Aloha and welcome to another edition of Condo Insider, Hawaii's show about association living. Many of our residents, maybe a third or more, live in an association and our objective in this show is to talk about issues that affect boards of directors and owners and how they can have a good home and have quiet enjoyment of where they live. One of the things I've heard over and over again for the years I've been in the management business is boards and what are their duties, they have a fiduciary responsibility, they have a conflict of interest and what is this all about you know homeowners and board alike are always yelling and screaming at each other about what these duties and obligations are. So I've invited one of our great attorneys in the association industry and a good personal friend of mine, Nalaan, to come and talk to us today about 514b and these issues of fiduciary duty and conflict of interest. So Nalaan, again welcome to our show. So glad to be here again, thank you Richard. Remind us again a little bit about your background, your family, how you've been in Hawaii, the firm you work for and some of your volunteer efforts like at CAI. I was born and raised in China. I came to Hawaii as a student and then went to UH Law School. After graduation I started my practicing condominium and community association representation and I moved a law firm, Mudo Oka and Rosenberg. We are one of the boutique firms in town specializing in representing associations. We handle their general matter consulting, you know dispute resolution for the board, for the association, other litigation, their covenant enforcement, debt collection, full closure matters. Yeah so it's been over seven years for now. And you're also on the CAI legislative action committee, correct? Yes. In fact you've been the past chairman of that I think, remember correctly. Yes, the former chair and this year's vice chair, yeah. And so what is the CAI elected legislative action? What is their role and what do they do? We basically represent, you know, the association industry. You know we lobby for the associations and the homeowners interest in the legislature. Also we try to, you know, keep all the members updated about what's going on in the association law field to educate all the board, the property managers and the homeowners. Well you know one of the things I hear not that often because I believe frankly that most boards want to do a good job. They're fair and they're equitable. They try to do the right things but I hear all the right time people say that's a breach of your fiduciary duty and I know 514b106 says that the board members are fiduciary. Yes. Can you kind of elaborate on that? What is what is the fiduciary and what are their obligations of the fiduciary? Right. So a fiduciary if you check the dictionary definition it basically means someone has to act on behalf of the other's interest. So that means you really need to subordinate your own interest to the other person's interest. So in the board director's role you owe a fiduciary duty to the association and all of its members. Not to a certain homeowner, not to a certain group of homeowner, it's to the association. It involves actually includes a bundle of duties you have to fulfill. So one of that is duty of good faith. So when you take action as a board you have to honestly believe the action you're taking is actually for the benefit of the association. A duty of obedience you have to make sure you manage the association's affairs in compliance with the statutes, with the project documents of your project. Duty of care which is we also call a due diligence. You basically act as an ordinary really prudent person would act in a reasonable way in similar situations. You try to gather information, do some investigation. You can rely on professionals. You got to make your own judgment in a reasonable way. And the most important one of course is the duty of loyalty. You owe your loyalty to the association. You cannot do like self-dealing. So basically when there is conflict interest you always make disclosure, make sure the disclosure is reflected in the board minutes, in the meeting minutes. I know that the statute itself refers to the fiduciary in the same manner as the law. I think it's 414d. Yes. What is what laws 414d and does it have any uniqueness to this as far as the finding of fiduciary? 414d is the statute governs non-profit corporations in Hawaii. There is a whole section regarding what the directors and officers duties and their care should be in functioning as the director or officer of a non-profit corporation. So basically the condo statute says you know if you fulfill those standards as specifying 414d you are covered. You will not be breaching your fiduciary duty. Basically it's a definition of the business judgment rule which the standard the court used to try to decide whether a board has breached his duty or not. So it can be said that at the fiduciary your job is to the association as a whole. Yes. Impartial and all the due diligence and all the things you said. But it's probably true that the owners themselves are not fiduciaries to the association. They're probably just owners right? They're all owners yes. They don't really have a under the law fiduciary duty to the association. Yeah. They may have interest in what is decided but they're not really fiduciaries as an owner technically speaking under the law. Yeah I mean under agency law I mean for example a managing agent it would owe a fiduciary duty to the association right as an agent person for relationship. Yeah. So the statute also goes to some other duties and obligations of the board. So let's just say I own a unit there and and I want I'm really angry and I want to get on the board and I have people of topology. Could I vote myself and my wife on the board? From one unit you can only there's only one representative allowed from each unit so you cannot have two representatives from the same unit be on the board. If I own unit 101 and that's all I owned I couldn't the association couldn't elect myself and my wife for unit 101 but if I owned unit 101 and 102 more than one unit then in fact in theory I could represent 101 and my wife could represent 102. You're right. I've seen some situations where unfortunately it can get out of hand where you maybe have a developer in a newly formed association that because they have unsold units may own 100 or 200 units remaining and during that proposition when they have to form the association they have control of the board because of the fact they have a large financial insurance they still have in my example 100 unsold units. Yeah for for developer controlled boards you know those directors officers who are you know affiliated with the developer they have to be make sure that they're clear there is case law clear stating regardless whether they have affiliation with a developer they also owe fiduciary duty to the association if they breach their fiduciary duty they will be held liable. Yeah I think which makes sense but for our listening audience it's important to know you may see more than one representative from a developer and that's somewhat common when they own such a large financial interest of unsold property but then in fact they still owe the same fiduciary duty to the board or they excuse me to the association outside of their personal interest with respect to the developer and so you were saying for example that the managing agent you know had the fiduciary duty what if I own a unit in a condo and I work for the managing agent and the owners want me to be on the board can I serve on the board as a owner of a unit who also was employed by the management company? You cannot be an officer that's prohibited by the statue you can be a member of the board but you know for example if there's the issues about the managing contract of course you've got it like recuse yourself you cannot vote on that you have to make disclosures like any other conflict interest transaction. So like summary was as they can you can serve on the board as an owner because certainly as an owner of a condo I'd have the same interest of protecting my property but it couldn't be the president vice president secretary treasurer as an employee of the management company correct? How about if I work for another management company for example I don't work for the managing agent that represents that association I still would be eligible to be an officer I would think because I'm not employed by the managing agent of the association. Not at the point but there's potential conflict there so you got to be careful yeah. Yeah I think careful is a key word we'll get into the conflict of interest kind of discussion surely well how about the resident manager can he serve on the board? No that's prohibited. And so what if the resident manager owned a unit can you serve on the board? Still cannot. So the resident manager no matter what whether he owns a unit doesn't own a unit he cannot serve on the board of directors. Yeah well that makes sense you know we're based on the needs now you know as you know board members have a great deal of authority I mean they control the association Monday they can authorize expenses. Can an association or a board let's say not the association but can the board say well we wanted John on the board be listened Seattle we're going to pay us travel expenses to Honolulu for board meetings every year. Well that's probably not reasonable but under the statute actually the statute allows a board director to attend a meeting you know by telephone or you know these days we have Skype you know you can see the person also listen to his speech at the same time on screen that's considered as if attending by person in person right yeah but you cannot allow a board like you know vote by proxy at a board meeting that's not allowed and if you know like every time there's a board meeting he has to fly over you want association to reimburse for the you know the the travel expense that's probably not reasonable I think. I think the statute actually says it could be done with a majority approval of all the homeowners. As long as the owners approve you're right. It actually refers to things such as travel directors fees per diem you know that if the owner's majority approve that at an annual meeting then in fact as possible although I have to tell you I've been doing it a long time I've never seen a volunteer director paid per diem or travel expenses the only exception which we're going to talk about briefly is that and there's been some debate about this is that the association is now involved in litigation and a director has subpoenaed to attend by a court to attend this this trial that in those cases it's probable that the association could pay the board members travel expenses I don't think it's a clear definitive ruling on that but most the attorneys I've talked to said look a court has ordered him to appear I date certain it's not for his personal benefit to go testify in trial but he's been subpoenaed in cases like that involving litigation there may be some reasonable exceptions a board could do to make sure the association protected because certainly his testimony may be very valuable to the association or very valuable certainly to the proceeding that he gets heard obviously someone subpoenaed him so that's kind of the one that's kind of in that quirky area for lack of a better word whether they can do it or not yeah if you consider him as any other witness I mean the expenses on that I may be considered a legal cause with which you there may be method you can recover that through the litigation you know right so yeah I know a lot of times shifting arbitration is construction defect board members they want them to attend that arbitration hearing right while they try to resolve it in the course of settlement discussions and the board needs that the arbitrator always order orders a person with authority to be president the arbitration that in those cases of the board had a fly their board member from Maui to