month project. Great. I am a big fan of this idea. And I thought you go would be as well. I'm seeing nodding people so I'm agree. Okay. And so I said we would love to have Pamela on here I invited her to the meeting but I wasn't sure if she could make it. And we can talk to her about what she's looking to do and if we can help arrange your reception. What we can do out of our resources or our work to help this happen. And I think we can help by having an opening reception or we can contribute some funds toward this. Would this all be okay with you. Yeah, we need to know what the funds are for obviously, obviously, like the D that the office there are DI office would have some money. Yes. Well, yes, but I'm just as a collaborator it would be, it would be nice for us to be able to interview. Yeah. I like the idea. I think let's let's go ahead to have that conversation. Okay. Learn what DI has what they, what they intend to. Okay. The first step was to ask us if they can use the property so if it's okay with you I will tell her yes. Is that okay. Yes. Okay with me. Okay. All right. All right. Good. I will let her know. Thank you. Moving on. I'm going to talk to Gabrielle Gould of the business improvement district. She told me that she's interested in bringing back art nights to downtown and that she would be helping with she would be raising money for it and helping organize and I said, great. And so we're going to talk more about that when I see her, I guess in January. So, and what's, what's our commission's role in art. I don't, there's really, I don't have an answer for that right now. This is just very like very beginning talks and I was not here for art, we are art night in the past. All of you probably have attended an art night here in Amherst. I have not. So there used to be, I think they called the gallery night or was it art night. They were open galleries I know but I think. I think it was a monthly if I'm there, I don't know. I did not attend, but she said it was great for business. That all the galleries open and people put art in their front windows and it was really, it was really excited about it. And then cove it came along and we haven't had those and she'd like to bring it back. And I said, we would love to do that too probably. So we, I don't, there's no role yet. I don't have any. Okay, let's, let's look in the documents that Angela gave us to see whether there's information about what involvement public art might have had in the past. I think that Amy, who was a chair from, I want to say two or three years ago. My name's Amy and I forgot her last name. I'm so sorry. I might reach out to her and ask with that what she did because I know that there was organization that happened on our end but just to kind of get some information about it. So that's where we are in that I'll talk more about it when I have any more information. And poetic dialogue is installed. Yay, this one plus can bills check is being processed now. And also the electrify Amherst project the grant, I put it in and I have not heard back about it yet so we're still waiting on that. And that's my update. So, thank you. Now we can go back to. We got that. We got that we got that chair report. Okay. I think I am at the end of what I have on my agenda. And it's 715. So it's only 45 minutes. I was trying to make it a half an hour but we pushed past that we have a lot of conversations coming up about planning coming up and there I really look forward to having those conversations about who we are and what we want, you know, and it is I think that this for want of an ill came it came up now when we don't have our guidelines yet, you know, so we're kind of struggling, you know, to figure it out. We'll start overlining it's it's, it's, I think it's, it's, it's going to help elucidate some of the things that we do need to just. It's been a year of elucidating right. It's been like a welcome to Amherst the year of hard knocks I, I swear it's been hard to accomplish things I'm hoping I have I have a lot of hope for 2024. Yeah. So, let's send out a doodle and figure it when we can meet in early, ooh, January. I started a new job I started a new job on January 2, which I'm very excited about. So, I'm very happy. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I'm very happy that Tom is co chairing with me so that we can share that work, and I look forward to that. And anybody have anything else say any other business we did not anticipate. Not me. Not you. No, okay. Robert, good to see you. Good to see all of you. I am going to ask for a motion to adjourn. No moved. Second. All in favor. Hi. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you all for meeting. I hope you have if you whatever you celebrate this month, I hope you have fantastic holidays and celebrations. And I will see you all in January. Great. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. I'll never turn this off. Hi, babe. Oh, I'm tired.