Okay, folks, look, I'm back at it again with another slow cooker recipe. This one right here is another crowd favorite. Today we make it beef and broccoli. Let's go. Okay, so look, we are just gonna skew them right over these ingredients. Don't forget the full ingredient list down with your instructions and the amounts. So be on my website, smokingandgrillerwithab.com.  I put this in the freezer so that my meat can get hard, right? This is top sirloin. I got about two pounds, right? So that's what that is right there. Look, I'm gonna use fresh ginger, garlic cloves, and then we got these ingredients here. Now, I have a lot of videos that say, listen, a lot of the things that I use, especially when it comes to Asian food, you guys might only make it every now and then, but if you buy the ingredients, they'll last and we can just keep making these, you know, different types of dishes like conge pal and things of that nature. Listen, I'm not finna over target. We finna get right into it, right? So the first thing I'm gonna do is I got a clean crock pot. I'm finna just go ahead and drop in. Instead of me mentioning these, I'm gonna go ahead and just mash them, get them to release. Look at that right there. Yes sir, we'll just do all of our garlic cloves. I'm gonna add some beef broth to the game, right? So what I'm gonna do is put in about a cup. So we start right there. Okay, now we got a little brown sugar to add to this. We're gonna do it the right way, folks.  No way we're supposed to. If it heaps a little bit, that's okay.  So we drop that in. Oh, there we go. All right, and then we're gonna add a little soy. Now I want you guys to pay attention to this right here. Listen, I always like to use less sodium. In some instances, I do use the regular, so I keep both on hand, but this is normally my go-to. All right, and then we're gonna do about the same thing with our oyster sauce, right? So, all right, so this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take my chili sauce, and I'm gonna probably put in, maybe just two tablespoons, that'll do it. Sometime I'll put in three, but they would like a little bit big, so that'll work. Now I'll do a couple tablespoons of the rice vinegar, and maybe a tablespoon of the toasted sesame seed. This right here, oh man, that's okay. So notice they got a small spout, this stuff right here is strong. You know what I mean? So you don't need a whole lot in there. You know what I mean? About a tablespoon, we gotta get some in there. All right, then I'll come up with my dry ingredients and then do my fresh ginger. You know what I mean? I can tell you this, if you want to, you can use, you know, powdered ginger. You know what I mean? That works, but since I keep it fresh, certain things that I just keep fresh, because I cook so much, right? So we put that over there. What did I say? Oh, onion powder, don't need a whole lot of this. Then for our cornstarch, we just go ahead and sprinkle in about three tablespoons. So okay, if you put a little bit more in there, even if they heaping, don't trip. Everybody like to have a thick sauce anyway, right? And now for my fresh ginger, we're gonna go ahead and get about a tablespoon of this out here. So let me go ahead and grate. And then for those of you guys that don't know, like even like how a saw works, it only works in one direction, right? So I see a lot of people weak going back and forth. When I pull back, I'm light on it. So listen to this. It's this way, that's the way it works. You know what I mean? So I'm gonna have to, you know what I mean? Just work this for a minute. Keep turning it until I can get about a tablespoon on the back end. Okay, so now I'm gonna take my whisk. You know, I just whisk this together, right? But another one of the things that I like about, you know, these type of recipes, when I say one pot, we not making it in nothing else, we making everything right here, right? So once you get it all together, you know what I mean? As you cook it, it will thicken up. And I'll show you what we do at the end if it don't come out as thick as you guys would like for it to be. Remember, I say if you put them in the freezer, at least give them 30 to 45 minutes, they become a little bit rigid, right? That's what you want. So what I wanna do is, I wanna cut them, you know, some thin strips. You see how they cut? Look, that's what we wanna have, right? So I'll just cut it down like that. The thinner you are, the better. You know what I mean? That makes for not so chewy. You know what I mean? Cause don't forget, we putting this in the crack pot, right? Since it doesn't have a bone, I'm gonna go ahead and cut it like this. And now we're gonna, I'm not gonna bore you guys. I'm just finna cut this down, just like that. Right? And then when I'm done, I'll take some of these and I'll just cut it however you want to. I know I cut that on the slant. You, look, this part right here is totally up to you. You can cut them straight or whatever. You can leave them long. I'm gonna leave some long, you know, some will be cut. But let me go ahead and cut these. And then the best practice would be to cut these across the grain, right? So let me just continue this on and then I'll show you the next part. Okay, so once I got them cut down, look, this is what I want to have. I don't mind them being that long. You know what I mean? They're gonna be nice and soft. They'll tear anyway, you know?  You guys can see some of the marbling and some of the flavor that's gonna mix. Right, so we'll just take it. And we'll just add it to it, right? Now, I'm gonna take my spoon. You just want to get it all covered. You know what I mean? At least coat it, you know? Cover that right there. See that? You can see how that guarded clothes kind of like break up. This is what you want to have. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and put this lid on here. We're not gonna add no broccoli to it. Not as of yet. I'm gonna put this back in the refrigerator. I just wanted to bring this out so you guys can see it, right? So let me put this top on. I'm gonna set it for about three to four hours on low. You know what I mean? Cause look, right about at three hours, that's when I go ahead and do the rest. So I'm gonna see you guys at three hours. Let me just set it right now. That's on low. All right, so let me just bring this over here by you guys so you guys can see it. You know what I mean? I got as much as I could. I mean, you could be here, if you ask me, you can be here for a while or you have to take something out, then try to strain it. But we want to leave some of it in there, right? And the reason being, you want to have something that's steamed. Now, when I say steamed, look, we'll keep this like this and we probably gonna go for about another 30 minutes. You know? So this is what we have right now. We can cook this down. I could add a little slurry to it, just to thicken it up to the thickness that we want to. But I'm looking at this right here. We're not gonna need no slurry. We just gonna put this on the stove, keep stirring it on super low and then cook some of that liquid out. All right, so now I'm gonna take my florets. You saw how it is inside of here, right? I'm just gonna add some of this. Now look, this is key. Let me say it before I even put this in there. Do not stir it up. Cause all we want to do right now is we just want to steam it. This one right here, I can cut back just a little bit. You want them to be more so like that, you know? So I'm gonna say it takes about 40 minutes, you know what I mean? To the desired softness that you guys like, you know? This is what you wanna have. Look, now there's still a lot of heat in here and it's still cooking, right? So I'm gonna put my top back on. I'm gonna let the timer do the rest. We're not gonna stir it. We're gonna leave it just the way you see it and we're gonna come back in about 45 minutes. I have not taken the top off of this. Now listen, I told you guys 45 minutes. 45 minutes is really the way I like to do it. How can I say it? I like my broccoli to be steamed but I like it to be a little bit more so on the soft side, right?  Look at that. I never, ever take my top off. Now I don't know if I can show you guys, I can pull one of these off like that and if I, this is the way I like it folks. This right here put a smile on my face. Cheers. All right, so I just went to the stove. I cooked this down, you guys can just see. Look, if you wanted to be thicker, like I said, you guys can go ahead and put some, what is that? You can put a little, I'll say just a, for this right here, I'm gonna say just a teaspoon of cornstarch and a teaspoon of, you know, cold water, right? Let me go in and get me a spatula because I want to get all of this. Now if you guys look down in here, now we have a little bit of sauce that was left in here because we couldn't get it all or we didn't get it all. You know what I mean? So now I'll just add this to it. All right. And one more thing, you don't want it to be super, super soft on your broccoli. You know why? Cause we gotta do a little combine. All right, so now I'll take it here over the top, just like that. And that there folks, that broccoli beef man. Okay folks, so you guys let me know down in the comment section below. You know what I mean? I'm trying to keep up with these comments, you know? But I really want to know what you guys think about this one right here. Hey, super easy to make. You know what I mean? Just listen, I'm not finna talk, over talking and nothing like that. We finna just get in here and get some. Now, this right here is fire. Listen, you don't have to go down there, run down there and look at them trays and say, okay, I want to get beef and broccoli. Now you guys know how to make it on your own. You know what I mean? It's super simple to make big with the family. Everybody's going to love it. I promise you. And if you like that beef and you like that broccoli and they never had this, listen, you're missing out. Don't forget, talk to me down in the comment section below. Let me know what you would do and add it, come back and tell me what you thought about it after you made the recipe and all of that. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me just take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and tell everybody out here. There's a channel out here that simplifies these recipes and taking a Mr. God of cooking. This time, y'all are going to have to look at these green onions because you know what? I'm out. Peace.