Honolulu because the arbitration in Honolulu I think the word would be cautioned to the board and right tell them the best thing they can always do is put it in a minute and approve it and explain why they did it right because that way you have a record of their business judgment what they did but in general terms board members can't be paid for per diem or travel expenses unless they've got the guts to go and say to the to the owners in an annual meeting we want to pay this person for this reason I think the more common thing I see more often than not is whether or not the board at the end of the year doing a small Palhalla Christmas party whether that's considered part of the statute that they're all going to get together and go to some reasonable restaurant and have a glass of wine and thank everybody for the work they did this year whether they have to have owner approval for that I mean I've seen different people say different things about that you know but I think if they focus on putting it in the minutes and explaining themselves it's reasonable it's not some five-star dinner with thousand dollar bottle of champagne but something reasonable more times than not boards look at it as a working working session and not something that's for the personal benefit of a director where because we elected him he lives in Seattle that we're gonna pay his first-class airfare or rent him and yet or something to get here so there are some gray areas with regard to that type of an issue okay so we're gonna take a short break and we're right back to have more questions about conflicts of interest hello this is Martin to Spain I want to get you get excited about my new show which is humane architecture for Hawaii and beyond we're gonna broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on think tech Hawaii looking to energize your Friday afternoon tune in to stand the energy man at 12 noon Aloha Friday here on think tech wait hi I'm Keeley Akina president of the grassroots Institute I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for a Hanukako let's work together we report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future we have guests covering everything from the economy the government and society see you Mondays on a Hanukako at 2 o'clock p.m. until then I'm Keeley Akina Aloha welcome back to condo inside ever sitting here with non-lon talking about board's duties primarily what is the fiduciary duty and we're gonna get into conflicts of interest in a minute I do want to again remind our viewers that we have a hotline<PHONE_NUMBER> if you're interested in calling in with a question but back to we talked about fiduciary and I had one little follow-up question on that we talked about directors without the homeowners approval can't get travel or per DM and those types of fees how about going to like seminars for CAI or HCCA Hawaii Council Community Association or attending a special course that may be of value to the board do they have to have kind of board spend money for education for board members yes as long as you know it's reflecting the budget as a line item the statue specifically allows that you know you think about it educating yourself to be competent to serve as a board that's for the best interests of the association right so the key words are it's gonna be a separate line item on the budget for director education whatever they want to call it and I would say that I know most of the industry organizations are focused on a lot more free education and so I think it's important that boards realize there are opportunities to learn their craft better and be a better director yes even if we have a CAI seminar for example it's a luncheon seminar partly subsidized by the real estate commission if the board approves it and they have a line item in their budget they that's perfectly acceptable to do that and frankly I would encourage more member or more board members to get involved and and learn these things with a lot of misunderstandings but now we know what a fiduciary is the law also says very clearly that's 514 b-125 f if you have a conflict of interest you have to disclose it and you cannot vote yes so what is the conflict of interest a conflict of interest there can be two situations one is you have a direct personal interest or you know a monetary interest that's not common to the other homeowners the second situation would be an indirect conflict interests for example if you serve in another entity as a partner as a director as you know trustee or some some some other position where you also owe fiduciary duty to that entity and then the association for example is doing in a business transaction with that entity a very typical example would be association seeking bids on landscaping company one of the board director happens to be you know a member of that company then apparently you have a conflict interest there so in both kind of situations under 414 d that's considered a conflict interest transaction you got to refrain yourself from voting on that I got to make disclosure beforehand before the other board director vote on it and reflect that in the board meeting minutes well let's just follow up on the landscaping example you gave so this board of member is a partner or owner or part owner in this landscaping company and they need to have a landscaping contract and the board is considering and they like his company the best because maybe it's at the best value the best price best reputation it doesn't prevent the other non-clad inflicted board members from voting and approving the contract no I mean if you have multiple bids and his company's bid is the best for the association the other you know disinterested board directors can vote for that and if that's the picked one you know it's a valid transaction and it's probably best they put in the minutes that the board is considered five bids and they recognize that director a has a conflict of interest but the board is voting to approve that contract because we feel it is the most qualified at the best value for the association and so the records are clear that they recognized it yeah that they made their business judgment that is still in the best interest of the association to select that vendor as the so a non-conflicted board members could certainly vote to you know to provide a contract to someone who may be in conflict you but the one I hear all the time is well you are a board member you can't vote for yourself at the annual meeting for reelection because you have a conflict of interest because you're voting for yourself or maybe even further that the board of directors because they're gonna vote back in fellow board members and owners have given them proxies as a board of director whole for example you can't vote your proxies for yourself that's a misconception I mean as you know just because you serve on the board doesn't mean you're right as a unit owner be taken away from you I mean you can still you know you know like you know exercise your owners right at the annual meeting to vote it like any other owner I mean if owners other owners give you proxy you can definitely vote on that there's just some like statutory provision you should be aware of that is if the association owns certain units in the building you cannot use that portion to vote for like to elect a board director or something there's pretty much on that and just for clarification for the association owns two or three units from a foreclosure yes those particular units they couldn't vote the proxy to reelect themselves yes however if you have owners who gave the board of directors a proxy and they're now voting for election and they're just owners proxies are not this foreclosure proxy I just discussed there's nothing improper about them the general presumption the law is that the owner trusts the board to make the decision about who they ain't the most qualified and obviously if they're on the board they're gonna pick themselves probably that's not illegal and not a conflict of interest to vote no with other owners proxies yeah so let's just kind of take an in-between case you have a building 20 floors and there's six stacks six rows of vertical rows of condos and all of a sudden a major plumbing problem has occurred in stack number two and the entire stack number two affecting all 20 owners who live in stack number two has to be replaced because it's leaking and potential environmental problem and one of the directors lives in stack number two so it's not the work is being done just for his unit we're taking all the units of stack two and replacing them all because it's an environmental damage and they've got their bid they've got their experts saying we have to replace the stack and number two does that prevent the director in stack number two for voting to approve the contract to replace the pipes for all the owners of stack number two no because in this situation the personal interest is not uncommon to the other homeowners you know because the board you know they have the duty to actually well maintain the common elements to prevent damage to common elements or other units so it's probably also a emergency situation here so they got to take action it would be different you know if in your example there are like a two decks leaking at the same time if the board got to decide which stack got to get the first repair down then you know I can see there's the potential you know there's a conflict there so that director probably it's better for him to you know step aside just close and reflect that in the meeting minutes for smaller boards it could be an issue if you only have like a three person board the best way we recommend to our clients is usually you can set up committee by a fellow board disinterested board director and some unit owners so that they you know decide make a recommendation to the board what's the best solution in the best interest of association that way you address that a lot of times which is kind of what you said we see the problem come up it's not because most board members say well this I'll just because everybody knows that the stack two has to be here he said I'll just disclose I live in stack two and I'm not gonna but I abstain yes and method where comes to be a problem to be candid with you is when these small boards and to have a quorum they need to get the work done because it's an emergency and it's a common element problem this pipe to stack and so because they need to get the work done that director feels he's voting for a common repair of a common element and yes he happens to live there but the board owes him a duty as an owner just like they do all the other owners of stack number two so I guess the good advice I would say is if it's depending on the size scope and dollar value of the work and the emergency nature of it you then in fact ask your attorney or ask for a legal advice or ask for solutions for your management company how to best protect it because I go back to disclosure in the minutes explanation we made this decision because because that'll protect you the best of all with respect to that you know yeah we in doubt you know get professionals that that's how you get covered under the business judgment rule and not to talk about the dark side but you know I think it was a recent case of a timeshare organization with the president had a undisclosed conflict of interest on providing I think furniture to for these timeshare elements they want the furniture to be alike and so there's a degree of uniformity that he didn't disclose that he had a part interest and they got substandard furniture I think the court ruled that he had personal liability about three million dollars you know it was a big case so board shouldn't take this lightly but to me I most boards I know they want to do the right thing and having a thorough discussion not voting when you're gonna get some personal benefit out of this which to me is the conflict yeah in simple terms and making sure the minutes are very clear and irrational will provide you the greatest protection of anything