Thank you for coming out this morning. This is a big day. For the first time in more than four years, this construction activity is moving forward again on this site and with it the hopes that the community has had for hundreds of new homes, for dozens of new jobs and new retail around this block and reconnecting streets that have been lost since urban renewal in the 1960s. And towards the creation of strengthening the city of financial in the school district with vast new tax revenues flowing to the city and the state. So this project stopped. I sometimes see people say that it stopped in 2017. From my perspective it was really 2018 when the demolition stopped and today because the hard work of these three guys and many others, you can see things are moving forward again. And given the level of interest in this project from the community, we thought you know we didn't want to wait for some choreographed groundbreaking. We thought we should come out and and just familiarize all you with with with how this is moving forward. And why don't you want to walk people through David on the on the map here and then after we do we'll talk a little bit and then what we can walk around the site a little bit and you can get other perspectives on it. So these little depictions together to give an overview of the project. Everybody's seen these throughout all the planning process and the permitting. And we've got basically there's two buildings on the site. There's going to be a U shaped building that runs all the way along Cherry. It comes down the two new streets. That's what we're calling the north building actually oriented a little backwards here. But the north building is going to have retail all the way around the street level. And then the podium is the next level above retail at which that point it'll turn over to residential housing over on this west side where you see the steel sheet piles right now. That's the wing that we've just worked the deal with Champlain Housing Trust. And that's where they're going to be building and managing the affordable inclusionary units. It's this northwest piece of the north building. Then the rest of the north building will be market rate units. And then there's a standalone building that's going in over here. There's a new road will be passing right through here right past that sheet piling. St. Paul Street and where that hole is right there. That'll be the lowest level. It's going down a little deeper lower level of the south building. They'll be parking underneath that building again retail at the street. Going to be one floor commercial space, which is going to be a combination of office, rental space, and then some community space that the development agreement talks about meeting rooms for various civic groups to get together. They can coordinate the use of that room through the CETO office and will be a small balcony at that level. And then at the top floor of the south building, there'll be a public observation area as well as a restaurant. And that's on the top of this, the south building, also the white building that kind of distincts the two. This is a masonry brick. And this is a limestone building. So nothing's changed much since it got permitted. We're still going with it. It's 427 or so units. We're working out the final floor plans right now, but the square footage and the size of the project has stayed the same. The affordable units will be 85 or 86 units over in the northwest building. And then there's going to be about 270 or so in the rest of the north building and 70 or 80 in the south building. It's going to be a 400 car parking garage in the core of this. It's like, there's a big donut of buildings. And then the donut hole in the middle is the parking area. And we're standing, we're probably standing halfway through. We're six feet above, I'd say the lowest level right here, right? Maybe eight feet. And then there'll be a level that you access driving off of St. Paul Street or off Pine Street at grade. You pull right into the parking level and then it'll be one above that. So three levels of parking, 200 or so spaces below grade, then 100 or so on each level. What makes this a public private partnership in many ways, of course, is just to orient people is on that side of the site, St. Paul Street will be reconnected. And on that side of the site, Pine Street will be reconnected partially underneath the 100 bank building. We know those streets will get built. What we hope and are working towards is the combination of this partnership and the TIF funds that are created by that plus additional federal funding that we're now pretty cautiously optimistic we will be able to receive as a result of the federal infrastructure investment that we will be able to rebuild for maybe even five blocks of Cherry Street and two full blocks of Bank Street behind us here. So for members of the media who, you know, what's happened in the last, I guess, a little over, it was, well, when was, when was the special meeting to approve the development agreement was two weeks ago yesterday, right? Yeah. Or today, actually, was it two, did we do it on Tuesday? All right, so in those two weeks, what's happened is that all the documents were executed. There were a number of steps that had to happen after the agreement was signed before the building permit could be released to the city. You know, significantly, these three men have all given personal guarantees that the podium, which they're starting construction on now, which is Dave just described that that will be completed. And with the completion of all of that work, the city issued last week the building permit. And that's why there's work work is moving forward now. And I guess I, you know, I just want to say again a point I made a couple weeks ago when we approved the development agreement. Development is inherently risky. And there's there's uncertainty to it. It depends that whenever a big complex complicated project like this moves forward, there's all sorts of challenges to it and things that change and create can create unexpected challenges. As our lawyer said the other night, we may well good chance that they're going to need to be further changes to the development agreement and to go back in and need to be talking to the council and the public again. What, well, but what I know where I was going with that is that the city now has the right partners to make it through whatever challenges lie ahead. These three individuals and the companies they represent are some of the best builders we have in Vermont. They've they have shown again again. They know how to get projects done. They've shown that here since they took control of the site just over seven months ago. And I am very grateful to be working with with the three of you as we as we head down this really critical direction for the city of Burlington. I still I've always believed in this project. This is what we need to make our downtown healthy and and vibrant decades into the future. I don't regret for a moment any of the decisions that that that took us in this direction. I'm grateful we now have the partners to to get to get us a podium and and more over the over the the months and years ahead. Thank you for your commitment to Burlington. Thank you for believing in this place, investing in this place and putting so much behind getting this done. Thanks. I can say he's talking partners. These two guys are the best best partners I've ever had.  We've become like brothers. We were not giving up. We get a little challenge. We all put our heads together. We overcome it. I mean, we had a lot of interface with the mayor's office, the CEDO office, the Department of Public Works working through all these details on streets and how things are going to run the storm water and and rights of way and encumbrances and it's been seven months of a lot of meetings and we get a to-do list and we break it up and we just pick it apart and get it done and that's the way this project going to keep moving on. So thank you guys. Thank you. I want to thank the mayor as well. Obviously he's played a big role in our success to get this bar and we look forward to getting concrete board to begin in December and keep things rolling. So thank you mayor and thank you for your help with your help. Thank you Scott. I also like to say that we've heard a lot of support from the the community and we want that support to be there to help us keep pushing us on because we're going to need that that help in the months to come. So thank you to the community as well. December's when you're thinking you're going to finish pouring the concrete. Start pouring. Start pouring the concrete. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, we'll be working here all winter long. Right. There's a good five months worth of site work just on the south building alone. You know, we're starting excavation today but we've got a solid couple of weeks before we can start concrete but we're hoping to get concrete start December 1st and we'll be working right through the winter in hopes to have the podium slab complete in May on the south piece and we'll work around the CHT building as we go as well. So like total the podium work into spring summer next year is that kind of what people can expect? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mid-May to mid-July. What's the timeline for the entire project then? We've got that worked out for a final completion date of November of 2025 and that's when you'll see like the roads finally getting finished. So again work depending on which way we work around it's site work then concrete work and then the steel goes up and then the building gets closed in the roof gets put on it. When that happens then we'll start focusing on we're going to use this area in the middle. All right. The exterior panels and setting windows and all that work when that's finally buttoned up we'll take the cranes away and not for long and then start on the garage piece which is the infill piece and once that's all done then it'll free up the roads. We're going to have a crane in the middle of St. Paul Street. We'll have a crane over in the future Pine Street to work the site. I mean the site's big it's almost 360 feet wide so it takes a lot of a lot of stick to get all the way around it. So it's going to be real busy and then spring I'm thinking spring of 2025 we'll be wrapping up the big equipment work and then starting in on the roads and they'll finish the roads up over that summer and we have a completion date of November. Now when they say that you've gotten the permits are they the permits for the entire project or is it just this beginning phase? The project is permitted the entire project and then we've gone in because we wanted to get a jump on the site work and foundation this year our engineer completed the foundation plans right now and then in middle of January the structural steel plans will be completed and we'll turn those over to the city for review and then we'll do shop drawings and and all the stuff that has to make it happen in some factory and then that'll show up we'll get a permit to put that up in the spring and then by then the architects will have caught up with all of the detailing and we'll have the final set of plans that'll be you know all the detail work the outside the masonry work the windows everything inside all the systems mechanical and electrical mechanical electrical systems yeah we can't forget I'll see the electrical country so so there's there's a lot of steps and we're catching up but the project was put on ice for about two years and as much as we were trying to advance it along when we were involved with our former partner things were just slow and the commitment wasn't made to getting those drawings done so now we're doing that we're catching up but we're playing catch up right now so the architects and engineers are working like crazy we have weekly meetings with them and we get progress sets as we go but nothing completed yet to the point where I mean we changed us we're thinking we're changing the stairwell over in this building based on some some excavation and and shoring details so things will change a little bit and then once we stop making changes they'll finish them up and that's when the exterior will be all the same exterior is not changing but that's that's the easy part that's the windows and brick and stuff it's all all how the the columns and the chases and the ductwork and the piping and all that stuff that's inside that nobody sees that's where they spend a lot of time coordinating and that's that's taking a lot of time I mean there's imagine there's 420 houses here so everybody's got to figure out all the systems and we're working on it and we're making good progress it's just uh take some time Dave is uh all the financing in place um that's a good question um not for the entire project right now but we we do have commitments on getting going on the south building uh cht is working through their process right now on funding their piece of it and then we're in talks with some potential co co development partners on the rest of the north building uh we'll be making the decision over the next uh month and a half or so it's which way that's going to go and then uh we'll have some announcements then and Dan I want to be clear that you know that's not news like we in that we talked about this explicitly with the council and the public before taking a step moving forward but these guys have guaranteed is that the podium is going to get done they put personally they're putting themselves behind that and they have the resources to to get that first very substantial kind of essentially foundation to the whole project moving instead of continuing to wait for that to their committee they have guaranteed it's going to get built that the the the foundation the podium as we're calling it will be completed that's the foundation you want to describe again what's in the podium yeah the the foundation and podium gets everything up the street level um on the south building gets us around the corner here and gets the this basically the second level of the north building gets us air air rights to the to all of the the upper floors so that when we do pick that that developer uh or a partner to come in that's when the additional funding will come in place another thing that happens early on I don't think these got kind of highlighted yeah it's people when the public comes down and looks in on what's going down here you'll see a bunch of digging on on this side of the site and over by the building where some of the storm water infrastructures been being put in and a lot of work gets done underneath the streets that that are that will be public infrastructure infrastructure that both serves this project as well as infrastructure that is good for the broader city and so that also goes to why the council approved I supported the council approved this changed the development the agreement that allowed this work to go forward and start right now for for the podium knowing getting back to the point before that that these guys are still in a variety of ways working on the the financing that's going to be necessary to to go vertical cht is well into the process of applying for the the public funds that are going to be necessary to build one of the largest permanently affordable housing family projects that the city's had in decades and you know Dave just shared where they are on the on the two other buildings first piece of construction we actually have to do is a storm tank which will serve serve the local roads and bank street that's the first piece we really have to do over here before because it's lower than the building of the south building so we've got to incorporate a lot of that initial storm work for the infrastructure in the road at the same time but it'd be a lot happening on the ground you won't see yeah did you say storm tank yes storm water storm water water tanks retention tanks retention tanks it's designed to take the whole storm store it and then slowly release it into the city system rather than just flooding the system well yeah while this is actually an often misunderstood point so while we got the the entire kind of media corps assembled here just something that often people get confused about they say morrow how can you be building new homes when we have issues with with with our sewer capacity and we we have these events where there's you know overflows going into the lake we don't we have to fix that before we build anything new what a lot of people don't understand is it's actually every time we build in burlington a new building to modern standards we're almost always making the storm water and sewer system function better than they do previously because these these buildings meet such higher standards than the way anything that was built before so prior when the mall was sitting here and there was rain on this site immediately hundred percent of the rain immediately went right into the store the combined storm water sewer system contributed to this big surge of water going in the system all at once what will happen now is that water that falls during the