Okay, so the aspects of transition I'm going to be focusing on today is the changing burial practices from mostly furnished graves to mostly un furnished graves. This is a process which takes place across large parts of Western Europe throughout the seventh and into the early eighth century though there's evidence from some areas that's actually part of a much longer process extending back into the sixth century. So my entire study period I'm looking at the sixth to eighth century's AD. Fy angen nowe, mae'n gael ein fynfenon iawn, ac mae'n gweithio'n llog o'r ffordd yma, neu yn ddelirio'n cydweithio'n cydweithiau, neu'n gweithio'n cydweithio'n cydweithiol. Ond mae'r llog o'r ffordd ymlaen i'r llog o'r ffordd yn symr y maen nhw, a'r byw'n gweithio'n cydweithio'n cyfrannu'n gweithio'n cyfrannu'n cyfrannu, a'r ffordd y maen nhw ymlaen nhw'n ffynwys i'r bwyllt ar y maen nhw. Ac yn ni'n dweud yn ymddangos ar gyfer y prosesau yw'r gweithio, wedi'u gael y bwysig ar hyn o'r mwyaf, ond mae yw'r rhagor yn fawr yn ei ddweud. Ac yn rhaid i ddweud, y dyfodol y peth yn ystod y gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio ddweud o'r llangellau yw'r gweithio'r gweithio ar y gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. So my study area includes six different modern day countries, all of which have quite different approaches to excavation, to chronological analysis and to publishing, not to mention the different research trajectories which have taken place in those different countries over the last 50 years or so. Another issue with looking at this sort of transition is that the type of evidence is fundamentally different on either side of it, so archeologists tend to approach furnished burial quite differently ac mae'r bwysig iawn yn ôl. Rydw i ni smalldoddol o fenogol Cronologlowedd. Rwy'n rhan o'r amlwg erbyn o'r oedlai, ac yna'r bwysig iawn i'n rhaglau'n dymlo'n hyn, am ydych chi'n mynd hwnnw o'r tyflau defnydd yw amguedd yn dartyni辵ar y gallwn môl. Rwy'n gweithio ar gwaith bwysig iawn ar rai cyflau sengfriddau sixa o bwysig. England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland and that's given me a sample of 246 cemeteries containing in total 33,690 graves. Now that sounds like an awful lot but it's actually a really tiny sample of what's available to me. I've only included cemeteries where I had a full grave catalogue available so a grave by grave inventory of everything that was all the objects which were associated with those graves although I did have to relax that for some areas particularly this part of northern France here where I found it quite difficult to find those full grave catalogs. Most importantly though is that I had good chronological evidence available for the cemeteries so ideally that would be things like absolute dating so radio carbon dates, dendro, chronology dates, or coin dated graves but those are unfortunately all too rare so second best was some of the typological studies which have been done although of course that does exclude the unfurnished burials. I've also only concentrated on cemeteries that contain more than 20 individuals just to try and keep this project to something of a manageable size. So taking that data I've created a series of kernel density maps using ArcGIS so this is the density of cemeteries at the start of the 7th century which is probably when I have that my densest concentrations and you'll see that there are some quite big geographical differences. There are some areas where there are lots of burials so East Anglia and Kent this low alignment region in particular but then there's some areas where I've really struggled to find cemeteries so South of the River Seine in France and that is a well documented, there's a lack of known cemeteries there. Some of these clusters however are more a result of excavation and study biases rather than historical realities so you will notice that a lot of these groupings actually correlate to where you have really good chronological studies which are taking place. So you've got the work of Hans and Bayless up in England and this is Peran and the Gouge's chronology normalise there, the work of the Franklin Arvites blooper analysing the chronology of the lower Rhine region and then South Germany is another area where there's been a lot of really good chronological study done. So there are some questions over how much this just reflects the level of study and how much it actually reflects historical reality. The most striking differences though are the chronological biases that I have. So when you compare the cemetery density at the start of the seventh century to what I have for the end of the eighth century that is quite a drastic difference there. Archeologists have traditionally been less interested in those usually later unfurnished cemeteries and I think the biggest problem with them is the dating of them. When you don't have the artifacts you do have to rely on things like radiocarbon dating and there are of course geographical differences in how commonly radiocarbon dating is used. So you'll notice although it's not very high the concentration in England is higher than the rest of the continent and that's because the English scholars do tend to use radiocarbon dating more though this is starting to change and it's starting to become more common in continental practices as well. A really big problem in the literature is this assumption that unfurnished cemeteries are always later than furnished cemeteries. So quite often you will read a cemetery excavation report and you'll read that this cemetery dates to the eighth to ninth century but there's no evidence to actually support that claim. So unfortunately I can't use those cemeteries in this sort of analysis without it leading to a circular argument. So to try and get around some of these issues about the very different levels of evidence available I've created some relative kernel density maps. So I've created density maps based on the average number of objects per grave and then shown that relative to the cemetery densities so the maps I showed you earlier and this somewhat accounts for sampling biases not entirely where you have areas where there are very few cemeteries there are still question marks over exactly how reliable some of these averages are but the advantage of this method is that it smooths out areas which have been subject to really intense study so where you see high densities of grave wood use on the maps you can be pretty confident that that's because people were richly furnishing their graves that it's not just an area where there's a lot of well-published well-studied cemeteries. I also at this stage carried out a hotspot analysis so this is shown the squares are statistically significant hotspots and the triangles are statistically significant cold spots and the relative sizes of those symbols is to do with confidence levels in that statistical significance but everything that's plotted is over 90% confidence. So this map here is the initial distribution at the start of the sixth century and you can see there's a fairly clear dividing line running from the coast south east down for the Alps south of which you have very low levels of grave wood use so you've got statistically significant cold spots over Burgundy over northern France and the grave wood averages they're approaching one object per grave on average but many of them are far far lower than that. Then north of that dividing line you have more of a band of medium use with pockets of of much higher density so I think East Anglia in Allemania and Bavaria and there some of the averages are approaching four or five objects per grave so how does this change as we go forward in time so for the first half of the sixth century there's actually very little change it's quite static then as you reach 550 this is where you start seeing those high concentrations in Anglo-Saxon England particularly what decreasing as you reach the start of the seventh century there's another period of stasis up until about 650 AD where you start seeing that decline in England beginning again and this is all leading up to the pivotal point I think of 685 so it's going to pause the the run through there and this is where according to Heinz and Bayless's chronology 685 is the date that most of the Anglo-Saxon furnished cemeteries go out of use. I think there's evidence from some areas that a few of them continue in use slightly later than that but there is a significant change and what's interesting is on the continent at exactly the same point there's also much more of a decrease in those concentrations than you've seen previously it's nowhere near as marked as it is in England but it's it's definitely something interesting going on there and then that moment seems to accelerate the process of change so as you get up to 730 AD that's when most of the aluminium cemeteries go out of use and then by 760 AD that pocket in the lower Rhine which was hanging on has also gone. At the end of the 8th century there is very little grave reduce across the continent there are still some statistically significant hotspots but when you have such low grave reduce everywhere even one or two objects could be causing that. I think what is interesting is the fact that all of England is showing up as a statistically significant hotspot so that suggests that maybe the abandonment of grave goods is more complete there than it is elsewhere. So what these maps have demonstrated is change that result from cemeteries going in and out of use but it doesn't really account for any change that might be going on from within cemeteries so I've combined that GIS analysis with a more in-depth statistical analysis of individual cemeteries. So I don't have time to go into all of these in detail unfortunately but I chose them mainly because there are large numbers of graves from which I could get quite precise dates from that allows me to plot change over time. So these cemeteries here from Wessex, Alemania, Francia and Bavaria all show a statistically significant decrease in their grave reduce over time and that grave reduce appears that so the decrease in grave reduce appears to start around the mid 6th century. I don't want to be too precise about these dates because the points that I've plotted they're just the mid points of ranges and all of these cemeteries have been dated by slightly different methods which aren't necessarily comparable but roughly the mid 6th century is when this decline seems to start and that is exactly when on the the broader scale we saw those first changes appearing in the annual Saxon burial records. So this isn't true of all regions that you see those changes within the cemeteries so these ones from East Anglia, Castlebite South, sorry East Anglia and Northumbria, Kent and Burgundy none of those show a statistically significant decrease over time and I know it looks like there's a very nice dip at the end of Castlebite South use but actually those last two phases only have one grave each dated to them so that's that does not come out as a statistically significant at all. What I find particularly interesting here is that of the four Anglo-Saxon cemeteries that I've analysed in this way three of them show change over time. Of the ones from the content that I've analysed there's only one that doesn't show change over time and that's from Burgundy which is one of the regions with the lowest grave would use to start off with so there's very little room for it to decrease significantly further. So this suggests to me that the change on the continent is occurring primarily within the cemeteries whereas the change in England there's there's much more of a rapid turnover of cemetery use so cemeteries are abandoned and reformed more rapidly so there's very little chance to see that change over time within the cemeteries and it's only really visible at the larger scale. Shall I bring everything together now? So at the start of the sixth century you have quite different types of practice scattered across the continent so South Germany and Anglo-Saxon England initially appear quite similar with their high levels of grave would use and then they're separated by this band of slightly lower grave would use in Francia but those two areas which appear quite similar to start off with change over time in quite a different way. So the Frankish and the Alemanian cemeteries the continental ones appear to be a bit more rooted they're places that people return to time after time to continually bury their dead even with the way in which you bury your dead even when that is changing. The Anglo-Saxon ones are less rooted in the landscape it seems to me they are abandoned reformed more quickly and when people start burying their dead differently they possibly move to a new cemetery to do so. So this has been quite a brief overview of my work I've also done a mid-range analysis of looking at individual regions in more detail there are smaller regional differences within England within those very broad areas of the continent particularly in the ways that different types of grave goods are used and I haven't really had a chance to discuss those there here but hopefully this has given you a broad overview of the way different parts of the continent might be relating to each other and influencing each other. Thank you.