you can do it's back to the minutes of disclosure with respect to those types of issues and so another one I heard to be candid with you is that they accuse the entire board of having a conflict of interest because they can afford the special assessment for the plumbing repair and the owners who couldn't afford the special assessment for the plumbing repair therefore you had a conflict because you could afford to make the repair and they couldn't make the repair I don't think that's a conflict of interest that's a very factual it could be a crazy business you know at times and but the general the general thing I tell everybody look business judgment disclosure review openness transparency bids scopes of work open discussion business judgment put it in the minutes and define what you did and why you did it that way yes that's a good practice and also we don't want to scare the board directors from volunteering on this position there are actually you know safe harbors in place to try to show to you from personal liability as long as you are not grossly negligent for example you have DNO you know insurance courage some of the project documents also have indemification clause in place to indemify you in those kind of situations but you know as a fiduciary you got to remember you know you got to do the right thing not just for your self-interest try to you know well let me thank you for being here we run out of time but the summary is we've had not long talked to us about this you have important obligations to the association as a fiduciary you have important obligations to avoid any conflicts of interest or even appearance of conflicts of interest in my book to make sure decisions made or in the best interest of the association in fair and equitable all so thank you for being here today we welcome you back next Thursday the condo insider although I'm wrong about that next Thursday's Thanksgiving turkey day so we're taking a day off and all us turkeys are gonna go eat turkey so anyway we'll see you in two weeks aloha


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I'm in Jersey, the weather is beautiful, I'm here for a conference for two days, I've actually been here all weekend with my family, this morning I'm now going to get over to some helio where the event is, get you posted throughout the day. So we're at the conference venue, we're at that moment when it's a big nice quiet room, I love this part of the day, it's about to get noisy though because it's just about to start letting people in. So today is an event for young people, you can just see them beginning to come in now and then there's also going to be an event for professionals and parents. We've made very good progress since that first conference in 2016, both in supporting our students and our staff with mental health issues. Our whole community recognises the importance of working together and to provide the right support. If you can just show somebody a bit of kindness, sometimes that's all you need to do.  I'm running four workshops about how to be a good friend to someone who's depressed. The first one's just happened and I think it went okay. What did I learn? Even if you don't feel like you can talk to someone you can always build yourself up from within. I work for an organisation called UMatter.  I just learned that you should really be there for someone, especially if they're experiencing a tough time, and really just listen to them and talk to them, but also to not force the talk and really understand why they're coming for you. You shouldn't always just tell them that things will get okay because sometimes they just need you to listen. Okay, we're getting ready for the final session. I've just been told apparently it's going to be really creative to go leading it as a poet. So all of you have written a group poem. Strength is saying when you're not okay. Strength is naming your weaknesses. Strength is talking. Strength is love. Strength is saying yes. Strength is saying no. And strength is power. Thank you very much. You wrote that! Looks like that was over. Part one is done. Everyone's leaving. I have sat down with the team from Youthful Minds. I say hi guys. Youthful Minds are a group of young people, but we can tackle and reduce stigma and discrimination on the island of Jersey. You just have to be like a good person, want to help, and that can have a really good benefit for somebody. Check on your friends. Ask your even your happiest friends. How are you doing? We do have lives outside of school, and the lesson was sat in at that moment might not be our priority. It's now late to the same day. I've done the thing that everybody hates, and I've updated my slides just before the event, which I never normally do, but I captured some really good video footage earlier, so I wanted to include that. Our aim, policy of aim really, is to help you as parents and carers become more informed about mental health. We aim to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health in Jersey, especially as it impacts on young people. The school has been inspired to develop a wellbeing and mental health provision for all our boys. I've just done my talk. There's like, I don't know, two, three hundred parents here. It's quite a lot of people. It was all about how parents can support their child. I'm here as a parent of three, and also as a Samaritan. We've got these Samaritan shush listening tips.  And what would be your tip as a Samaritan? How do you manage that? Not necessarily saying anything, just the fact that you're there. Inevitably and subconsciously is you will start to compare your lived reality with everyone else's very carefully curated highlights. And during exam time the anxiety will be coming up slowly. It will be about here most of the time. It's very close to hitting to overwhelm. You need to be on higher alert and thinking what are the things that we can do to make sure that we bring the calmness back in. So I'm now back at my hotel and really it's time just to go to sleep. I'm so tired. Good night. It's the beginning of another beautiful day in Jersey. It's just something out there. Today we've got professionals. I'm just putting the finishing touches on my presentations for the day of which I'm giving three. Really looking forward to it. Okay, I've arrived. The room's really, really full, really, really busy. I'm sitting on the table with the young ambassadors who are featuring in my presentation. They're doing a workshop later. We'll talk to them a bit more. We had a room of 214 to 19-year-olds. And gosh, they made us proud. At the time I myself was going through depression because of my shame and discomfort I've never told it. But actually that day I did tell it in the lunch queue and that was a real relief to be able to do that. And then two months later at Victoria College in the whole staff insect in the great hall with all our brief expressions it seemed absolutely right thing to do to tell that audience that I had personal experience with depression as a way of starting a conversation about stigma and opening up that conversation at Victoria College. This place was buzzing. Because Pookie, are you not in the room yet? Yeah. Are you filming you? Yes, sorry. I took your advice. I had a very hot stressful day yesterday. It ended up with budgets, not good.  And I felt much better. So I released a little bit of that stress. Despite my power, I am a youth. I think it's very important for it not to be a confusing process. Listen and listen to sort of be there and not listen to go, oh what am I going to say next. At 15 I was expected to meet someone new and tell them my whole life story and then because of high staff turning about which actually as young people isn't our problem we are expected to do that over and over again. I just want to say thank you so much for your bravery as well and for sharing. Come marvel at me, Batman. Linguistic reflexes like a cat man.  I'm a daredevil. I caredevil. I never even have to swear devil. It's Liz Kendrick-Largen and Suzanne Jobs, rain child. But I found a sponsorship 18 months ago and I've been helping her ever since. I think you deserve a pat on the back for that. Thank you. Lot of people enjoying coffee, having a break. It's the kind of thing where I could be like do you want to come say hi on camera and everyone's going to say no. Everyone just runs away when you have a camera. This is another great thing I'm learning. I don't like people. I like people but autism and lots of people are noise stuff. I found if I walk around with a camera no one actually wants to talk to me which is actually quite good. The other tip for how to manage a conference if you're pooky and you find noise and people are really stressful is toilets. Yes, I'm filming myself in the toilet. I realise that's probably weird. But I spend quite a lot of time hiding in toilets and it just gives me a moment. I sometimes do some box breathing or finger breathing, you know that kind of thing. Just for a minute or two and kind of help myself to reset a little bit. I'm going to introduce you briefly to the people who make the magic happen. So the tech guys. So this is all the screen equipment. So this runs back to the projectors which you see up there. I've got a few laptops on the go. So I've got the next presentation ready loaded on this laptop. So are you from Jersey? Have I imagined that? Partly, I'm from Leicestershire but I was raised in Jersey between 8 and 18 so I spent 10 years here. So all my formative years in schooling was here. So I've been named like proper fangirl stuff so I do poetry not like you but I wrote a book about using poetry for healing stuff and I've always wanted to learn to rap and now you maybe really really want to and I've also gone, that looks really hard. I don't know if I can learn. There's a way of doing it. I could teach you the tricks and the trade. I'm going to learn to rap. So we have finite, fixed brain bandwidth a fixed capacity to focus on certain things at any one time. We just had the lunch break which as you know is not my favourite thing. Someone kindly took pity on me and went and got me a sandwich which I ate quite a little on my own and now my room is just beginning to fill up so I am going to be teaching a workshop about eating disorders and then another one about cell phone. It sounds like you're doing a great job. It sounds like you're doing a great job, yes. Relapse is a really, really important part of eating disorders recovery. We can think that there is only one way to recover and that's perfectly. If we need to help people recognise that there's lots of different ways to recover and it doesn't always look neat. There'll be good days, there'll be bad days and the most important thing is on the bad days to ask for help and support and I will help you. I will be here. It's okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop, stop, stop, stop. It's not 1992. I'll play it for that. Okay, just go for it. So at Saltgate we're really committed to wellbeing and supporting young people particularly in our community but extending outside of Jersey as well. We really want to engage. We've set up a charitable fund and we've put one and a quarter million pounds in there and we want to spend it on things like the wellbeing conference and everything that comes out of it. Health and wellbeing. We want to be working with charities and with great organisations to be getting the messages out there and getting the support out there. That's really where we're coming from and the feedback's been phenomenal so we're really pleased that the attendance has been so great. The speakers have all been so fantastic and hopefully the messages will get out there and more good will come from this. So, do you reckon it might happen again? Yes, absolutely. We're really committed to this. We'd love to see more events like this. Brilliant. That was phenomenal. That's a wrap. I'm eating leftover brownie. Clearing up stuff. They're breaking everything down. We're done. It's been a long couple of days but it's been great.