storm will be retained on the site in these huge tanks and then slowly released over time and that dramatically reduces the storm surge in terms of what this site contributes to it so it it's this actually will make it less likely that these negative events that we see with these combined sewer overflows yeah we have i think over 10 000 square feet of what they call green roof which will capture a lot of the the water and it doesn't even get into the storm system it will retain it and then slowly evaporate there's a elaborate drainage system and so on the top of the south building and then a good portion of the parking garage there's a section of green roof that just helps cut back on the amount of storm water that hits the the city system once it is is released and there's three of those tanks right scott how many gallons are there oh i don't know i know i think you're 25 000 gallons each there's one in the middle of uh state of the art the new st paul street there's one in the middle of the new pine street and there's one that serves just the the building itself that's um right where that excavator is right right adjacent to the 100 bank street building that's what he's digging right now in the first tank what is your best uh you've heard a lot of numbers over the years what's your best estimate for the total construction price uh i think our budget's right around 200 million dollars right now that's just for the podium that's no that's okay i just wanted to which does not include synexes part of it does not include phase two or phase three fair to say this is the largest construction project in our state is it it's in the it's in the top uh two or three probably huh what compares right don't know i don't know of anything on the housing pieces obviously like housing is a very acute need right now in the state and particularly in the county um do you have a sense on when some of the units might be coming online uh i think this we had a press conference here a few weeks ago the kind of this project is going to be a big deal for the the housing development here in the state and the county so when can we start to expect to see those the south building is about a two-year build so if we're starting now it'll be ready end the summer early fall of 2024 again depending on cht's timing and we'll know a lot better on that as they go through this they're doing a kind of a preview of the funding or a pre application and then the the actual uh request goes in sometime in january and they know soon after that um they may get their money and be able to have us start that as soon as we get the the podium in place which would probably be mid-summer and that that's about a two-year build that's about 80 units so they would be following up behind us maybe six months later on the south building and this building we anticipate would be finished up in the summer of 2025 the new road is part of the negotiations with the city after the lawsuit when brookfield went away we agreed to give the land to the city for the the two streets so there's a 60 foot right away it's right off the building the macy's building out 60 feet which brings us to about the middle of this last bay of 100 bank street building so this is probably the pretty close to the edge of the road right here then there'll be a sidewalk and then our building is to the east um so the city's 60 foot right away it it actually goes right underneath the building 100 bank street and then ties back into pine street um it's part of our development we've got an area over in this corner for indoor bike storage and lockers and showers as well as like a little repair shop if somebody has to change a tire or whatever and then our loading dock for the south building wraps right around the corner of the 100 bank street building right where the excavator is right now and goes back out to bank street and then retail picks up and goes to the corner of st paul and chugs right up st paul street and both both lanes of uh describe how st pine how paul pine street goes goes past here pine street is going to pass right underneath that archway yeah and then it's going to take a little kick and get closer to macy's and it's going to take the place of where the old driveway that used to take you underneath the park into the parking garage and the sidewalk that used to take you up to the mall we're flipping that orientation and the sidewalk is going to be on the east side and the road's going to be hugging the west side but we're coming right underneath this building avoiding the columns and then uh the road's going to be down about it's like going down about three feet there two and a half feet it's going to be 12 foot clear under that building scott have you ever built a road through a building before no not really i'm looking forward to it no it was the first will it definitely pine street yeah pine street is going to reconnect from from bank jerry as well as uh st paul is going to go up and then that right where the yellow bean porch is now and if uh that's that's the street level that's the street level and then you can really see at this level or here you can see the cht building why don't worry in people with the cht building this wing of the cht building is going to be coming right along this side of so right on this line at the end of that sheet filing basically it's coming this way about 130 feet there's going to be a gap in between the buildings of about 60 feet from the hundred bank street building to the edge of the argy building although the parking garage will fill in that one one or two levels above grade in between there so this will this will read like a four-story building coming off of that building sorry one thing i think people you don't really think about much unless you're kind of standing here working on the site is uh how much higher cherry street is than than bank street yeah there's got eight eight foot difference in grade so you get a whole another level right as you come down there's another level uh yeah um bank streets pretty much what 212 roughly 212 to 210 that runs from 218 to 216 so six or seven feet difference so this road's going to come in then it has to grade off um to to meet up with uh cherry street we'll plows people to go under the archway yep little ones i think maybe the only like the bucket trucks for uh like bd might have to go around as i remember like but they all all the different vehicles got evaluated yeah yes well you're fully humming here construction how many people do you think will be working on the site um i yeah yeah the the guest was always around two to three hundred maybe two two fifty it's all different different phases as you know there'll be a lot of site work concrete guys here than the steel guys yeah and when the steel guys are here the site and concrete guys are still going to keep going along and then concrete guys come back before the slabs and then it'll get probably maximum busyness when you're doing working on the exterior building the exterior walls putting in all the windows and then whole different crew comes in when you start doing your framing on the inside again depending on how how it flows with the different um funding sources for cht us and um it's going to be different levels of construction going on then then it'll start waning off when the south building gets done um and that same kind of crew will follow through so i think there's winners like concrete we should have between 25 and 35 guys and a lot depends on weather it's well we're hoping for a warm winter i heard it's going to be really warm so the warmer is the more guys we can fit in but you're prepared scott right to work if it if it gets cold you can keep moving yeah actually in burlington every major foundation the city of burlington has been done in the winter with the exception of the courthouse say that again that's a surprise in fact every major foundation the city of burlington in the last 20 years has been done the concrete's been which we've done the concrete most cases was done in the winter with the exception of the courthouse so it's what we do and we know what we gotta do and it's just all about protecting heat and protecting concrete but you don't have no effect on quality and keeps the team busy you know something we haven't talked about we want just to say a little bit about the outreach you've done to the local businesses and and the hotline you've set up if if there are things that people yeah there's any questions or complaints or comments i want to keep the complaints so minimum but there'll be signs posted on the new fence lines we've set up