T.F.N.N. The Tiger. Financial News Network. News Update. One Monday, March 14th, Basil Chapman giving you the Tiger Financial News Network, 10 a.m. market update, down to up 183. Now when these rumors come out, like on Friday, you just can't trust them. You've got to be wary because they're just rumors. So there was another rumor saying just anything that has to do with moderating the war that's going on in Ukraine, it really helps the market just momentarily and then reality sets it. So we're up 184.331.28. Under any other circumstance, we should be seeing a terrific balance. The Dow should be in the 34,300 and set it to the 33,100 is not good. The S&P at this particular point, also attempting a rally. The S&P is up 7 at 42.11. It really needs to get, wow, by Wednesday or Thursday, it needs to be up in the 4,280, 4,310 areas to say, hey, I have some substance here. Don't rule me out. The QQQ and the X100 trading down a $1.19 at 323.24. Not good at all. It's got the lower case. H pattern is going to a lower case. And there's a little trend line support. Better hold 322 today. Otherwise, it's a big problem. IWM, IWM is the Russell 2000, going from the lower case H pattern to a lower case M. So it doesn't, it's not doing anything right now. It's down 92. It's $195.8, but it just can't get out of its own way. It's showing residual strength, but not enough to break to the upside. Just a whole support. Looking at gold. Gold had a very sharp pull back starting from about a week ago. It hit the 2000 and 2007 and 78 level. It's trading right now at $1959. I made that peak. We were talking about and we are looking at some kind of digestive formation here in gold. And look at the silver, same thing, silver's pulling back. What is interesting is that the dollar, the dollar is holding quite well. It is down 26. But that's not the issue. The real issue is crude oil is having a sharp move to the downside. Down seven points at 102.38. It was at 130.50 just a week ago. This is a big pull back. And you're looking at the TLTR bonds. I mean, down 240 and 132.62. Right. I couldn't even see an edge and move the lens. I'll be back in a moment for the target to pitch south. I hope you can see that.


Good morning, and thank you for the privilege of the chance to talk with you today. In 1913, Henry Ford gave the world a gift. He figured out how to make the automobile accessible to the common man. And over the last 100 years, what we've seen is the transformation that's had across America and around the world. It's affected the way we live, the way we get around. It's affected the shape of the cities around us. We're now on the cusp of, I think, the next great democratization and transportation.  At Aurora, this is our mission. We deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. Safely because it's important that we do this right. Quickly because if it's worth doing, we should do it now. And broadly because if we build 10 of these things, who really cares? We want to have an impact at scale. Why do we think this is so important? So that gift that Henry Ford gave us has had profound negative consequences as well.  Around the world, that number is more like 1.3 million. The good news is that 95% of those accidents are due to human error. So if we can bring technology to bear, we can interest them. And this isn't just a very painful social issue. This is an incredible economic issue. The drag on the US economy of traffic accidents is estimated somewhere in the order of $1 trillion. About $150 billion of that is direct cost. And the other $850 is indirect cost. So if this is a real, real, both social and economic impact, our cities and the world we move through could also be dramatically transformed. By making the way we get from point A to be more efficient, we can reduce the amount of carbon we put in the air. We can reduce the time wasted getting from one place to another. In San Francisco, something like 30% of the traffic at peak is people looking for parking. Imagine if we take that out of the mix. And then in cities like Los Angeles and Houston, something like 30% to 40% of the adversary of the city is dedicated to vehicles. If we can transform that space into something that is now green space, real estate, it would be just incredible. And then finally, this very human element to this, 3 and 1 half million Americans never leave their home. Over 1.9 million of those are due to the fact that they have some kind of disability and can't get from one place to another easily like you or I can. So if we can give them back the ability to take part in our community, that's important. And then for the rest of us, it turns out I'm not a car guy. But a couple of years ago, I bought a convertible. And I had that moment that people who become car guys car people do. I was on 280. I had the roof down on my convertible, driving along with my music on. And it was magical. And then I got to San Francisco. And the traffic stalled to a halt. And it took me the next hour to go 15 miles.  And if we can give them back those 80 minutes a day that they waste, then this will mean something profoundly important to the quality of their lives over time as well. For me, I've had the, oh, I'm sorry. And then I forgot, we are building a company. And it turns out this is an incredible Greenfield economic opportunity. This is UBS's estimate that by 2030, the self-driving car industry is going to be about $2.3 trillion. So there's some real meat here to go after. So for me, the journey started about 15 years ago when the Defense Department announced the DARPA Grand Challenge. The idea was to drive 150 miles across the desert and not bump into too much stuff. This was the robot that we built at Carnegie Mellon. I think of this as kind of the missing Lincoln self-driving car space. A lot of vehicles before this had used lasers, radar, and cameras. But this was the first time we put that together with maps. And that turned out to be one of the key ingredients. So we built and developed this vehicle. We took it out to the desert, we tested it, didn't always go well. But we got this thing back together. We entered it, we qualified, we put it on the race course. The 150 miles we set it off in the morning, it was incredible. And it drove 7.2 miles. It got caught up on a berm here, almost literally burst into flames. And obviously, we were crucified in the press. But the Defense Department said, come back next year. And you know what? We'll give you $2 million if you win instead of one. And so we built a car. Again, this was one of my lessons about move fast and break things. Doesn't really work in this industry. So we got it back up on its wheels. We entered the competition. And what was incredible was that this year, this unwinnable challenge, this DARPA Grand Challenge, five teams finished. And so we got up on our soapboxes. The little blue vehicle here, by the way, was from Stanford. It beat the two red vehicles. At Carnegie Mellon, we were very sad. But this day, we got up on our soapbox and we said, this is exciting. We can go take men and women out of harm's way in the military. And the Defense Department said that's great, except where we drive, there's also other people on the road. So why don't you come back when you can drive around a course where there's other moving traffic and where you can stay on your side of the road and where you can deal with stop signs. And so they created the DARPA Urban Challenge. And this is a fun video from that. So that's MIT, the Black Vehicles from Cornell. And this was the, so as a Carnegie Mellon person, this is entertaining. As a Stanford audience, I'm sure this is fun. So I did not realize it was on loop. I apologize for that. So what's interesting about this, one is this is the first self-driving car on self-driving car accident. The other is that it's very representative of the key problems we face today. And that problem is that the vehicle here, the MIT vehicle, is trying to understand what the other person on the road is doing, in this case, a robot. And there's confusion. It thinks because the Cornell vehicle hasn't moved. It's good to go. The Cornell vehicle at some point makes up its mind to move. And then we have it coming together. This is the same kind of problem we face today. At the end of this challenge, though, they pride those two vehicles together, they apart, they finished. We had another couple of vehicles. The team that I happened to be the technical director for ended up winning that year. And so again, we got in our soapbox and said, we've got this. We can make self-driving cars. And the defense department said, you're right. Problem solved. Go figure out how to do it. And that was that for a couple of years. Until in 2009, Google picked up the torch. I had the opportunity to go there and help lead the self-driving car team for a number of years. And over that time, I think we kind of introduced the concept of what this could mean to the world and have actually pushed the industry forward to the point where now there's an incredibly broad set of talented people pushing this ball forward and trying to reap the benefits of this technology for society. And it's everyone from the tech companies to the automotive companies to startups like ours. Why is this happening now, I think, is one of the big questions many people ask. And there's two reasons for it. One is the configuration of the automotive industry today. Right now, the automotive industry is kind of under attack from three fronts. It's under attack from electrification, from connectivity, and from automation. And they recognize this. They recognize they're facing many of these challenges. And so they're looking to try and find ways to do innovative ways of doing business to move the ball forward. So that creates a moment. The other is that we're able to build off the giants that are out there. Cloud computing is now a thing. The advances in deep learning are incredibly important to this space. Just Moore's law and the amount of computation we can stick on a car today is profoundly different than it was even a decade ago. To build this, though, it takes an incredibly diverse set of people. At Aurora, we have folks with backgrounds across the industry. We have folks who've landed rockets, folks that have worked with the military, with agriculture. It's a very hard problem. A lot of what we think about is engineering, but we also have to engage on the social side of this. How do we communicate with regulators and help them understand the benefits and challenges of what we're building? When