Welcome to the Fiji Symposium 2019 here in Cairo in Egypt, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio satanist and Masoud Rana, who is the joint director of the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit. Mr. Rana, welcome to the studio. Thank you, Max. Now I'd like to start off by asking you, what will it take for the world's poorest people to prefer digital financial services over cash? Will digital financial services be enough for this to happen? Well, I think there are two good reasons. For choosing digital financial services for the poor people, one is security of their money, another is availability of their money when they're required. Let me start with an example from my country. While I was too young, I have seen the poor people in the village. They saved their money into a pot, which is basically made of mud and they called it bank. But, you know, in most cases, they cannot protect their, these savings into those banks because some of their friends, family members, they expand it. And when they required this money for expenditure purposes, then they broke down all the pot and then they spend maybe small portion from that. But, when the DFS come with the digital wallet or mobile wallet, they can securely save their money into the devices as well as they can expense their money how much they required for specific purposes. So, it seems to me for these two good reasons, the poor people are willing to go for the digital financial service instead of cash. It's also a matter of trust, of course, because they're always going to know where that pot is, hidden, or envisioned, or wherever it might be, but they might think, well, if I put my money somewhere, or I can't see it, maybe somebody will take it. Exactly. So, there's a certain culture that has to be overcome, I think, on that side as well. But I just also want to ask you, what innovations are required in the regulatory collaboration to create an enabling environment for digital financial services? Yeah, if we consider the digital financial services enabling environment, then, of course, it comes in my mind that we need to have a people-centric market regulation, then financial literacy, as well as the establishment of sandboxes, or innovation hub by private public partnership. An unintended consequence of digital finance-led financial inclusion program is that it can lead to greater financial data inclusion, but not necessarily increased financial inclusion. Would you agree with that? I think it depends, because if your national financial inclusion strategy is built and developed in such a way that it focus for the poor and marginal people with digital solution, then it must be fruitful for them. Otherwise, there is always a chance of financial exclusion to introduce the digital financial services. So, it depends. How do you see the fintech sector reshaping digital financial services? Again, I must say that this era is fintech era, because perhaps in early 80s, the digital financial service came into the market, introduced by the bank when we got the ATMs, followed by the POS cards. So, these are the basically digital financial services introduced by the bank for the first time. Then, it has come to Telco in some cases, some financial institution collaboration with the Telco, they provide the digital financial services, but during the financial crisis when the bank is stopped to provide the loan, then it comes, the fintech company comes and they provide the loans, they come up with solution. As you know, within this couple of years, the fintech company has already invested more than 30 billion USD. The fintech company are now providing services in the remittance, in the lending areas, in the mortgaging, in the payments, in the transfers and all these services are growing at the exponential rate. So, all this development seems that the fintech is going to reshape our future financial services. Finally, I'd like to ask you, what role do you think governments can play to enhance usage of digital financial services at the national level? As I said earlier, that government has to play a key role to establish digital financial services. For example, to establish a official payment system, then promote the financial literacy, people centric or market oriented regulation, as well as government has to ensure that availability of digital devices with low cost may be by reducing taxes or levies or other things. Finally, another thing government may think of, availability of speedy internet with low cost. So, I think all these things can promote faster digital financial service growth. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for joining us in the studio. Thank you, Max. We hope that we will be able to catch up with you again some stage in the future. Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you.


Here we go again fact-checking the so-called fact checkers. Don't get me wrong I love doing this work, but it can't be a good sign for this country when a 40-year-old stay-at-home dad is a more reliable source than ABC News And these were the president's words. He said I'm not about taking away anyone's guns In fact, we believe we should be treating responsible gun owners as an example of how every gun owner Should behave in this country and then he laid it out More like and then he completely contradicted himself. Here's what the president wants to happen in this country He said we need a ban assault weapons in this country. We heard the president say this again He has said this in the recent weeks after previous mass shootings and now after Tulsa has been added to the list here He he said once again that we should reinstate the assault weapons ban that passed in 94 with bipartisan support We know that lasted 10 years It was allowed to expire when Republicans were in control He talked about the stats after it expired He said mass shootings went down while the assault weapons ban was in effect wrong when they expired in 2004 he said those weapons were allowed to be sold again mass shootings have tripled wrong as our team had time to Fact-check that David we think he's citing a New York University study showing a slight decrease in mass shootings when the assault weapons ban Was in place and a surge in a decade right after it was allowed to lapse and in fact We know we've seen a dramatic rise in mass shootings recently.  All right before I smash this fake fact check. There's a couple of things We have to make clear. I know a lot of you already know this stuff But for those of you who are new to this topic the term mass shooting doesn't have a solid definition And when the Democrats or their media use it It's usually to bolster a deceptive claim to push their agenda or more people are shot in a single event Look at these numbers according to the gun violence archive. There were 417 mass shootings in 2019 by last year that number had spiked to 693 that's an incredible 66% jump the pace of shooting so far this year mass shootings may be slowing down a tab But we appear to be maintaining a high level of such shootings We're now in an era where we can say mass shootings are chronic sustained and sadly routine I'm sure you must be thinking to yourself over 200 mass shootings I can only think of a few of them when were they reported and I'm saying this not to downplay any of those shootings But that being said none of us have heard about any of these other 200 mass shootings Why because they were mostly gang-related shootings that met the criteria of more than four people shot The gun violence archive as well as the mass shooting tracker which were launched in 2013 Basically, they said well, you know, there's nothing in the phrase mass shooting that implies death So they decided to they kept the threshold of former people Shot they said well shot. They could either be injured or dead problem is it's it's Confusing to people and part of the reason why it's confusing is those those statistics of former people shot And that's not necessarily killed They are always brought out for context in the press and on television in the wake of a mass killing when 10 people are murdered, right? Like for example bolder Colorado the next day you see all these citations. Oh, there's hundreds of mass shootings a Year well, they're different. Those are different in fact in the gun violence archive mass shootings on Averaged is one person killed Her case in fact half of the cases no one gets killed However, they will use the raw no context data in order to scare people into accepting gun bans And when it comes to labels like assault weapons or assault rifles, it's the exact same game at play You mentioned you want weapons of war out of circulation What is a weapon of war to you? Assault weapons assault weapons that likes semi automatic handguns and rifles Am I automatic weapons? Would qualify as assault weapons and these are things that should be banned almost take almost every gun off of out of People's hands. I mean handguns for example would not qualify Under under what I just described. I got I'm sorry. I got the AR-15 was literally designed as a civilian weapon It's not automatic and no military in the world uses it So what exactly makes it a weapon of war any more than a handgun an assault weapon can literally be any gun or any Weapon for that matter an assault rifle on the other hand is a very specific military issued fully automatic Rifle that the public at large cannot get the AR-15 rifle that civilians can get are semi automatic Which means one trigger pull one shot the game here again is to conflate semi automatic with automatic So that the general public thinks that when they hear semi automatic We're talking about fully automatic machine guns. We think he's citing a New York University study showing a slight decrease in mass shootings You think wow that's some real top-notch Just the facts hard-hitting journalism being right there when the assault weapons band was in place and a surge in a decade Right after it was allowed to lapse and in fact We know we've seen a dramatic rise