an email address that's info at buildingcityplace.com so you can email a comment in or questions and there's also going to be a 1-800 number and i don't know that number off hand look it up it'll be on the fence it'll be posted and right now those ring right to my phone so we appreciate that it's something that the city in talking with uh you know the the business community has been incredibly supportive this project always has um at the same time people are aware that there'd be a lot of you know project to this size there'd be the potential for disruption and and i want to make sure that there was good coordination and communication and another way we appreciate the partnership is that these guys agreed in the development agreement to to do what they've just described and are making good on it and we reach out to all the businesses on jane street including 150 bank and 100 bank and everybody on the opposite side we put in vibration monitoring systems to just check make sure things don't get out of control they've gone through and done like a seismic check to make sure if there's any cracks they're identified they're monitored for the state that they're in whether it's a quarter inch crack or eighth inch crack and then if they if they get worse you know we'll monitor it over the course of construction and then make any necessary repairs if we have to let's talk there will be a people who've been covering this for years may remember there was talk at one point that there was going to be months of pile driving at the beginning and there will be a little bit of sheet pile being driven is that right scott in the next few weeks here there will be a little bit for shoring and supportive excavation but initially when this was a 14-story building it required piles that were 75 feet deep around the whole site and the footings poured on top of them but with the new design there are nine to ten storage does not require that to spread footing so we minimized all that vibration problems that for potential buildings and residents and citizens so and noise it should be a pretty clean operation this is this is an example of sheet pile in the right yeah this is basically that's just vibrates down it's just to support earthwork and most of it we still use everything here we might need a little bit in the corner but very little be required and with minimal vibration so i think i think that that was a test pile there they drove that thing down about 70 feet right okay so we would we had had hundreds of those if uh on the old plan or yeah there was like 1600 of them so it was a lot of it's a big change that that doesn't need to to happen anymore it's definitely simplified it substantially i think it's last clear i just want to clarify the the phases of the project you've got cht handling the affordable piece in the north and south building you're looking for another another partner will help with the financing of the north building we're evaluating some proposals there's you know once once we got control of the site and decided we were we're going to be moving ahead a lot of interest came from other developers that maybe had looked at it when synex was contemplating selling it at one point and that's that's how we ended up he was saying all right guys i think we're going to sell the site and we said well we want to buy it so but he had a broker out there marketing the whole project as a you know first sale permit ready and then we just said you know we we've been involved we worked too hard to just sell it off to somebody else and so we worked out a deal with dawn and ended up buying this we're still partners in the two other buildings with with devinwood that's the macy's high school it's bhs high school right now and looks left to the old mall and the yellow beam building and you're in the south building is the one that you're beating up you're not looking for a partner on that one no we're just gonna get that going starting it um just we wanted to get going and that's it's you know smaller piece that's probably uh the big picture is probably 60 or 70 million dollars which is not small but small enough that we felt we could handle it and just get the ball on that's what this whole project seemed to need that and and so kind of lit the fuse so so when does the concrete actually get forward how much pre-work do you have to do uh quite a bit we've got it like I said that mentioned before we've got a couple weeks of excavation on the south building and working around that tank but we expect to be pouring concrete first of december and we'll be working all winter and hope to finish up the south building podium probably mid-may june and we'll keep working around the cht so we'll we'll have multiple crews working as we go home in the south and we'll be heading right around Scott, can I get your last name and title and also your name and title? Here's Scott Ireland, president of S.D. Ireland, Al Sannicoke, president of Omega Electrical Construction. Paths up from Albany she doesn't see all the Ireland trucks uh driving around it. What is the final number of parking spots created here? Make 422. 422? Yeah. 422 and 427 I think is the apartment, right? Right. Have you made a decision about owned versus rentals and housing? Right now we're going ahead as planned as as rental units of different sizes. Yeah it's it's the mix of efficiencies one bedroom two bedrooms three bedrooms. I guess something to point out like about the garage you know there will be a fair amount of monthly leases to the tenants for parking spaces for themselves but we're going to have a monitoring system that as cars leave we'll be able to take in public parking and we'll probably have a kiosk or there's some sort of scanning sign but you can park parked by your plate number and similar to a lot of the lots around town where you can do transient parking even though spaces are committed to people during the day and we'll have a management system that'll similarly the city has where it'll monitor cars in and out and then based on some evaluation of the timing of the day and stuff the public parking sign will go on and it'll allow people in to pay and monitor when they leave and then kind of wean away from that towards the end of the day when the residents are coming back so they have their parking spaces on the go here and residents paying for the cost if they want them it's not automatically it's it's separate um from the rent that's part of uh one of the um Burlington ordinances that you can't tie a rental two-way parking space so if you don't want one you don't need to buy one if you need one you buy one I guess it's too early to ask how much the rent's going to be or do you have a sense on uh with the horrific rental price on the housing units yeah um the the range all over I don't know if we've settled on it I mean they're not coming to market for two years so I think you know there are their market rate units and then there's the affordable rate units um and even those numbers change it's based on um mean monthly income or mean annual income I'm not I'm not sure the formula how they determine it then there's a range of like from 60 percent to 120 percent um on the affordables and then the market rates or the market rates uh which nobody's got a crystal ball yet but um I think those first departments will be two years from now 20 20 yeah fall of 2024 I just you know um I don't know if we'll be standing here quite like this again so oh yeah I just think uh standing here looking over there uh look gives you a sense of um just some of the challenges that we've had to work through together to to get to this point having moving forward you know when the when the city tore down these six blocks and urban renewal and combined all these streets gave up these streets they never thought it would be reversing that uh that the thinking at the time was that that was a good idea and um you know it's not very often that cities give up streets it's rare to get them back once they do that you sit sitting here you get a sense of the complexity of uh kind of what had to be sort of sorted out to make that possible the original that office building was built on top of the uh the mall that was already there you can see how some of the structure is still kind of sticking out and it's going to need to be shaved off and uh kind of tied in to the to the new structures you can see the macy's building never thought that that was going to the building was going to the garage that was there was going to come down um and uh it's uh i'm pretty excited standing here seeing that after a decade of talking about it putting in plan btv that we were going to try to get these streets back that uh we're now moving forward again on on uh i'm getting it done i've talked to a bunch of people they're pretty excited about it there's one local guy his name's bob blanchard he runs runs one of those uh facebook sites and i'm actually working with him we're gonna um he's got tons and tons of old photographs of the whole neighborhoods and we're trying to conceive some sort of uh public art project where as you walk down the street there'll be pictures of the old building that used to be right there so if you're standing here on on cherry street looking south you're gonna see the house that was there the school that was there so he's pretty excited about working on that with us too yeah so how much taller i just counted maybe wrong but this is seven stories how much taller will the building eventually be than this building be nine stories so it'll be two more four well i think that's eight isn't it well no problem it's a little hard to tell you really if you count that bottom one is one one two three four five six seven i think we should wrap it up thank you all for coming out