we think about what we're building, well, that's, again, broad. There's the hardware, so the combination of the computer, but also the sensors, the camera, the laser and the radar that allow the vehicle to see the world around it. And then there's the software that takes those signals, figures out what's happening in the world around the vehicle, and then how do we safely move through it. And then finally, there's the data systems and services that come along with this, things like the maps that allow the car to understand where it's going in the world. And this is what that looks like from the car's perspective. It starts out with a car understanding roughly how it's posed in the world. And then the red lines and the yellow lines here, the curbs and the lane markers, and they've come from a map, and they're now loaded into the vehicle. And then the cloud you can see come in is the laser data from the sensors on the vehicle. And then ultimately, the onboard perception system is identifying the bicyclists here with yellow boxes and other vehicles on the road with blue boxes. And at this point, we can then figure out how do we move safely through the world and hand it over to motion planning. In a more complicated environment, it gets more interesting. So here, we're applying interesting machine learning techniques and fusing those with Bayesian filtering on top to be able to drive through San Francisco. So we're again tracking the vehicles parked on the side of the road, the vehicles around us moving safely through the world. Driving, it turns out, is a very social activity. And expressing the cost function, expressing how the vehicle should behave is actually very subtle. And so in this video we're watching here, and it'll loop back at a moment, our vehicle is entering from an off-ramp or a non-ramp, I guess. And it looks to the left and it sees that big yellow truck and it sees a minivan. And at this moment, it has to figure out do I accelerate to get in front of the truck, slot between the minivan and the truck, and or fall behind the minivan? It turns out if you did the default thing here of just kind of get up to speed and hope, it becomes very uncomfortable very quickly. And so what we do is we take these vehicles out on the road, we have expert human drivers do behave in the way that they would to make their passengers feel comfortable, and then we're able to learn those cost functions over time. And that allows us to come up with a relatively efficient way to build a system like this that works well. And then finally, simulation is a key part of the way we build these systems. What you're looking at in this video is the black car is what happened on the road. Our test drivers were moving through a neighborhood they, by policy, disengaged because we were approaching a pedestrian. And then the red vehicle that you see separate from the black car is run in simulation. So offline, we can ask the question, what would have happened? And in this case, the vehicle would have yielded appropriately for the pedestrian crossing the road and then continued on its way. And this is a way that we can thoughtfully and safely test these systems out on the road, out on the real world without putting the public at undue risk. So where is this going and how do we kind of get there? My very deep belief is that this technology would come to market first through ride hailing and shared transportation services. And the reason why is fundamentally economic, that if we try to sell this as a feature on a vehicle, people pay $5,000, $10,000 for that, maybe. That's probably not enough to cover the cost of the technology we have to embed in the system. In contrast, if we can bring this technology to market providing a service of transportation and offering basically robotaxi capability, but at somewhere between half and a fifth the cost, then that will be clearly a clear economic winner, winner for the consumer and a winner for the people delivering that service. We also see an incredible opportunity to revitalize these cities, give people back their time, expand access to mobility, and increase safety in vehicles. And those are really easy things to talk about, but let me take you a moment to talk to you about what that means very concretely. So this is Steve Mann. He's a gentleman that I got to know at my time at Google. He's an artist. He's the director of the Santa Clara Institute for the Blind. He's incredible. It just turns out that he's blind. And that means every day he has a tax of a digital two hours to get from one place to another that you and I don't have. So by giving him just a simple moment of freedom like this, riding in a self-driving car, changes his life, allows him to engage in the community the way that he wants it on his terms. This gentleman is the brother of the best man in my wedding. His name's Steven Fletcher. He's a Canadian politician. When he was in his early 20s, he was a mining engineer. He was driving to a mine site in northern Manitoba on the way there. Moose stepped into the road. He swerved around it and hit a second moose and instantly became a quadriplegic. Now I'd like to think that if we have got our technology to the point where it's commercially viable, he would have never had that event. But much like Steve, if we could give him today the freedom to get around that you write for granted, that would transform his life and give him back joy that he doesn't otherwise have. He's had an incredible career. He was in the cabinet in Canada, but every day he's held back by his inability to move through the city. And then finally, this is my family. These are my two boys. Ethan here on the right is about half a year away from getting his driver's license. That is absolutely terrifying. And not because he's a great kid, he's smart, he's courteous, he's thoughtful, but if you look at the statistics on traffic fatalities, there's this terrible bathtub shape to it, and young drivers are particularly at risk. If we can deliver this technology the way we intend to, we can keep him and his brother and your families safer on the roadway. But I think that is something really worth working for. So this again is our mission. We hope you join us in it and we look forward to a transformed future together. Thank you very much.


I'm here, but first let's look at some top secret. Yeah, so first up Yeah, I'll talk about what I what I design. What's this? Okay? This is a TCA 4307 so last week you might remember I had the ISO 1540 breakout which is an I squared C isolator But while I was looking for that I also bumped into this chip This is the TCA 4307 which is a chip that does hot swap for I squared C So basically means you know if you have that issue where you have like an I squared C controller And then you plug in a peripheral and it like has spazes out your I squared C connection like is the clock or SDA line Gets toggled and now like it's out of sync. Well, this chip it it only electrically isolates Temporarily the two sides of the data lines and then connects them when it's a stable time to do it And so you can hot swap I squared C which is like a pretty candy thing I thought so I made a little break up for it next up And I wanted to play with like the Pico DVI projects that I've been seeing Wren who's a Raspberry Pi Pico dev has been doing some cool video output Projects for the RP 2040 and I was like I want to do that But you know, we do have a DVI breakout in the shop that's like terminal blocks But I thought you know, I should have one that's like a PCB You know friendly Breakout for DVI uses an HDMI connector, but it's a DVI All right, and then this is the latest round of the RP 2040 QT by yeah I showed this off last week as they like it's it's also a top secret This is me actually like getting like after the show. I was like I should actually like get it working So I got it working Got circuit Python Compiled for this chip and tried it out just plugged in some sensors and got stuff printing out on the rebel Okay, and that is this week's top secret. Oh get back in the vault


Yes. They do but I asked that fact She better like boys. I don't care how many pairs of hands drawers you got on ma'am.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited ecumenical patriarchy in Istanbul on July 8 following talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials attended a prayer held by the Patriarch Bartholomewai for the soldiers who lost their lives in Ukraine. Zelensky arrived in Turkey on Friday after visits to Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, part of a tour of some NATO capitals aimed at encouraging them to take concrete steps at a summit next week towards granting key of membership of the alliance. This is the end of this tragic moment.


Hello and welcome to the session. The question says integrate the following function and the 23 is x plus 2 upon root over x square minus 1. Let's start with the solution. We have to integrate the given function. So we have integral x plus 2 upon root over x square minus 1 into dx, which can be written as integral x upon root over x square minus 1 into dx plus integral 2 into dx upon root over x square minus 1. Now, first let us integrate this function. Let us name it as 1 and then we shall integrate the second function. Now, for the first function, let us say x square minus 1 is equal to t. So this implies 2x into dx is equal to dt or x dot dx is equal to dt upon 2. So this first function can be written as dt upon 2 into root over t or we have 1 upon 2 integral dt upon root t and this is equal to 1 upon 2 into 2 times of root t plus c1 where c1 is a constant. So this is further equal to root over x square minus 1 plus c1. So this is the value of the first integral. Now let us solve the second one which is taking 2 outside the integral sign. Again we have dx upon root over x square minus 1 and 1 can be written as 1 square. Now this further equal to 2 into log mod x plus root over x square minus 1 plus c2. Therefore this function which is integral x dot dx upon x square minus 1 root over plus 2 times integral of dx upon root over x square minus 1 can be written as root over x square minus 1 plus c1 plus into log mod x plus root over x square minus 1 plus c2. What is this further equal to root over x square minus 1 plus 2 log mod x plus root over x square minus 1 plus c where c is equal to c1 plus c2. Thus on integrating the given function we get root over x square minus 1 plus 2 log mod x plus root over x square minus 1 plus c. So this completes the session. Bye and take care.