in mass shootings recently so that is not in debate David wrong all the information I just gave you it's critical to understanding why everything they just said is not true and purposely deceptive Everybody knows at this point I thought that handguns are responsible for the vast majority of mass shootings because again most of these mass shootings are gang related and They're using handguns. In fact the only mass shooting that I can think of that occurred at that time using a rifle was column Bind they use shotguns and handguns moving on he claims that this isn't even debatable because Obviously mass shootings have gone up since this band was lifted again connecting two things that aren't related AR-15s weren't used in those mass shootings and they're not being used in two-thirds of mass shootings now So when they perform a fact check to back up binds claim that these shootings all drop during the assault weapons ban is Incredibly deceptive. It's purposely misleading It has to be because they have to know that in the vast vast majority of these shootings It's illegal handguns being used The truth is no so-called ban of assault weapons is going to stop these shootings The only thing that's gonna stop a psychotic person with a gun is another person with a gun or a show of force in Other words good security that would deter any would-be attacker. We need to spend a lot of money on security for schools That's it. That is the only way But I think we all know the left Democrats and their media are not at all interested in that solution The only thing that they want to do is take away your guns law-abiding people who just want them to defend themselves Than their families and also to keep communists like them at bay. All right folks. That's all I have for that one Thanks a lot for watching Please smack that like button share this video and leave a comment to let us all know what you think. Have a great weekend. Thanks a lot


EEG to music conversion. Yeah we have this too complicated structure which we probably do not need run by code. We're asking to not generate anything, but it is generated. You've shared sets of a basic Flask web application with roots to handle EEG data visualization and conversion to music. Here's a brief overview and some suggestions for improvement. Flask app configuration. You've configured the Flask app to use specific directories for templates and static files, which is good practice for organizing your project structure. Index root displays the main page of the application, retrieves EEG data based on parameters like start, count and channel. The function load underscore data is used to fed data and the result is returned at JSON. Includes error handling which is important for robustness. Currently, this root does not take parameters from requests. Instead, it uses hard coded values, start, count, channel. Calls convert underscore EEG underscore underscore music to process the EEG data into music. Returns a success message upon completion with error handling included. Instead of just printing errors to the console, instead of logging them to a file for better error tracking and debugging, add more robust validation for input parameters in both roots. For example, check if the start and count are within acceptable ranges and if the channel is valid. Return more descriptive error messages to help front-end developers or users understand what went wrong. Okay, so we want to turn this into music. There's a few problems. This button does not do anything. Are there errors? No. Okay, so we're having trouble with the MIDIJS giving a 404. How do we fix that? Yeah, I definitely wanted to do this. I thought I'm doing this already, but obviously... Convert EEG to music root to accept parameters like start, count and channel from request. You can follow similar approaches used in the EEG data root. Here's an updated version of your convert EEG to music root with these changes. Parameter retrieval. The root now retrieves start, count and channel parameters from request. Parameters determine which segment of the EEG data is to be converted into music. Dynamic data handling. The load underscore data function uses these parameters to fetch the appropriate EEG data segment. Logging for debugging. Add a debug log to track the parameters being used for conversion. It's pretty sure I was doing this already, but honestly, I don't know what EEG data is. The second EEG data, EEG data, return JSON file, message it, that's correct. Okay, the other thing is on loading. I get no signal. This button doesn't seem to do much. Play EEG music button doesn't seem to do anything. Can you fix this for us? So when we hit the button in network, we can't do anything. And no. So in Java script, where is our Java script? We haven't uploaded it yet. The bot doesn't know anything about it yet. And hopefully if it maintain context, it should pick up if there's any errors with this one. Yeah, what's about this one? Asynchronous behavior. Since fetch EEG data is asynchronous, ensure that any dependent functionality properly handles the asynchronous nature, possibly using. Then for async await. We're getting this Java error that didn't look good. So the minijs, you're initializing it in the HTML. It's not available, is it? Yeah, this will be a problem, won't it? Just fix the link for us. I understand this was used in some example code. But if you're such a smart bot, can you find this for us? Okay, is this URL correct? Yes, find midijs. There is a midijs. There's a player, CSS. Which one should I use? It's not the same link. Looks a lot, okay. I need that integrity line. What is that integrity line? No idea. And let's save this. Run again. Get it. Error seem to have went away. Yeah, don't expect the MP3. There's no MP3. Still doesn't do anything. Okay, the button still. Let's check the HTML. It's a playMediaID. Search for that. We have getDocumentByIdClick function. And this is going into this path. But this path, I suspect is empty. Okay, this path is empty. And what should populate this path is this music conversion, byte and code. And yes, we had this problem already last time. So it's just going in circles. Unfortunately, yet this path is empty. Can you help us? Anything useful? I think we had a problem with this code. A music conversion function should be called from runby. Yeah. We have to have the URL. We access it like this. Good. Easy to music. We get an internal server error.  Because we really shouldn't be doing this manually. Code should be doing this for us. So in HTML, when we hit the button in JavaScript, this code is not running properly. First of all, because this sound font is probably not available. Okay, this one gives a four of four. But why am I not even getting that error? Is something else wrong? I'll try five. Yeah. This structural issue might take longer than I expected. A couple of problems. First, this URL gives a four of four. So that sound font doesn't exist at that URL. And give me fake links again. Is it actually working? It is working. That's great. But this has a lot of rubbish. Swammydjs is, yeah, we could host it locally. But this thing is actually working. Piano player. It's a JS file. Right. Not found. It's downloading. Hopefully mine works faster. Well, first of all, this is working. Okay. How about we use EEG to just activate this? Because this will actually be playing music. It's pretty decent. How am I? Keyboard is actually working as well. But how's the keyboard mapped to the keys? Also, anyway, there's many questions. But this works. That's great. Our link didn't work. Question. Where do I do an API for downloading sound font? Okay. Would this work? Okay. We're already using that. We have a grand piano. Well, right. Except that URL doesn't work. But this suggests we do not need it at all. Okay. Well, that link doesn't work to be given. So my guess would be actually do anything because that sound URL failing. Other than it still doesn't do anything. Yeah. My MIDI button doesn't work. Yeah. So I do not have the sound font with debugging. Don't get anything at all, which is super weird. By the way, we haven't checked this site. These two. So if you have any feedback, comments, please do let me know. Okay. I need to understand how this MIDI plugin actually works. Why are we saving it to file at all? Does this need it twice? Does it work? I was expecting it to not actually write file, but play the notes as they go. So essentially it will convert this into notes. As you move along, we'll convert it to notes as well. And we'll just keep playing about that as a prompt. I mean, and this button doesn't do anything at all. So we might as well get rid of it. And this load file, this loading file, this Python code meant to be saving it. Yeah. I have a whole structure issue because that this file is not running properly. So if music conversion doesn't work, there's nothing to be played. So it should be called in the JavaScript, isn't it? Get the eG data. So my js is actually not calling this function. Yes. So the bot should already have this number. Where is this function being called? There is a KMW check. It's being called in JavaScript properly. Function is not there. There is the fplot eG data. hgdata const URL. How many of those we have? Only one. Right. So we weren't even calling it a converber. Don't have a converber. We do not want another button. We want to somehow do it automatically when you change inputs on the HTML page. Now, slider is a good start. When we add this date data, we already have date data. Yeah, we'll delete the bounce timer. It doesn't seem like we're doing much progress. We might just sum up and out. So eventually what we want is have this eG raw data loaded on the front page. And this parameter is based on certain features like amplitude, frequency. We would like to generate musical notes out of this signal. We haven't got yet into the technical aspect of how to do it. GPT gave us some generic example that we are trying to test, but still having trouble implementing it all into one place. I'll see you later. Bye.