Thank you very much. When I came here this morning, I wasn't aware that I'm going to give a quick talk presentation So thank you very much for the opportunity to talk a little bit about What is code and what code has to do with with blockchain and blockchain research. So I'm Peter I recently joined Code University of Applied Sciences. We are a Private state accredited University of Applied Sciences about 500 meters from here into that direction 400 students free study programs software engineering product management interaction design and Part of my new job is also to cultivate and to build Blockchain from an educational perspective before I was a post-doctoral researcher at Technische Universität Berlin and Telekom Innovation Laboratories also here in Berlin doing blockchain analytics And in case if you haven't heard about code before Code is basically trying to do a lot of things New and better when it comes to education. It's about self-directed project-based learning in interdisciplinary teams and Code is also very deeply embedded into the Berlin ecosystem Companies so that students basically can choose their own problems Working on them and we the professors are more acting like mentors or consultants to the students and helping them learn along the way And what I would like to do in the next few minutes is to Introduce you to some of the work I also did in the past and I'm currently working on one example is called the token gallery You can also open this in a browser and this is an example for an analysis of Token transfers on blockchains and here you can see visualization of about thousand different token networks in which we can Observe different transactional patterns where Tokens are being transferred between different addresses some of these tokens are being traded on major exchanges and by just Browsing through this list. You can go already just by looking at these patterns guess That tokens different tokens are being used in different ways somehow We can see some I mean obvious patterns like this. This is probably a failed airdrop So not a lot of activity here. We can see some fractal patterns down here. They typically come with Burning token somehow we can see some quite Obvious structures Maybe over here what we have one big exchange involved and we have a couple of Bigger hub and spoke patterns But there are also some patterns that can't really be explained so far So if you're interested and want to learn more about this go to token gallery net And you can yeah, basically find find more at this website now I just wanted to point out that when it comes to analyzing token networks nowadays That it is first of all fascinating. I mean, this is very nice very colorful But also if we went more deeply into the network and the graph theory behind we would find that many of these structures Very new We haven't seen them before if you do social network analysis if you look into communication networks If you look into transportation networks the structures in these graphs are different and These are new patterns that we can now see emerging from the usage of tokens on blockchains And no matter whether this is about for example a token that is used to play poker online Or someone deploying a test smart contract on on the blockchain Or again a failed airdrop over here These are all new patterns and that is from a research sector of course fascinating to Analyze and to observe first of all, but it is also interesting maybe for future applications to look into how Tokens are actually being used and what we can learn from these patterns Yeah, there are many of these Visualizations available just feel free to go there and look look around and a second topic I would like to very briefly mention is also the topic of blockchain governance and here you can see a recent visualization where Atom tokens on the on the cosmos blockchain are being delegated by the token holders to validators so that these validators can to it can take the delegated tokens and then get elected to create new blocks on the blockchain and By just looking at this again. This is just a high-level visualization But we can first of all apologize for the low resolution. It's I think better if you go online later on But you can already see that in time there are some burst events where massive redelegation of tokens happen at some point in time in indicated by blue lines now Probably this was some real-world event happening many people reconsidered their delegations And this is of course also interesting if you ask who's actually in charge Who's actually in control of a blockchain if you look into token delegations redelegations proxy votes and the ultimate question who is controlling the blockchain so these are questions We are we are currently Dealing with we are we are looking into analyzing these networks And I'm basically here today to say that you are welcome to join this discussion If you're interested in these topics and the last thing I would like to briefly mention is That there is also a conference upcoming which I'm one of the organizers. It's I triple edeps It's gonna take place in April and Oxford UK next year. It's a second edition of an conference on decentralized application and the submission deadline is the end of this month So if you have something as some ongoing work, you would like to submit your very welcome and hopefully See you in Oxford. These are my coordinates and Feel free to contact me if you like I'm also be around Only today unfortunately not tomorrow and now I'm open for a couple of questions. Thank you very much Yeah, have you tried to apply any like your like token governments model within a quarter University Within within quote Berlin Well, one of the ideas is now to build some environments and some structures at code First of all to make students able to quickly learn about these concepts But we are also thinking currently about what kind of processes we could possibly Integrate and enrich we are by means of DLT's To the best of my knowledge. No decision has been made yet, but we are actively thinking about it Thank you. How do you know that the air drops failed? Because the tombs didn't move or because there was no usage anymore at some point in time. So basically usage was was dead Okay, thank you very much


Bonjour, I'm Claudia Chapelle, co-founder of Camp Versulet in Ajax, France. We are planting black truffle inoculated hornbeam, white oak and green oak trees.


I'm thrilled to be able to make the announcement today about the International Presence Pilot Project. This announcement, we're going to be providing funding to 18 touring projects that will eliminate from British Columbia. It's going to include $100,000 toward BALABC's international tour. The embarking on this international tour allows us to reach international markets for British Columbia, which enables BALABC to be a cultural ambassador of BC talent around the world on world stages. It's also really, really fulfilling to be able to share that with people because as artists, that's sort of what we do is we share what we create, we share what we dream up. BALABC is one of those amazing organizations that has done a tremendous job over the years. We see what they are contributing to the BC economy as a result, but also that they're taking that talent and experience and sharing it with the rest of the world and they're recognized as one of the best companies in the world as a result of that.