Personal Finance PowerPoint Presentation. Municipal Bonds. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Most of this information can be found at Investopedia. How are municipal bonds taxed, which you can find online. Take a look at the references, resources, continue your research from there. This by J.B. Maverick, updated January 17, 2022. In prior presentations, we've been taking a look at investment goals, investment strategies, investment tools, and keeping that in mind. We're now asking the question, how are municipal bonds taxed? A bond is a debt security issued by a company or government to raise money and cover spending needs. So it's kind of similar to basically a promissory note, where basically you're going to in essence lend them money. They're going to give you the bond. The bond will typically have a maturity date and give you a return for lending them money in the form of interest. Oftentimes when we think of bonds from an investment strategy, we think about the government bonds because those are going to be the more secure type of investments. But of course there are company bonds and all other different kinds of bond structures that we can imagine to be set up. A municipal bond, also known as a mini, is debt security used to fund capital expenditures for a county, municipality, or state. So now we've got the government bonds, but we're talking about the bonds for the minis that are related to the county, municipalities, and states. Possibly not as secure as you would think the federal bonds, the U.S. government federal bonds are often thought to be quite secure because they're backed by the U.S. government. The U.S. government having more security possibly than a county, municipality, and state import because they've got the printing press over there, right? But you would still think that the state bonds and county bonds oftentimes would be more secure investments possibly than investing, say, in equities, for example, on a general basis, although it is dependent upon the county, municipality, or state. So municipal bonds are commonly tax-free at the federal level, but can be taxed at state or local income tax levels or under certain circumstances. So notice that the government are the people that are imposing the tax. So one way they're the ones that want the money, right? We're paying the county, the municipality, the state one way they can incentivize us investing in their bonds as opposed to investing in, say, corporate bonds is to remove the tax on it, right? So that would mean that the returns on those types of bonds could jump up or be a little bit more favorable. Obviously, when you think about those tax favorabilities in terms of the market, you would think that it would also be priced into basically the market as well. So when we're comparing different kinds of investment tools, different kinds of bonds, we've got to take that into consideration as well, meaning there's that little tax wrinkle that's a little bit different than when we compare to other, say, taxable bonds that we have to take into consideration, adding a little bit of complexity to our decision making process. So other overview of municipal bonds for an investor, one of the major advantages of many is that they are typically exempt from federal income tax. This debt securities are often excused from local and state tax as well, particularly when bonds investors lives in the state in which the bond was issued. So if you're in the state, the bond was issued possibly more likely that it will be taxable, non-taxable, not only on the Fed, but on the state level. When we say non-taxable, we're typically talking about, of course, the interest, the earnings, because when you buy the bond, you're paying money out. You're not going to have a tax implication when you're paying the money or you're investing the money. Typically, when will the tax be triggered? When you're earning, when is that going to happen as interest basically accumulates? And that's the question as to whether it's something you have to report on your taxes, which would mean that it would then be a taxable event possibly at that time. Essentially, unless you're excused from it, which would be the benefit of some of the corporate, of the munis. So essentially, when investors buy a municipal bond, they loan money to the bonds issuer in exchange for a specified number of interest payments over a set period of time. So it's similar to like a promissory note. We're loaning money. We're getting basically like the note, which is kind of like a bond in return, which is going to have a fixed set of rent on the note. We're loaning money just like when you loan or rent a home. For example, rent an apartment. You pay for the use of it. Well, if the government's renting basically our purchasing power of the money, they're going to pay rent in the form of the interest that we agree on in the terms of the bonds. So the end of this period is referred to as the bonds maturity date. So typically, just like when you sign a rental contract or something like that, at the end you've got the maturity date in which you have to return the property, in this case the property being the money that we loaned to the government that would have to be returned to us at the end of the time frame, defined as when the investor's full investment principle is returned. So they're going to have to give it back to us, what we gave them, because we only loaned it to them. They're going to give it back to us. Municipal bonds because they are tax exempt and popular among individuals in higher income brackets. So the tax savings, it's kind of an interesting calculation on how it will work because noting that the tax implications will have different impacts depending on how much we earn because of the progressive tax system. So that would mean that our higher income levels, the fact that we have this non-taxable component, might be a more advantageous thing when we're talking about the higher income earners as opposed to the lower income earners. So again, this tax implication, taxes always complicate the situation. Progressive income tax will complicate the decision as to what will be the impact of that tax-free component compared to other kinds of investments, other kinds of bonds, which would be taxable. While duties are generally assumed to be tax-free, investors should determine a bond's tax consequences before investing. If an individual invests in a bond issued by an agency of their home state, there is rarely state tax charged. However, if they buy the bonds of another state, their home state may tax their interest income from the bond. So while the interest income is usually tax exempt from municipal bonds, capital gains realized from selling bond are subject to federal and state taxes. So in other words, if we buy the bond, then when we pay the promissory note, when we make interest on it, that interest is typically not taxable. But we could also simply sell the bond, which could go up in price. If the bond basically goes up in price, then when we sell the bond, if we sell it at a gain, now we've got another kind of income, that would be a capital gain. That would be not us holding the bond till maturity, just owning or getting the rental income, the interest on it, but rather a capital gain on the sale, which could trigger a taxable event. So the short-term or long-term capital gain or loss on the bond sale is the difference between the selling price of the bond and the original purchase price of the bond. Municipal bonds and capital gains, when buying duties on the secondary market, meaning secondary market would mean if the bond issuer, in this case being the state, for example, issuing the bond, issues them directly to the investor, you're buying it basically on the primary market, or you can of course have people, just like we said, selling the bond that we already purchased from the primary market. That's the secondary market here. So investors must be aware that bonds purchased at a discount, less than the par value, will be taxed upon redemption at the capital gains rate. Note that this tax does not apply to coupon payments, only the principle of the bond. For example, the table below shows three different bonds all maturing in two years and all of which give the buyer a return of 4% if purchased at their net present value.  We've got the bond one at par, one premium, one discount. We've got the required rate of return, which you can think about as basically the market rate of return being the same for the all three, the coupon rate, which is the rate on the face amount of the bond. Now remember, if you're buying on the secondary market, then the coupon rate, the amount of rate on the bond is already been set. If you can think about it as being written on the bond, you can't change that. That's different than if you were to take a loan from the bank, for example, or if you were to loan money from the bank, they would adjust the interest rate, but you can't adjust the interest rate of the bond on the secondary market because it's on the bond. Therefore, you're going to be adjusting the price. Now, if these two things were the same, which they typically would be when the bond was issued on the primary market, for example, then you've got the cash flow at the end of the year, which is going to be the 4% cash flow at the end of year two. Coupon and principal, it's going to be the 104%. So the net present value then is going to be 100 because these two things are the same. We're assuming it's a $100 bond. So if we got the premium, then now we've got the market rate at the 4%, but the coupon rate is 6%, meaning the rate on the bond is actually paying higher than the market or what you can get somewhere else on the market. So that means that you can't adjust the interest rate to down to 4%, so you're going to have to adjust basically the price on the bond to compensate for the fact that you're getting a return higher than what you can get on the market for similar types of bonds. So cash flow at the end of the year, we're going to say 6%. Cash flow at the end of year two, coupon and principal, 106%. Therefore, the net present value is going to be 103.77. I'm not going to get into the detail of calculating that right now, but just note that we're issuing it for something higher than basically the face amount of the bond because it has, it's paying out 6% and that's higher than the current basically required rate return or market return of 4%. A discount then if we have the required rate return market rate at the 4%, but the bond itself has 2% on it because when they issued the bond, it was at 2% at that point in time. Again, we can't basically increase the percent to 4% to match the current market for similar types of investments and therefore we're going to have to adjust the price. So if we have a cash flow at the end of the year is $2, so then we have 100 into the net present value is 96.22. I'm not going to get into the detail of how to calculate this, but just note that now the 96.22 is what we had to adjust instead of the interest and that is now below basically the face amount of the bond because you've received 102 and it's the difference between these two rates, market rate, in other words required rate of return and the coupon rate, the rate on the actual bond that is resulting in some of that complexities. The difference between the net present value and the principal payment at maturity is taxed at a capital gains rate of 15%. In this case, the discount bond from above will be worth less to the buyer as shown below. So let's go back up to the slide above just to get a handle on this. This one that was purchased at a discount means that it was purchased for something less than the face amount, which we're thinking was the $100 due to the fact that the rate on the bond, the coupon rate is less than basically the market rate what we can get from similar bonds, for example. The fact that we purchased it for something less than the face amount of the bond could mean that we have tax consequences on that. If we take that into consideration, for example, the tax consequences could be calculated thusly. We've got the 100 face amount of the bond minus the 95.62 is the 4.38. If we