What's up guys! Welcome to another D5 render video! We have something wild to unbox today, and I'm sure you've been waiting for this! The ultimate GeForce GPU, RTX 4090 is finally here! The long-awaited graphics card is powered by the Nvidia Ada Lovelace architecture, featuring 16,384 CUDA cores, running 24 gigabits of G6X video memory on a 384-bit bus! With more extensive ray tracing features, upgraded tensor cores, and DLSS 3.0, 4090 should be capable of running real-time rendering software, D5 render, to provide the fastest and smoothest possible real-time rendering experience at an amazing frame rate! Let's see how it outperforms its predecessors when running D5 render in this review! Tests will be done on architecture, interior, and gaming scenes! Ray tracing on! Let the game begin! We will be using D5 render benchmark tool from D5 official website, by running this tool which automatically starts testing. On the same scene, you'll see how well your computer performs when it comes to real-time operating and rendering output in D5 render! You can see from the results that it took 3090, 3 minutes 44 seconds to finish the rendering test, while 4090 made it in 1 minute 45 seconds! For a 2K resolution image, 3090 renders in 33 seconds, and 4090, 19 seconds! For a 5 second long animation, 3090 renders in 3 minutes 11 seconds, and 4090, 1 minute 26 seconds! All these test results can be found on the result page of D5 benchmark tool! As you can see, 3060 here still shows great capacity with a total time of 3 minute 23 seconds to render an animation 5 seconds long! For 3D rendering professionals and enthusiasts, we have got 3 more scenes to put you in the know, about how good 4090 can be for you! On the left, we have an average FPS of 22 in this CG gaming scene coming from 3090, and 4090 almost doubles the number, offering us an FPS at 57! This is actually a complex scene heavy on Alembic files, and let's take a look at the animation preview! 3090 real-time FPS 8.5, 4090 real-time FPS 12, which means a 41% uplift! This is crazy! FPS 40 for 3090, and a whopping 60 for 4090! The maximum FPS in D5 is now set at 60, so it's possible that what we saw is not yet the best possible performance! Finally, we have this aerial view rendering for a fairly large architecture project! You can see that 3090 does the work! Feel free to zoom in, and don't worry, lagging is not expected here! At the same time, 4090 continued to surprise us in this architectural visualization scene, with an average FPS at 34! How smooth is that? We've tested several features and commands inside D5 render on the scenes, and it turned out that the beastly 4090 is extremely competitive in working with D5! By using D5's built-in path, scatter, brush tools to quickly place multiple car, people, vegetation assets, which is normally resource intensive, we can still expect a smooth and efficient rendering experience with a relatively high frame rate! When it comes to rendering export, we test on still frames and animations in 2K 4K resolution, and the time was pretty much reduced by half! What it means is that we get to have a 4K aerial view, or site planning, rendered in a matter of minutes! For this review, tests are done using D5 render version 2.3! While the results are already looking amazing, there's still room for improvement! Rendering with the coming 2.4 would be another story! Stay tuned! Comparing the raw performance of the Star 4090, with 3090, we saw 100% uplift in both real-time FPS and rendering speed! Its futuristic features should work especially well with D5, in shortening render time drastically! Handling extremely huge or complex scenes, and offering an incredibly smooth real-time experience! Is it worthwhile to purchase 4090? Whether you have an answer right now or not, what we can advise is that apart from a hardware upgrade, switching to a better, easier, more affordable software like D5 render, will also be a boost to your efficiency! Despite its amazing performance with 4090, this software is not limited to high-end cards only, and runs on GeForce GTX 1066GB and above! It's also coming to a wider range of graphics cards, in the near future, bringing next-generation rendering workflow, to more architects, designers, and 3D artists! Leave a comment to let us know your ideas and requests! We'll come back with another amazing video soon!


I want to go over the various things in the stimulus and maybe comment on them. I want to specifically talk about the checks to individuals and give you like a little bit of the left critique of the checks to individuals and the whole approach that the left has towards these kind of things. So let's quickly go run down, give you a sense of how these stimulus packages work. Thank you. One, $1,400 per person just to check every person I guess who makes less than a certain amount. I'm sure if you make over $100,000 you're not going to get $2,000 but you know every person who makes less than a certain amount of money is going to get $2,000, $400 in additional unemployment benefits and an extension of the unemployment benefits until December. Many of the unemployment benefits were going to expire in March, an extension of it all until December and an increase above and beyond the regular unemployment benefits that people get from the state to an extra $400 over that. In many cases unemployment benefits or in some cases unemployment benefits would be actually higher than what people actually were making. Let's say rental assistance and eviction moratorium. So $25 billion in rental assistance for low and moderate income households who have lost jobs during the pandemic. So if you lost a job you get an additional amount of money above and beyond the unemployment insurance and above and beyond the $2,000 check that you're going to get. You're going to get some more money, right? And this is by the way $25 billion in addition to $25 billion that was already approved in December. So it's $50 billion to renters who are having a hard time paying rent because of all these things. All these things. $5 billion is for struggling renters to pay their utility bills, right? And $5 billion to help states and localities assist those at risk of experiencing homelessness. So $25 billion, $25 billion, $5 billion, $5 billion. I mean the billions are just flowing here. How about $1 billion to Iran Book Show? Imagine what we could do with $1 billion. We change the world. And then of course the federal eviction moratorium which Trump, the capitalist, co-markets, you know, you have Pal, Donald Trump, the great capitalist, put in place an eviction moratorium where you could not evict tenants until January. Well, Joe Biden is going to do him one socialist better than another socialist once every leftist has to undo the previous leftist in office. And he's extending the rent moratorium until, you know, September 30th. But this means, right, so people with federally guaranteed mortgages, they cannot pay their mortgages. This is in addition, sorry, people with federally guaranteed mortgages do not have to pay their mortgages until September 30th. And people who just can't pay their rent cannot be evicted. Why are we paying $25 billion people in rental assistance when they don't even have to pay rent to begin with? Because they can't be evicted if they don't pay rent. What's the downside if not paying rent? How much maintenance do you think landlords are going to do in 2021 on their buildings given that they're getting very little rent? I know people who've told me that they're the only person in the building paying rent, that it turns out none of their neighbors are paying rent. Okay, in addition, we're going to see a 15% increase in food stamp benefits through September, right? They're expiring in June, they're extending into September, $3 billion to help women, infants and children secure food. I don't know how you secure food, but I guess they're hungry and they get food. I thought that's what the food stamps were, but to hell with it, why not create another program? Let's call it the food security program.  And then US territories are going to get $1 billion in nutrition assistance. Cool. That means Puerto Rico gets some of the money. All right. Puerto Rico gets some of the money.  If you're needy, we're going to, if there's no program for you, we're going to create a program for you. Shay asks, do men not eat? You're absolutely right. This is a sexist program, but it's really social justice because of the fact that men have exploited women for thousands of years, you know, this is a means to balance out the equation over millennia, you know, all these millennia of discrimination. I'm kidding people. I know this is going to be a quote from Iran tomorrow on somebody's Facebook page. All right. We're then going to boost the child tax credit to $3,600 for child, under $6,000 for 6 to 17. We're going to propose to raise the maximum income tax credit for a year to close to 1,500 for childless adults, increase the income limit for credit to about $21,000 and expand the age, the range of eligible to cover older workers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's just, whoa. Then we're going to have subsidies for health insurance premiums, which used to be in the Affordable Care Act and were taken out. So if you have to pay more than 8.5% of your income for coverage, we're going to subsidize it on and on. He also wants Congress to provide $4 billion for mental health and substance use because you know, mental health problems have gone up dramatically during the COVID. And then $20 billion to meet health care needs for veterans because we don't have a lot of money already put aside to take care of veterans. We add, what the hell, $20 billion. We're spending billions and billions of, we're spending trillions of dollars. What's 20 billion among friends? Okay, restoration of emergency paid leave. The plan would reinstate the paid sick and family leave benefits that expired the end of December and extends it until September. Also tells you that they don't expect to have people vaccinated until September 30th because that's kind of the deadline that they're including on all of this. Now note that this is a way, this doesn't cost the