All right, so really Scott is back again for the sequel to Prometheus. Let's get into this. My name is Brandon Keith-Avery, and this is just my opinion. All right guys, welcome back. This is my review for Alien Covenant. I was looking forward to this film, thought it would be pretty good, but I wasn't like super duper excited over the moon for it. But I saw it, I was lucky and I saw it. This is directed by Ridley Scott, of course. He is the guy that directed the first Alien movie that came out in 1979. I saw that movie, of course. I thought it was great. James Cameron did the sequel, Aliens Plural, which I did not see, but everyone tells me that it's good. You know, there's kind of like a half and half as far as people saying it's Aliens or Aliens better. You know, some people are saying that Aliens is a great original movie, while Aliens is like a great action movie, or Aliens is a scary movie, excuse me. Did not see Aliens 3 or Aliens Resurrection. I did see Aliens versus Predator 1 and 2, and they were okay, they were just okay. Part two kind of sucked. And I also did see Prometheus. And I like Prometheus, and Prometheus came out in 2012. It wasn't necessarily an Aliens movie necessarily, but it was in the same universe if you haven't seen it. And that's what got me excited about it. And I thought it was a great movie, but this movie did have mixed reviews. Some liked it, some did not. A lot of people were complaining about plot holes in this movie. I couldn't think of any myself, or I can't think of any right now. So if you know of any, please put them in the comments section. Let's talk about it. But I did like this movie, but one thing that was disappointing in this movie is the way it ended.  And did they potentially, are they the ones that made man as humans? Are they the ones, are we seeds from them planting their seeds? So either offspring or where does man come from? Is kind of what this movie was dealing with. And it was entertaining, but it is, and you're like, okay, this is kind of like a part one and a two-part series. And so the Blomkamp guy that did District 9 and Chappy, which I hated that movie, and Elysium, which I love that movie, he was rumored to do Alien 5 that could possibly pick some of this stuff back up, but they got him out of there, brought really Scott back, and now he's doing Alien Covenant. And some people at the beginning didn't know where this was tying in with the story, but I will go ahead and say this is a sequel to Prometheus. I'm not gonna say how much time has passed from Prometheus to Alien Covenant, but I will say that it's a sequel. And while I did enjoy Prometheus, I did not enjoy Alien Covenant pretty much at all. And the reason why is I thought the story was horrible. The characters, none of them were likable and I barely remember them. And also Alien Covenant completely abandons pretty much everything that came before in Prometheus.  Why would you make this decision? I don't know where this movie can go from here. Now, something that I really did like about Prometheus is Elizabeth Shaw played by Numi or Naomi Rapace. Please excuse me if I did not pronounce her name correctly. I liked her character in Prometheus. She was, I mean, kind of slightly annoying at times, but nobody's perfect, but she just felt like somebody that I could relate to. She had a strong belief system and whether it's talking about God and they had those flashbacks with her and her father. Why do you believe this? And it's like, you know, I believe in this because I choose to. You have Charlize Theron's character in that movie that was just like really cold.  Then you had Michael Fassbender over here playing this robot, android type thing. You just had all these characters that I cared about and know Elizabeth Shaw character.  And, you know, I actually cared about these people. In Ellen Covenant, I did not care about anyone at all. Just the very beginning of the film, things happen and people die already and then you're just supposed to just get on board with them. But the person that comes in, Eric Banna, the captain of the ship, is that his name? I feel like, I don't feel like that's his name. I think it's not Eric Banna. It's, I don't even remember it. That's the thing. I don't even remember his name in the movie so I can't like look up his name like that's sad. I mean the only person that's Michael Fassbender and Danny McBride. Like I don't, and this guy is, you know this guy. The one of the main. Okay, yeah, Billy Kudrup. This guy, Orem. It took me that much, I had to do all of that to remember somebody that I saw in the movie. He's coming on to the scene, trying to save the day and give orders and stuff and he's just whack. I mean like, nobody wants to follow these guys.  Well, we have to do this and the procedure says that we go one, two, three, X, Y. And I know you want to go to Q but we have to go to M first. I mean, come on guys, I'm trying. Okay, can you just, like that's how his character is at the very beginning of the movie.  But this is the people that are left in charge. Okay, and like everyone else just follows suit and then there are no one is following orders. And when it comes to their decision-making skills it's just ridiculous. They're using emotion instead of logic. I know that you are like, you're there with some people and that should probably even be a rule that says you can't do that because it'll be a conflict of interest and judgment while you're on this trip, trying to colonize another planet going across the galaxy or wherever the hell you're going. But no one is following orders.  Hey, I wanna do it anyway because like we gotta, I mean, it's like, come on, use your common sense, use your better judgment and none of the characters are doing that at all. Excuse me, and it's just really frustrating. And then the movie just completely abandons what came in Prometheus. I mean, I don't know who they didn't address to engineers at all. They didn't address who made human beings, where they come from, like they tease us in Prometheus. Just none of that. I don't wanna spoil it for you, but we get a brief glimpse of the two characters that ended this movie. And if you've seen it, you know who I'm talking about, David and Elizabeth Shaw. I mean, we get a brief glimpse of that. And then the alien coven is just kinds of pertains. In my opinion that this thing didn't, you know, like it didn't exist. And I know it was supposed to be in a parallel world, but you have to understand, like, you knew at the end of this movie that people were frustrated. It came out in 2012, this is five years later now, you could have did a better job to wrap that up, even if you wanted to have Ellen go this way and more Prometheus go this way, you just could have really, Scott, I just feel that you could have did a better job tying all that together. And, you know, giving the film some hope and the fans some hope that people that like this, because I mean, I don't know, I just didn't like it at all.  And it's just like, these guys are space travelers. They should be mentally prepared to run into anything they come in contact with. And as soon as things get a little rough, one character is like just panicking beyond belief. And I'm just like, if this is how you react to certain situations, who is the person that approved you to go on this mission? It just doesn't make any damn sense.   Really, are you serious? Clumsiness is killing people instead of the aliens.   And it's just nothing like that.  And that is just something that I don't want to see. And then like the highlight of this film is a hand-to-hand battle between two individuals. Yeah, this is an alien movie. There's also a giant plot hole in the middle of it. I'm like, wait a minute. If you say you did this, then why did you show me this? I mean, I can't spoil it for you. And then this, the way this movie ended was just trash. I'm like, really? Where can the movie go from here? I mean like, and there's supposed to be two more sequels after this one? Where can the movie go? I have no idea. There's no happy ending. It doesn't always have to be a happy ending. Like Saw wasn't necessarily a happy ending, but I respect that for some reason. But this, I just don't. I mean, I wish I was gonna talk spoilers, but I just don't care. This movie, this was not good to me.   But guys, if I had to rate this movie out of a one out of 10, I would give this movie a three out of 10. Yes, a three out of 10. But that's just my opinion. Have you seen Ellen Covenant yet? Do you want to see it? Have I turned you on? Have I turned you off? Do you agree with me or do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comment section below. Let's get this conversation going and keep it flowing. Guys, I want to go to the red carpet premiere of Marvel's Black Panther that comes out February of 2018. Is it likely that I'll go? Who knows? It's a long shot, but I'm going for it. So help me out by sharing this video 1,000 times.  And if you don't like the video, that's fine. Just leave me a comment below why and still give me a thumbs up. Since you're here on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can get all the content that I have to provide with it being some movie season. I'm gonna try to give you as much as I can. And also guys, look me up on my website, bookmark it. Also go to my social media and look me up there. But guys, I just want to thank you again for tuning in for my opinion slash review of Ellen Covenant. And before you go, don't forget that my name is Brennan Keith-Avery. And that's just my opinion. Peace.