multiply that times the rate which we're assuming is 0.15 or 15%, we get the 0.657. If we subtract that from the 102, so we're going to say minus the 102, we really have the cash flow at the end of year two, coupon plus the principal minus the tax of the 101.34, which adjusts the real net present value after considering taxes to the 95.62. So I know that's kind of getting into the weeds, but again, just to point out that the taxes do complicate when we're trying to make different comparisons of items that have a taxable component and those that do not. An investor could end up paying $96.22 for a bond that is only worth $95.62 without knowing that the gain is subject to capital gains tax. Now, a couple things to note here. One, you might say that's not a big difference. I'm not very concerned with that difference. But obviously usually we don't buy just one bond, but we would buy multiple bonds. And if we take that difference and expand it out to a large investment, it can be a significant factor. And two, a lot of the individual investors may not be purchasing say bond for bond, for example, but possibly it purchasing mutual funds that have bond component and exposure to it. So may not be getting so much into the weeds like for these types of calculations on a bond by bond calculation. But do you want to have a general understanding, a broad understanding of the tax consequences of bonds that could fit into their tax planning strategy, depending in part on upon their income level. So the bad news that is that while discount bonds are taxed, bonds purchased at a premium do not work similarly. They cannot offset capital gains by providing capital losses. So you would think that the opposite would be true when you pay a premium on the bond because now you're paying more than the face amount of the bond. But no, so the tax rule runs contrary to that of most investments including other types of bonds because the Internal Revenue Service treats tax-free instruments differently than their taxable counterparts. Therefore, when analyzing yields for many bonds offered on the secondary market, the yield to maturity figure is usually sufficient to determine an expected return. For discount bonds, one must also factor in the negative tax implications that can arise from capital gains. Municipal bonds and de minimis. So one of the most confusing concepts relating to many duty bonds is the de minimis tax rule. This negative tax law states that if you purchase a bond at discount and the discount is equal to or greater than the quarter point per year until maturity, then the gain you realize at the redemption of the bond, a par value minus purchase price, will be taxed at ordinary income, not as capital gains. So now we're getting into the weeds again in terms of the types of taxation because the whole point of purchasing the munis or part of it, part of the incentive being that you get this tax incentive component. And now we're saying, well, there could be certain situations where you have a discounted bond, where you might be subject to capital gains, which is bad enough. But if you're subject to ordinary income gains, now we're talking about different kinds of income tax, that capital gains usually have a preferred rate over ordinary income. So if you had the choice of being taxed at all, you would rather be taxed generally at the capital gains rates, which are typically lower than the ordinary income rates. So this could mean the difference between paying 15% and 37% on the gain for those at the top of the tax bracket. So for example, let's take the discount bond from the previous example, because it is two-year bond, we can calculate that purchasing it for $99.50 or less will mean falling into the de minimis rule and being taxed at the ordinary income tax rate. So since the net present value for this bond is well below $99.50, we need to calculate the tax consequences with the gain on the principal is taxed at ordinary income as indicated here. So I won't go into that in more detail, but keep that in mind. Let's get a little far into the weeds here. Well, an investor might pay $95.62. If you're only accounting for capital gains tax, the true value is much lower, only $94.73. At the time of purchase, the buyer must recognize whether the bond is subject to de minimis because the after tax return could be substantially less than expected. So we have to get the proper rate for trying to figure out what the proper tax consequences would be, which again, taxes get quite confusing when we got these different rates, income capital gain and when it's going to be applied and comparing that to other types of investments. So don't have the same tax consequences. So municipal bonds and federal taxes, the federal government does not tax most activities of state and municipalities, therefore giving most muni bonds tax exempt status. However, some activities do not fall under this tax exemption. For instance, coupon payments for many bonds sold to fund those activities are federally taxed. With one common example is a bond issued to fund a state's pension plan obligations. So when this type of bond is for sale brokers selling the bond should readily know whether it is taxable. Another more harrowing example of taxable munis are those that are issued as tax free, then later become taxable if and when the IRS determines the proceeds are being used for purchases that do not fall under tax exempt status. So obviously on the federal tax side of things, they're going to say they're trying to influence what the state is going to be basically using the money for. And it would be a bad thing, but you can see we're under the tax law here that something at one point could be under non taxable, for example, and then they changed the law and that would be a problematic thing for many taxpayers, but it's possible to take place. This is very rare, but when it happens, it leaves a lot of very unhappy investors clearly. Their coupon payments are taxed as ordinary income, and if they choose to sell the bond, the price they receive will be reduced because buyers would require a higher yield on taxable bond. Generally, taxable munis are still exempt from state and local taxes as investors in states with higher income taxes may find that they get a better after tax return than with other fixed income investments that are fully taxable at all levels, such as corporate bonds or certificates of deposits, the alternative minimum tax. Although it is relatively uncommon, some muni bonds are federally taxed if the holder is subject to alternative minimum tax, typically a type of tax that's subject to higher income individuals for the most part. So, if you are unsure whether a specific muni is subject to AMT alternative minimum tax, consult the broker before purchase. For example, a bond that is used for a particular municipal improvement that is not backed by the credit of a state or municipality, but rather that of a corporation such as an airline backing an airport improvement bond would be subject to AMT. This would be zero coupon muni bonds, zero coupon municipal bonds, which are bought at a discount because they do not make any interest or coupon payments, don't have to be taxed. In fact, most aren't. As long as you're investing in a local municipal bond, taxes won't be a concern. This provides a big advantage over taxable bonds even with lower interest. To determine whether or not a tax-free bond is a better option than a taxable bond, simply apply the tax equation yield, tax equivalent yield, that's the TEY formula. You might talk about that more in a future presentation. Another important note here is that you will likely be subject to a capital gain or loss if you sell the bond before it matures. If you sell higher than the adjusted issue price, you look at a capital gain. If you sell for less than the adjusted price, you suffer a capital loss, which can be utilized to reduce overall tax bill. The biggest and most obvious benefit of zero coupon bonds is that you're buying the bond at a big discount to its face value. This is also known as the original issue discount or OID. For example, you can buy a $1,000 bond for $500. However, most zero coupon municipal bonds are sold in denominations of $5,000. Either way, you're buying at a tremendous discount. Thus, in return, allows you to buy more bonds if you so desire. The longer the bond has to mature, the bigger the discount you will receive. Of course, you have to hold up your end of the bargain to see the greatest benefits. And that simply means that you must remain patient until bond matures. By doing so, you will see a substantial return that's also tax-free. If you're the type of person who does not like guesswork or worry about economic conditions, it is worth considering zero coupon municipality bond because you will receive one payment at maturity, which is based on the principal investment plus the interest earned, compounded semi-annually at a predetermined rate. It's not going to be subject to the market fluctuation because you've locked in. Zero coupon municipal bond matures between 8 and 20 years.  Municipal bonds are one of the safest investments you will find with the average default rate at 0.08% between 1970 and 2019, according to an annual study by Moody's credit agencies. Indeed, most zero coupon municipal bonds are rated A or higher by the rating agencies, but it's still important to check the quality of the issuer. So you would think they would have a high rating because they're kind of in the government bonds, but you still want to kind of check it out. Some places are in better shape than others. So if you're unconcerned or questioning whether or not you made a good decision, you can ease your mind by purchasing insurance for the bond. What is the distinguishing feature of how municipal bonds are taxed? Municipal bonds are free from federal taxes and are often free from state taxes if the bond purchased is from a state other than the purchaser state of residence. The home state may levy a tax on the bond's interest income. Alternatively, if the bond holder sells the bond and there is a gain, they are subject to a capital gains tax. Also, when bonds are purchased at a discount on the secondary market, capital gains tax may apply when the bond is redeemed. What happens to Moody's prices when taxes increase? Because municipal bonds are generally free from taxes, they become an attractive investment when taxes increase. And for Moody's increases and as a result, so do their prices. So how are state municipal bonds taxed? Municipal bonds issued by state are free from federal taxes and are often free from taxes from the state that issued the bond. Moody's are often free from state taxes if the bond issuer is not in the purchaser state of residence. However, in states like Oklahoma, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, interest income is taxable for residents. In states with no income tax, purchasers can purchase munis from any state without a state tax obligation. Do municipal bonds show up on 1099 tax forms? Form 1099 INT reports interest from municipal bonds. So typically you're going to get that good old 1099 to help you out to determine if something's going to be taxable or not. Although reported federal taxes are not due, our municipal bonds need ETFs tax-exempt. So now you're thinking about the ETF, a format of purchasing or investing in these types of bonds, for example. Municipal bond ETFs are generally free from federal and state taxes if they hold only tax-exempt bonds. However, if the municipal bond ETF has a combination of tax-free and taxable interest, taxes may be due on the federal and state level. How do I buy tax-free municipal bonds? Municipal bonds can be purchased from a broker, dealer, or bank that deals with municipal securities from an investment advisor through a self-managed account or in a mini-mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. That's the ETF. What's the bottom line? While traditional or zero-coupon municipal bonds are an attractive investment for many due to the tax savings, you must understand the potential tax liabilities before making a purchase. In the absence of proper due diligence, you may be surprised by unexpected tax bill.