government anything. This is a way to shift the burden to corporations, to businesses, small businesses, larger businesses, which basically means a tax increase for those businesses. They're now forced to pay sick and family leave benefits that are higher than existed before. Assistance to small businesses, $15 billion to create a new grants program for small business owners separate from the paycheck protection program because you have already a program, you probably have 25 different programs to help small businesses, but wouldn't it be so much better and so much more stimulating, stimulating if you could create an additional program and stick $15 billion in it? It also proposes making a $35 billion investment in some state, local, tribal and non-profit financial programs that make low interest loans and provide venture capital to entrepreneurs. That's the problem we have in this country. Absolutely. There's just not enough venture capitalists, there's just not enough people willing to invest in entrepreneurs, so we need the government now to become a venture capitalist. We know how good the government is at doing this, so we need to provide venture capital to entrepreneurs, so we need to create another $35 billion program to do that. We're still like, I don't know, less than halfway through this, and we've already created 65 different programs, aid to states and schools. Another $350 billion to state, local and territorial governments to keep their frontline workers employed because states are being so responsible to now, we want to reward them by bailing them out and helping them out and giving them some additional money and this is not at all to bail out irresponsible states that have been running deficits for decades and everything. $350 billion, wow. So they're not going to force the states to use this for any particular reason. Additional assistance to the state, $350 billion is not enough guys. Additional assistance to the states has been, so they're looking to add $150 billion, no, I guess this is, forget that, scrap that $150 billion. Biden plan would also give $20 billion to hardest hit public transit agencies. There you go. We need buses, even though nobody's riding in the buses because COVID and stuff, we need $20 billion to the transit agencies to help avoid layoffs and cutting of routes because we don't want to cut routes that nobody is actually using. I forbid you do that and what will happen to the drivers and what will happen to the people employed. You have to keep them employed, so we're going to give them $20 billion to do that and then we're going to give another $170 billion to K-12 schools, colleges and universities to help them reopen and operate safely and to facilitate remote learning. Most schools already open, in many states schools already open, $170 billion to help schools reopen. How much of that, how much of that lands up in the coffers of the, teaches unions? How much of that lands up in the coffers of the administrators? How much of that lands up just wasted and disappearing like the 100 million that Zuckerberg once gave to the New Jersey school district as a contribution to improve education in New Jersey? And it just went like that and it just disappeared. Now this is on top of, by the way, just so you don't think Biden has been cheap here. This is on top of $82 billion that schools got in the December bill that the champion of capitalism, Donald Trump signed into law, right, $82 billion. All right. Now we get to actually, maybe in the context of what we're dealing with, maybe what government actually should spend money on.  What is that? Well, it's vaccines and testing. Now, I'm the first one to admit, I'm the first one to argue that government shouldn't spend anything on vaccines, let the private sector deal with it, let insurance companies pay for your vaccines and let Walmart and CVS and clinics and doctors and drug companies sell them to you and whatever, by whatever mechanism they deem fit, the last thing in the world we want is government doing it, but government is doing it. So if it's doing it, let's at least get it done fast. So this is the only money I approve of in the stimulus package. And indeed some of this money, if Trump had actually signed a bill with this money in, he was against this, he fought this, tooth and nail. If the Trump administration had done some of these things, maybe we wouldn't be in this unmitigated disaster with COVID that we are in. You know, I don't know if you know, but hospitals, when I was in Orange County, literally people in ICUs were intense outside. If you weren't critical, you were being sent home, even if you were 80 in your late 80s with COVID, you were being sent home because the hospital couldn't deal with it. Hospital couldn't deal with it. That's how swamped they were with patients, with COVID cases. This is not the flu. It is not some regular viral infection. This is, it's a, it's a viral infection that hits old people really, really, really hard. And we could have prevented all of this. Could have prevented all of this. Anyway, he plans to call for $20 billion in a national vaccination program, vaccination centers around the country, mobile units in how to reach areas. I don't know why only 20 billion, but that's what he's doing. I mean, it's much more important to spend $170 billion for schools, I guess. Invest $50 billion in testing. This is, this is what Trump should have done, should have invested in testing, providing funds to purchase rapid tests, expand lab capacity, and help schools implement regular testing to support reopening. And it would fund 100,000 public health workers, nearly tripling the community health network to do tracing. This is what should have been done from day one. That's what the plan is going to do. Now, is any of that going to stimulate economic activity? No. Handing out checks to people. If they're worried about their job, they're likely to put it in the bank and spend it slowly. That spending will have an inflationary impact on the economy, moderate, but it will have an inflationary impact. If they're feeling good, if the economy recovers, they'll pull their money out and they'll spend it quickly. That'll have a bigger inflationary consequence to the economy. In terms of price, there's price inflation here I'm talking about. The inflation of money printing is happening in the background.   I know my words are going to be taken out of context. I know that. But MMT doesn't even advocate for this because MMT thinks that you can spend all you want as long as the spending is going to what MMT views as productive activity that is increasing productive capacity so that the extra dollars are actually increasing the number of goods and therefore you don't get price inflation. Now, there are lots of problems with that. But that is much saner than this. This is old line Keynesian, NISM, where the problem in the economy is a lack of aggregate demand, which means people are buying enough stuff. So you give them money to encourage them to buy stuff. And if they buy stuff, then a businessman think that this is a good sign that this is a sign that the economy is going to do well in the future. So they start investing. They start hiring people. And that's how you get out of a recession. That is the idea of a stimulus. Again, stimulus means more consumption now. Businessmen think that this is an indication of consumption in the future. They invest and they hire people. I mean, one of the many problems with this is that the consumption now, businessmen look and say, oh, this is the government stimulating a consumption now. It's doing nothing to produce consumption in the future. So why should I hire anybody? Why should I expand capacity? Why should I produce more when consumption in the future is still questionable? This is why the stimulus in the Great Depression didn't work. It's why stimulus packages never work.  Because even Keynes recognizes that what really drives economic growth, what really drives an economy, what drives economic success, is business investment and hiring of people, entrepreneurial activity. He just wants to fool the businessmen with a rush of consumption. But you can't do that. It doesn't work that way. That's another reason why right now all of Trump's stimulus, Trump has already, Trump has signed $4 trillion of stimulus into law. For those of you again who believe Trump is a capitalist, for those of you who believe Trump is pro-market, for those of you who believe Trump is a conservative in any sense of the word. $4 trillion, a stimulus over the last, what, seven, eight months? Nine months maybe. Trump has spent their money. Who drifted to the left exactly? That's Trump is a leftist. When it comes to economics, Trump has always been a leftist. So criticizing Trump is not a leftist strategy. That's, if you're criticizing for spending money, that's a capitalist critique of Trump. So it's stunning that $4 trillion have already been spent and the economy is not recovering.  That's what's needed to happen. That's the only thing that will help. That's what our politicians should be doing, moving towards freedom. Because a movement towards freedom is a movement towards economic growth, towards economic success, towards wealth creation. Stimuluses do the opposite. Whether it's a Trump stimulus, a Biden stimulus, an AOC stimulus, it doesn't matter. It's not stimulus. It's handouts. It's bureaucracy creation. It's waste. It's welfare. It's redistribution. It's central planning. It's all the things that we know are actually destructive to economic growth. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist growth. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  But at least the people who are liking it, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there. Help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at your book show dot com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals and show your support for the work, for the value. Hopefully you're receiving from this.  You'll know what shows are on, when they're on. You'll get notified, right? So, yes, like, share, subscribe, support, like, share, subscribe, support. There you go. Easy. Do one or all of those, please.