What's up to all my Aragorn fanboys and fangirls out there? It's your boy Ian, here today to talk about Viggo Mortensen's favorite books This is a very interesting selection because Viggo Mortensen is a very smart man. He's an intellectual I've been hearing about the books he's read and all the books he's adapted to film and His life as an intellectual and as a nature lover for years ever even even sends Lord of the Rings But this list almost falls short a little bit and we'll talk about that in a second But it has a bunch of classics that I think if you're the right person and approach these books from the right point of view Then you can get a lot out of them. I think that's what that's who Viggo Mortensen is He lives in Montana. He likes to live in natural and contemplative life And you know plays a lot of serious roles at times So let's hop into the books. So the first book and this is on New York Times comm is the origin of species by Charles Darwin and This one is very confusing to me because I view people who like evolution Like love evolution like how I view people who are super religious just kind of off because Scientism is a religion, you know having this huge belief in science or in government. It's a religion It's dogmatic just like religious people in so I'm very so I'm kind of like the origin of species by Charles Darwin I remember when I was an atheist Debating everyone and coming from this point of view of it and it seems a bit immaturable Let's see what he has to say about it. So this is Vigo speaking There's nothing more important than the natural world we live in and we are bound to affect it positively or negatively by the virtue of our relative But relatively brief individual and collective presence Darwin's visionary study of the evolution of living beings on our planet is a crucial guide to our understanding Of why we are here and what we might do to live in a harmony with our environment Absolutely, not if I have a whole course called the spirit for free on this channel called the spiritual ecology course If you want to learn how to live in harmony with the environment this book is pivotal for yes Iron our understanding of nature But it could also be said that this sped up our understanding and of of the human existence and help destroy nature more and get Us into the climate situations We are in now and this is kind of coming as we're going to see by the next book this Aristotelian point of view of Examining and categorizing nature, which I think is kind of problematic Of course we need that to get where we are now with modern medicine and everything that's going on that is needed But Continuing that every Continuing that today for most of us is a problem. There are people out there who aren't scientists Who have nothing their life has nothing to do with science and they live in only in objective reality And they don't know how to work You might not even know what I'm talking about how to live in subjective reality and view life and view problems From a subjective point of view and that is a problem and that really comes at some level from our boy Plato which is next the Republic by Plato the notions we have in the United States and in other countries that function to a better Or lesser degree as nation-states with variations of democratic Representative government as their political systems would not exist without Plato's work So it seems like Vigo is taking this classical the classics approach that of course that the Philosophers King mindset and the history of our nation-states and Thomas Aquinas's Adaption of Aristotle and thus Plato into the Catholic Church Which then kicked off the Renaissance and Sir Francis Bacon and thus Charles Darwin are all important. Yes But really the Republic by Plato. I you could make it through life I with a summary of the ideas of the Republic and I am going to do a Plato Breakdown and course one day on this channel for all of you guys and go over the Republic But do I think that you know and this isn't my choice, right? But Vigo saying I think that he is trying to take this axiomatic approach to life and what we need to understand But I think we can sir sir Surplant a lot that we can take shortcuts with a lot of that information to kind of circle back for all that later on and We need to get as many people in this world educated as possible We are going to end unnecessary suffering and taking expecting telling people to go read Charles Darwin or the Republic Can be problematic because they aren't simple books They aren't simple books like the Dowdae Ching by Lao Su, which is the next book and the Dowdae Ching for me This is a very this is as every bit as important a guide in terms of personal moral ethic Fix as Plato's work is another side of the same coin the timeless lessons that can be had from Plato and Lao Su Reinforce each other in many different ways. I would agree and The Taoist mindset and religion are very important for many people in this Western culture So I agree with this pick that it's an easy read most people can get it It can impact most people immediately in an hour in the hour that it takes to read it and the practices can be put Into place into play almost immediately. I remember when I was 16 and I heard I read the Dowdae Ching I would I started I gave I lost a lot of ambition man with sports For instance, I started I was doing cross-country and track at the time and I live out in the desert We'd run out in the desert. I remember in the off season. I would just kind of start walking I just I was like, why am I running for four years? I've just been running so hard so fast Why don't I just start looking around and for years? I kind of adopted a Taoist mindset and that actually helped me Re-engage later on that set helped me set up a base to re-engage your spirituality and God, you know the non-hierarchical God Not that he got later on so Taoism is very important I feel like it is much more important than the Republic understanding the axiomatic origins of evolution or nation states because We inherently understand that in our DNA as Westerners but the Taoism eludes us because surprisingly most people have no concept of Eastern thought in the West still that if you talk to most people They think oh meditation and they do like these weird hand signs and like they act they act Yeah, if you I you know, I'm a yogi I've been dealing with this for 14 years now that people act it what they're like Oh, you're so enlightened.  No, this is a mindset. This is a belief This is the giving up of ambition.  So I would agree the Tao day chain a great selection by Viggo Mortensen I would recommend that everyone go check that out I mean go check out play do too, but I would I would I would recommend starting with some other texts by Plato before the Republic And if you are going to do the public following online like a university course for free Online or getting a guide so you know what's going on And that actually brings us to the next point that you maybe could get a precursor to Plato In the history of Western philosophy by Patron Russell with all of its invetable sins of omission and generalizations This great compilation of Western philosophical ideas and currents from pre-socratic times until the middle of the 20th century Is an invaluable and accessible guide to our shared social history? And I would absolutely agree that this should probably be on a lot of top 10 list that the history of Western Philosophy by Patron Russell is probably a pinnacle Philosophy book other than the story of philosophy by Will Durant for introduction introductory of philosophy like there's the root root lages history if there's like a lot of other history of philosophies But bias is good Patron Russell is biased He doesn't like Nietzsche as a lot of people didn't like him back then because he really a lot of people described a lot of negative views In the world to him they didn't separate that like Nietzsche the scholarship wasn't there on Nietzsche yet But a lot of other people's a lot of other people Patron Russell has problems and I like that as a thinker you want to know what a great thinker like Patron Russell knows and what he thinks and What his biases are and that's why it is