Well, hi there. It's Sandy Aldock and today I'm going to show you some technique ideas to use with Copics and your stencils. And these are from Pinkfresh. They're actually a set of stencils. Each one has multiple stencils in it. Hanging Garden is this one. The one on the right is Garden Florals and in the center is Seamless Floral Panel. And I'll show you each one of those. But before I get started, I thought I'd flip through my Copic Art Journal because I'm going to show you some tests that I did in here using some stencils. But the rest of this journal, at least the first 10 spreads or so, are from the Copic Art Journal class. So if you're interested in learning how to use your Copic markers in your art journaling and learn some crazy techniques, lots of this can be used on cards. It's not just for art journalists, but it's also a lot of fun for journaling. And the themes for each one of the lessons are all about being an artist and the life of an artist. So hopefully it's also going to be encouraging to you as you create things. Lots of them are very loose. Other ones are very doodly. And you could use stamps in this. You could do all kinds of things. It's an art journal, so it's very unique to you. And as we get back here to the end of class, we'll get to the section where I started playing with these floral stencils. This one I airbrushed over top of because I had some mess bleeding through from the previous pages. And then even the florals that I did on the other side bled through. So I kind of liked the idea they were soft. So I just airbrushed over it. I'll save that page for some doodling. This is the Garden Florals. And you'll see that kind of a technique shown. And this one, the stencil idea didn't work. I was trying to use colorless blender through the stencil to make these flowers and they were just blobs instead. So I made them actual blobs by just putting dots of colorless blender on the page and making it more like bubbles and wrote, just keep swimming on it. Because, you know, when you mess up a page, you just keep going. And this one is the seamless floral pattern panel. I wanted to see if it actually was seamless and it does join top to bottom. So you can make a long strip of it by just moving the stencils and working again. The left side, I used the same flowers, but I just did them in a random pattern. And the random pattern didn't work all that great because I didn't pick very good colors. But I'm going to do it all over that one too. That's what art journals are for. So now I am going to start with airbrushing. And don't worry, if you don't have an airbrush, there's non airbrush techniques coming as well. But first, I'm going to be blowing the airbrush color through the air gun. It's a Copic airbrush gun that's attached to a compressor and it just blasts the color through the holes in the stencil and layering them on. Each one of the stencils has little corner marks.   And you can line them up in different places on the card rather than just right in the center. But they're also marked with what order they think they should be done in. And if you're using inks, you probably should follow their order. But I'm just using them in random order because Copic markers are transparent, so it doesn't really matter. So you can use these in whatever order you want. And you can also skip some. You don't have to use them all. But I'm going to try to use them all and be faithful to what they designed them to be, at least partially. But airbrush gives a very soft edge because the airbrush blows underneath of the stencil. Like it lifts up a little bit while you're blowing. So it doesn't give you a really crisp, perfect edge unless you put a product under it. I don't feel like doing that. I like things that are a little bit easier on me product-wise than that. So I decided to just keep going, just plow ahead and let it be soft. And then I started kind of having fun with adding airbrush background to it. You could add an airbrush background first, of course, and then do this stenciling over top. But if you do it afterward, then you can control it. There's another one you'll see over on the blog at the end of this. Be sure to check out the samples over there. Because there's one where I airbrushed around everything and I just left the centers of the flowers white. And that looked kind of pretty too. And I used heavier color with it. So lots of different options for how you can play with it. And this is really forgiving for people who are learning airbrush because it's clearly just very rough and loose. And I'm layering color over top of things. So if you have a spot where the airbrush really blew out underneath of one of the spots of the stencil, you just put a bit of background over it. No one will know. So here is the second technique. And this one is also with garden florals. These are the same stencils I just used. And I got a Swisper. These are things I got from Costco. They also have a Met drugstores and things for makeup removal. And I put a little bit of 99% alcohol on it. You could also do that with colorless blender. But the alcohol is cheaper if you can find it. And just started moving the color around using that. Now make sure you switch back and forth if you're going to use orange. Don't also use the same Swisper you had the green on or you'll get mud. But it's basically just wiping the color off the stencil and pushing it into the open areas. I discovered this technique years ago and I actually called it Copic stenciling. And I'll link you to that video at the end of this one. So you can see it. I used it with one stencil and it was just one giant flower. Which was a little easier to do than all of these little itty-bitty pieces. But it was the seed of this idea and I wanted to try it again since I saw all these sets that had multiple stencils in them. So you can see I got totally, totally different looks out of doing this. In the one of the right where you're pushing the color through, you do get a little edge, little strange edge in some cases because of the way that the liquid pushes through the stencil. But I don't find it bothersome. It's just different. It's just kind of a unique look for it. So this one now is called Hanging Garden. And if you don't have an airbrush, this is how you would do this technique. It's just color onto the stencil itself. Now I did try coloring into the open holes and that looked really bad. Like at least when you're pushing it through with the swisper, it feels a little more loose and organic, whereas it just feels forced when you end up kind of pushing it through with the marker strokes. You could certainly try it and with different stencils that might work. But here I'm just saturating, well not totally saturating, just making the swisper wet enough that it will move the color. If you just put the color on there and you use a dry paper towel or a dry swisper, nothing will happen because the color will just get stuck on there. And you don't want that. So make sure you put enough to keep it moving. But different amounts of the liquid will give you a different look. So sometimes they'll, they'll be smoother if you put more of the liquid in there. And again, make sure you don't cross contaminate your colors, because orange and green are going to make you a weird brown. Don't ask me how I know. It might have been that I forgot. Yes, that would be it. I forgot. And was using the wrong swisper at one point on one of these, but the black surface that I'm using underneath of this, by the way, is my Ellen Hudson Craft Assistant. And I like it better than the craft mats that are out there because it's metal and it's flat and it's always going to stay flat. It doesn't ever get wrinkled on me. And I've had several of those other kind of mats, just different kind of brands. And they eventually do get wrinkled. And maybe it's that I take very big care of my stuff. I don't really know. But this one, I can't wreck. I can't do anything to it. It's metal. And it's also black. So it gives me a real clear idea of what I'm seeing on my piece of paper, because I've got the contrast of the black edge. So I'm just going to add a couple different colors for the flowers here on the hanging garden. Now the hanging garden is a hanging garden. It does look like a hanging garden. But I also realized you could turn this one the other direction and it looks like a garden with flowers growing up from it. So you could use this one in either direction. And of course, there are gajillion ink techniques you can use with any of these. So this is just in addition to the possibility of using them for inking is just being able to utilize your Copics with them. It's always nice to be able to stretch your supplies and be able to use a different medium with any one of your different types of stencils and things. I do hope to do some stuff with some of these with watercolor as well. I used to do some watercolor stencil work by tracing into some of the areas. And I may do some of that. We'll see what kind of time I get. But this one came out really soft and pretty. I just thought it was gorgeous. The sentiments from both of these are from all of these, I guess, is you are amazing from Ellen Hudson. Link in the doobly do for all supplies, by the way. And now back to the book. I'll show you a little piece of how I did that seamless panel. I had put a piece of tape down because I just wanted to do that edge.  And it also stopped short. And so I went through aligning all of my stencils in the same place, aligned with the left of that piece of tape that's on the piece of paper.  And now you can see the second row here is where you can line up the second row of the seamless panel. So it's seamless. It joins the ones at the top are repeated at the ones in the bottom. So the purple flower that's only half of flower at the top is the other half of it is on the other end of the stencil. And so if you've got a scrapbook page or some long project that you want to do, then you could certainly do that kind of stenciling with this, or you can just random stencil. I mean, that's what I was doing on the left hand page. And in, you know, coming times in the next couple of weeks, keep an eye on my social media. And if I end up doing the doodling that I have in my head, if it works out, I will post that on social so you can see how it comes out. Because it was kind of a mess at the time that I did this, but nonetheless, I'm sure it will be fine later. So I hope this gave you some interesting ideas for ways that you can approach working with stencils and using some Copic markers with a little bit of a unique techniques. And that's about it for today. I will see you again very soon with another video. Make sure you attend my birthday party coming up. I'm kind of excited about that March 27. I will see you there for the live YouTube video. Take care. Bye bye.


Hi, my name is Shruti Ramaswamy. I'm Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Relationships at TechSoup. Today I wanted to show you a quick way to protect your documents and secure them before sending them to different people. This is a Word document that I have that I wanna protect before I send to any group of people. So if you go to the File button here, you can click on that and you'll see an option on your toolbar that says Info. When you click on that button, you'll actually see the first thing here called Protect Your Document. And if you click on that, you'll see different options for actually being able to protect your document. So you can encrypt it with a password, which means that you can set a password and only people with that password can actually open that document or you can restrict access to only specific people. And when you do that, there's four different levels of access restriction and that allows you to actually restrict whether or not anybody can edit it, view it, print it. So you're able to lock in a lot of settings within your document before you ever email it or share it with anybody else. And that provides a extra level of security and protection to make sure that your data and your information is safe. So hope you enjoy that tip. Thanks.