So, hello everyone, thanks for the invitation to speak at this brilliant conference, it's really a pleasure to be here. My name is Sebastian Post and you can follow me at S-Post on Twitter. I would like to add some additional information on my person, so I am a publisher, a publishing consultant and an entrepreneur in publishing, especially in e-book publishing since 2005. So I have founded the first company in Germany to distribute e-book content to retailers in 2007, so I have been involved into e-book production, e-book conversion and distribution of e-books as well as marketing and now data analysis. By the way, this is my blog Publishing Hurts, so I occasionally also write on topics related to e-book publishing. In April this year I founded a company that is called Publishing Data Networks together with Bucherport, which is one of the three magazines for the publishing industry in Germany and 100% subsidiary of der Spiegel magazine, which you obviously know and Bucherport has been dealing with market research for books for a long time and is also creating the Spiegel bestseller list. Six weeks ago we launched our first product, which is called Monitor and it's a tool for publishers, authors as well as retailers to analyze e-book sales trends, marketing data and context information, and I would like to provide some additional information on the following charts about this product and our business. Our company goal is to create an infrastructure for the mutual exchange of data between the publishers on the one hand and the retailers as well as libraries on the other hand, so to optimize data-driven retail marketing and distribution of digital content. So we post ourselves two questions. One is what data is actually relevant for publishers when it's about e-book distribution? So what data can help publishers to learn about marketing and distribution of digital content? And on the other hand, what publishing data is relevant for retailers and libraries in order to sell more books, buy the right content, purchase license the right content that the readers actually would like to have presented and actually like to read? And I will give some examples on what data there is out there for publishers to learn and to know about distribution and success of their campaigns. So of course, publishers receive monthly sales reports from the retailers. They are the basis for accounting and for the royalty settlement, but you have to take into account that it's a monthly information that you receive at the beginning of the following month. So in between publishers until now had no information about sales, so more and more retailers now start offering daily sales information, sales trends or even real-time sales information back to the publishers, so which can be used to indicate sales and to have more current information on the actual, on your sales as a publisher. But there are data or there are more data that are not only related to sales, so sales transaction that can indicate the level of engagement of readers with e-book content. So it's very interesting, for instance, for publishers to have a look at reviews that are written on websites or professional or non-professional blogs. I don't know the situation in Sweden, but in Germany there are loads of blogs and websites of ordinary readers that are writing about the books they love and they like to read. We would like to inform publishers and try to establish a relation with these readers talking, writing about the books. We have detailed user feedback in customer reviews and you have these reviews in most of the e-book stores out there, so you have these reviews and five-star ratings on review sites, just like Goodreads or lovely books in Germany where thousands of users writing about their reading reads and reviewing it. Or social reading platforms where you not only have comments or five-star ratings but also reviews, longer passages, how the book was experienced. Library aggregators, digital and you mentioned it, are able actually to report back data to the publishers on library landings and subscription services or these social reading platforms can present numbers of reads back to the publishers. So these kind of data is available out there. You have, every time you open your app on your reading device, there is tracking of your reading habits, so all these data outside, that is available in principle for the publishers. We have e-book charts, we have top 100 lists and they provide extremely interesting information back to publishers to think about pricing, to think about genres, etc. So there's a lot of information out there and of course the bus created on Facebook or Twitter that can tell publishers and authors as well, provide information on the traction of their marketing campaigns and their ambition to communicate the titles out there. So a lot of data, I don't want to mention all of it, so you have e-commerce data from e-commerce related aspects like upselling rates from reading samples. You have page impressions, number of followers of authors and publishers, etc. And not the least data that you receive when you have marketing campaigns or do marketing campaigns on Google or via Facebook. So there's actually a lot of data out there and it's a goal not only to randomly present all the data that is available out there but to somehow coherently try to answer specific and relevant questions to publishers and thus make little data out of big data. But moreover and furthermore we would like to take the sales data and the context information and generate something that we would like to call the trade impact factor which is a measure for trending titles and the social impact. So the trade impact factor will be able to tell publishers and authors which titles are trending, where on which platforms titles are being discussed and maybe even how they are being discussed. So and it, of course, it's very relevant information that can provide valuable insights for publishers in terms of marketing their e-books and digital content in a different way than they're used to market print books and maybe provide insights when it comes to the right pricing of the titles. But it's not only that we will be providing data from the shops and the libraries like sales trends and additional data back to the publishers. It's our idea that publishers will provide data, trade impact data back to the shops and the libraries. So we try to create an infrastructure for a better communication between the publishers on the one hand and the libraries, the retailers on the other. Because I'm convinced that the exchange of information on distribution, on marketing, on campaigns, on budgets for marketing, on trending titles is very important to accurately adjust what I would call 360 degrees marketing campaigns that you have. All the aspects of marketing really focused to the point. And if we ask ourselves what are the digital bookpiles, we might come up with an answer that they are the landing pages, the starting pages of the stores. That they are the list, the recommendation lists, the journal lists, that they are the mentions in the newsletters or the promotions. So that the retailers are necessary or as necessary, it's good, it's helpful for the retailers to have all this information to improve the sales and maybe for libraries. The trade impact factor, this additional data can help to put the right books on the shelves as well to license the content that readers like to read at this moment and that are being discussed at this moment. So as we are speaking about libraries, I would like to introduce you in two slides or three slides to the German library market just for you to know about the market over there. So we have for public libraries two library aggregators, one is called DVBIP and they're selling the on-liar, it's called to the libraries and the other company is called Seattle to give you some numbers. So the DVBIP on-liar system is used by more than 1100 libraries with more than 120,000 e-books from more than 800 publishers and it's estimated and it's their number, so I don't know whether it's true, but it's estimated for 2013 that they have between six and seven million digital landings in 2013. And the library purchase one reader at a time license. So this for a fixed retail price currently at the moment. So one reader can borrow a book for two weeks and if there's someone else interested in a book he has to wait or she has to wait until the two weeks have inspired. So if the library wants to sell content to more than one person, it's necessary to purchase another or more licenses. So this is a model which results in very long waiting list. You can imagine that if you want to read a book that is published now and that is being discussed now, you don't want to wait for eight weeks or ten weeks or even longer to have it. So this is a situation there, but it's a market leader for the providing content to public libraries. And since two years time we have subscription service called Scooby. It's a joint venture of the two major publishing groups Random House and Hold Spring Macmillan. They have about 20,000 titles or maybe even more right now. And it starts, the pricing starts from 10 euros a month to have access to this library. For academic titles there's a company called Paper C and they have more academic content that they offer mainly to students. But of course we have a third offering in the German market that is a pirate site. And the pirate site is very influential in the German market and is that successful so to say that they started in order to cope with all the traffic and to deal with all the costs involved in all these downloads. They began offering a subscription service. Of course completely illegal, but they said okay we just can't deal with all the number of downloads and you can see a little number. So for July, so last month, they had 1.4 million downloads of ebooks. And if you compare the official numbers for 2012, I mean last year, it's about 1 million of legal downloads, paid content downloads per month. So you can see how big this platform is and what they announce or what they say is okay we're just trying to find out what the reader wants and it's DRM free download without any hassle, broad assortment so possibly all titles available on the market and reasonable price which they offer via some obscure payment method I can't recall between three and five euros per month. I mean this is of course completely without the consent of the publishers, but it's and to come to my last slide and to make the point, if you are dealing with innovation especially with new business models and it is very important that you try to find legal business models with new ways of licensing content and for this you have to have a very close look on the data that is available because it can tell you what the users like, what models they prefer, what pricing they prefer, and so this is the end. Thanks. So.


The 2022 annual Southeastern Kentucky Chamber Awards night is September 27th. For tickets call<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can also watch live on the free Mountain Top TV app. Through its inaugural big summer give back program, Thornhill Toyota has partnered with the Kids in Need Foundation to provide over 400 backpacks and school supplies to kids throughout the region. We're very excited to join with the Kids in Need Foundation and Toyota Motor Company to have this opportunity to give the backpacks. We did a promotion in August through our service department. $3 of every oil change and tire rotation went to this program and they're all across the country. We're doing over, she said, 405 backpacks in this area. We were at Chapmanville Intermediate School today, but we're just excited to have those opportunities to give back to our community and the folks that help keep us going. We all work together and we're community strong and that's what we believe in at Thornhill. In addition to new backpacks, the kids receive notebooks, scissors, pencils, pens and other essential school supplies to ensure they have the proper tools to learn. So much going on in these times, but our kids especially and here in West Virginia we're always trying to figure out ways, how do we keep our students here? How do we keep our communities growing? Part of it, the main part is their education and developing them through the years to keep them in state, to have them come back so one day they'll come and hopefully be working here in the southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. But when folks are in need and supplies, the supply chain, everything the way it is nowadays like that's the best thing we could do is any way to give back, we're here to do it. Outside the backpack distribution, Thornhill Toyota has committed $10,000 in donations to ensure that local students will start the school year strong with new supplies. For Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.