Steven Spielberg, who is best known as legendary director, producer and screenwriter, he is considered one of the founding pioneers of the new Hollywood era and one of the most popular directors and producers in film history. He has had a massive compound in the Pacific Palisades since 1989. During his astonishing career, Steven Spielberg's films have made him a billionaire, which have been able to snag him some pretty impressive real estate. Along with his massive compound, the director also owns a $184 million yacht. We'll take a look at Spielberg's $17 million home that comes complete with a vineyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean in his backyard. That's right, Spielberg has his own vineyard. Like his films, the extravagant mansion is a thing of beauty. In these videos, we don't reveal any addresses, so please do not show up at any private residences because it is not safe for anyone. Steven Spielberg's $3.7 billion fortune makes him the second richest celebrity on the planet, behind good buddy and fellow director-producer George Lucas, who's worth $6.5 billion. In this case, I think I'm all right with second place. Spielberg's first big break came in 1975, after his career skyrocketed with the success of Jaws. In 1975, Jaws became the first real blockbuster film after over 67% of Americans went to see it. For his own film, Steven frequently ops a relatively low upfront salary, let's say $10 million in exchange for back-end points on the gross revenue. One such deal for 1993's Jurassic Park resulted in $250 million payday for Steven Spielberg. Steve co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures, where he has also served as a producer or executive producer for several successful film trilogies and later transitioned into producing several video games. Spielberg is one of the American film industry's most critically successful filmmakers. With praise for his directing talent and versatility, he has won the Academy Award for Best Director twice. Some of his films are amongst the highest grossing while his total work makes him the highest grossing film director in history, which led him to his $3.7 billion net worth. Spielberg also had a Malibu home which was sold in 2015 for a marvelous $26 million, although there are rumors that the estate sold for up to $35 million. The 7,200 square foot beach house features nine bedrooms, six bathrooms, one of which has its very own ocean view terrace, private massage room, and even a private library. The home also features a few other terraces as you do a pool and a luxury home theater. The grounds also include a detached two-bedroom guest house, which occupies 150 feet of beach frontage, which provides magnificent ocean views. Before selling the home in 2015, Steven and Kate rented out the property for $125,000 per month. While there has not been an abundant of information on Spielberg's homes throughout the years, we managed to snag a few photos and descriptions of other properties owned by Steven. Steven Spielberg's house in New York is situated by Georgica Pond in East Hampton and sits across six acres of beautiful land, overlooking a peaceful pond. This area is one of the most sought-after spots in all of the Hamptons. The Spielberg residence, known as Kell Barn, is complete with a luxury guest house, which was designed by the well-known architect Charles Guathme. The estate also features a large outdoor pool and plenty of space for family and friends to stay for a summer getaway. Celebrities and stars alike seem to flock to Naples for its sandy white beaches, calm atmosphere, and wealthy community. So, of course, Steven Spielberg has a home here, too. Unfortunately, there's not a great deal to report about this particular home, although we do know that it is a large compound situated in a private area of the town. Naturally, like a director, Steven Spielberg's current house is located in the heart of Los Angeles. I mean, where else would a Hollywood director live? Spielberg immediately fell in love with the place back in 1989, claiming he was attracted to the views of LA International Airport, Malibu, and Will Rogers Park. He claimed it was like going to Hawaii and finding the perfect cove. At the time, Spielberg purchased the Spanish Mediterranean-style property for $6.5 million. He essentially went back to square one, stripping and redoing the whole place from top to bottom. During the renovation process, he actually managed to double the space, taking it from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. Handyman Steve, huh? Currently, the abode features five bedrooms and six bathrooms, a hobbit-inspired room, a vineyard overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean, and, of course, a pool and terrace. The home spreads across three and a half acres. The outside gives off a Mediterranean ambience, but the inside is even fancier. The symmetrically carved front doors, which came with the house, open into an extravagant foyer with a spiraling stucco staircase. Illuminated by a Tiffany lamp, a Gustav Stickley side table, the furnishings inside the foyer complement Spielberg's love of arts and crafts. The rooms on either side of the foyer are both spacious and intimate, and connected to a series of curves and arches made of the most lavish, Honduras mahogany. This is found everywhere throughout the house, from the front gate to the back porch railing, and on numerous doors, windows, and moldings. While the luxurious living room floor is made of 100-year-old cycled pine, light blue walls with painted white bookcases and moldings enhance the most feminine room of the house. One of the surprise features includes a swinging panel that opens to a secret staircase, which leads to the master bedroom. On the opposite side of the living room is an oval-shaped formal dining room with curved pocket doors. Adjacent to the dining room is the kitchen and family room, which again displays the most abundant use of woods. The floors are 100-year-old pine, as in the living room. The pine kitchen cabinets are designed with multifunctional drawers. Probably the coolest room in the house is the hobbit room. The room features mushroom-shaped windows, moldings, and fireplace designed for family gatherings. The hobbit room boasts a soda fountain and a retractable television screen hidden in an alcove. Outside the abode is a landscape garden surrounded by mahogany picket fence. Santa Fe-style mahogany beams that overhang the second floor balcony. The walls are stucco but are scattered with many and large windows. There are also beveled glass railings on both the lower and upper terraces. Also featured is a freestanding bungalow that contains Spielberg study and the screening room. The main floor has the expected desks, computer, and film editing table. But above is a loft suitable for those who want to snag a catnap and below in the basement is a neon lit playroom sporting video games. A window looks upward and out toward the sloping backyard to a swimming pool and tennis court. The bedroom suites are a thing of beauty. The master bedroom includes its own private kitchen. French doors open to a porch overlooking the pacific. The furnishings include some wicker pieces and the artwork of mostly family photos and memorabilia. The master bath is illuminated by indirect lamps and a skylight. The arcs of the bathtub and fireplace lay against a soupion curve with a sink which is topped by a curved aquarium filled with 14,000 gallons of water. The abode also features a solarium which contains a bar, 12 foot high windows, wicker armchairs, and an array of orchids. Now being the wine connoisseur that Spielberg is back in 2013, Steven added his own vineyard to his 45,000 square foot property in the pacific palisades area. The vineyard was installed facing the pacific ocean in the picturesque Santa Monica mountains. If having your own vineyard wasn't enough, Steven upgraded to 184 million dollar yacht and no, we checked. He does not park it at his mansion. He calls his bad boy the seven seas and it is packed with amenities. An infinity pool, a 15 foot glass movie screen, a helicopter pad, gym, spa, and massage room are just a few of the luxuries that are reported on board. As for accommodations, there's one master suite, two VIP suites, two double bed cabins, and one cabin with a twin bed. In total, the yacht can sleep 12. Alright, so I think I'll bring this house to an end here. We got to take a quick look at Steven Spielberg's homes and that impressive vineyard overlooking the pacific ocean, 184 million dollar yacht. After seeing that fancy little boaty snagged, what did you guys think? Was it everything you expected out of a billionaire? Personally, if I had a yacht like that, I think I would be throwing a few parties. How does Spielberg's speeches, which ones were your fave? You guys can go ahead and rate them in the comments down below. I'd love it if you guys would subscribe and hit the notification button and I'll see you guys next video.


The water replacement method is a method that allows us to measure the volume of an object that is oddly shaped, for example a spoon like this. Why would I need to know the volume? I need to know the volume if I want to calculate the density of an object. The mass of the object can easily be obtained by putting on a scale, but the volume, if it's oddly shaped, cannot. According to legend, the method was invented by Archimedes when he was tasked to figure out if a crown was really made out of gold. He could figure out the mass, the density of the crown, but the problem is he couldn't figure out the volume. It was oddly shaped and melting the crown down to measure the volume was not really an option. So he was blocked and he didn't know what to do until one evening when he was going to take a bath, when he realized that when he steps inside the bath, the water level inside the bathtub raises by some amount which is exactly equal to the amount of volume that his body was submerged. So apparently, the moment he figured that one out, he was getting out of the bathtub, running down the street and screaming Heureka, which apparently means I have found this in Greek. Now let's use this method to figure out the density of my spoon. I'm not going to use one spoon, I'm going to use several spoons. Why? Because if you use more mass, then we have also more volume, that means you will have probably a higher precision and our result is going to be better. So if you can, use several objects at once. So first of all, I will need a container in which I can completely submerge my spoons because if they cannot be completely submerged, the experiment will not work. If they're not completely underwater, you will not get the correct volume. So I used my cup here and I marked where the cup is empty and where is one liter of water in my cup. I knew this in this case because there was a real line here that told me where the liter is. When I measured the distance between those two lines, I got that 14.5 centimeters, corresponded this around my liter, I'm sure about the one. I'm not so sure about the second digit, so I write it with two significant figures. So here is my liter. So now all I have to do is to submerge my spoons for which I can quickly measure my mass by putting them on a scale. So I get 114 grams, 114 grams. Again, I'm using several spoons instead of one because the density is a material property. It doesn't matter the amount of material you take. If I take more mass, I will get more volume. With higher amount of material, I will get a better precision. So I dumped my spoons in the water and I'm going to measure by how much my water volume raised from the line I had previously drawn. It's a bit difficult because I don't have so many spoons in there. What I get is a difference of about 0.3 centimeters. Now how do I convert the centimeters into volume? Well, I have my own unique conversion here. I want to get rid of the centimeters. I put my 14.5 centimeters at the bottom and my liters at the top. So I get 0.3 divided by 14.5. It gives me 0.02 liters or around 20 milliliters. Note I'm going to write down the final answer with only one significant figure. I'm going to keep however for the calculations that I had actually 20.6 here. I look at my calculator. So I'm rounding at the very end and I'm going to put here in the 20 milliliters in the calculator. I'm using 20.6. And what I get is 5.5. However, I only had one significant figure. So I'm going to report this as 6 grams per milliliter. You see that my answer only has one significant figure. That means actually also the 6 could have been a 5, could have been a 7. But at least it gives me an order of magnitude. And of course if I want to get more precision I need a better measuring device. Or alternatively I could use more spoons. The main problem here was that I only got a very little water displacement. So if I had used many more spoons, hopefully I would have gotten a bigger value here which then would have increased my precision.