a great book He gives really a great overview much better than willed will Durant in the story philosophy does but will Durant does a much better job With language and concise ideas and telling the story better So I would recommend everyone in here read the story of philosophy by will Durant first and then maybe the history of Western philosophy But the history of Western philosophy hits everybody it has it touches on all the pre-socratic Greeks and even a lot of almost all the Greeks it's really a deep dive into the Greek thinkers and into the Augustine Aquinas bacon really gets into everyone gives everyone a brief overview Which I view as a very good thing and Patron Russell with all of his biases does a good job And I would recommend everyone getting into Western philosophy It is the root and core of thinking in the West that if you can't really play ball with these things that you can't really understand deeper elements of intellectual thought that much like learning Meditation and yoga and those things are the pinnacles of the east Western philosophy Western philosophy is really the gemstone of the West and all the progress in that has been made there You know the famous line by Jock Derrida that these has no philosophy because we're just on a totally different level at some level I agree with that the West has been going hard. The West has had people like Contents, but Noza spending so much time in the on the Grind putting out, you know, just working through problems and Hegel and all the people that he gets into in this text So I would really recommend this book. This is another great selection by Vika Mortens. So next we have of course Shakespeare Maybe not of course, you know, I really love these top 10 lists and you never really see Shakespeare That's why I would pick this because it's very canonical, right? And I think that having celebrities that are into the canon is important And you know Vika really doesn't talk about this very often in public But with all the multiculturalism and stuff, which is great and the spreading of marginalized voices But if we don't understand the canon and ideas, we're just a bunch of idiots getting our emotions played by book marketers If we don't understand or we're a bunch of like neo-contians or neo-spinozians or Nietzscheans Or Machiavellians running around with our ideas thinking that we're original, but we're just spewing out the same ideas I know so many basic Himbos and bimbos out there that are just, you know, spewing some watered-down version of a philosopher And if they just did a the smallest amount of reading just if they paid attention in school a little bit They could actually access deeper ideas and go that much deeper, which really does a lot for self-reflection So obviously Shakespeare is the canonical figure of the West maybe other than the Bible And there are many poets that I might have included in this list of books But to my mind Shakespeare is the greatest of all in terms of the breadth of his knowledge His lyricism, humor, and the universal applicability of his work And this is what I say about Shakespeare, man And this is what I say about Wordsworth and all those people that are like really pre-1800 That they were shoved down our throat in school And if you were like me, man, I couldn't handle it In high school, in college, in all the various degrees of college I had trouble really dialing it in and because it was for the group It wasn't for me, it was for an assignment, it was for this check on the box, this grade And I remember when I was in at my parents' house in Wyoming for the summer And I had a lot of time on my hands I was reading the prelude to lyrical ballads by William Wordsworth And I was just kind of combing through it and just reading it and contemplating it slowly And I got it Like after I had read that and had to do a song I probably had six university classes where I had to read parts of that and write about it And for the first time ever I sat there and it meant something to me And if I would have done that from day one, the same thing would have happened And I feel the same way about Shakespeare That a lot of us have had to ram down our throat And I didn't get it and a lot of people don't get it Until you come at it for your own growth From your own understanding For you, not for everybody else Not because Viggo Mortensen said that it's canonical Or I said it or Harold Bloom said it Because you want to do it And when you touch Shakespeare Shakespeare, well, it's kind of sad We'll touch you back, right? Shakespeare, well, you know, you take one step Shakespeare will take 10 steps towards you That's a non-section That's how I feel about Shakespeare And about all those old authors That take the time out, take it slow You got a lot of time, they're all dead You have, you know, probably a couple of decades To explore all those people Explore the people we're just about to talk about now So next on the list we have Look at that nice photo There he is Ten favorite books The Divine Comedy by Dante And right alongside Shakespeare Dante's work explores and highlights Enduring universal truths related to the human condition As well as any writer I know of And you know, if we're talking about poets with an impact Dante for sure does because he has He explores the human impact Listen to this Once again, I read Dante multiple times And I didn't get Dante until I spent some time in Philadelphia I was kind of spending some leisure time in Philadelphia And I read The Divine Comedy on my own And it made a pretty big impact on me, right? Like, I made a pretty big impact on me And I read some other Dante I read all of Dante's work And then also The Inferno And then I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art And outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Which is such a trippy place All of that, I'm not going to go into Philadelphia being trippy But there is a Rodin Museum And Rodin of course did The Gates of Hell Which is depicting Dante's Inferno And in that moment after I didn't even know that place existed I saw why I was reading Dante It was just, I was reading Dante And Walt Whitman just for fun I don't know, just to be like a kind of a suit A suit because I wanted to be cool or whatever And be Walt Whitman, Dante, Parking And I read, I saw Rodin's Gates of Hell sculpture And I got it Once again it clicked I got the emotion and the depth And the whole Christian narrative And the evolution of what Dante was doing with it And the human condition And the past 1700 years of history Got in a sense unlocked in my brain That's what we're looking for here everybody But you know, me telling you You gotta take your time with this stuff Don't go read this stuff because I'm saying it Read it when it's time for you to explore these classics And I think that's what happened with this next book Which is El Guacho Martin Fiero by Jose Hernandez Oh sorry, oh yeah I debated between Cervantes, Don Quixote And Martin Fiero Because they are both great classic epic stories In the Spanish language But I ended up choosing Jose Hernandez As great poetic work Because of my early connection with it As a child growing up in Argentina And I got this book right This classic poetic epic poem And I started reading it a couple days ago I stopped, I couldn't get through it Because I was reading it for this I was reading this classic For this video I'm shooting right now And I didn't get through it I feel like the English translation I was reading Also was a bit clunky So if you understand Spanish I would recommend this I didn't really, I don't, I think maybe you'll speak Spanish I have read Don Quixote I can recommend that I think there's a lot of knowledge in that If you read Douglas Glover Has a good analysis of Don Quixote But I couldn't get through this book So I'm sorry, you know That's what I'm here to do To burn through this book But I don't got time for that I have, I may come back to this I see its potential I see what it is I now understand that it's really a Spanish classic It's been on the list Actually for a while now And now is not the time for me With this text Next is a Faust Oost Faust By Goethe And the great work of literature And an extraordinary cautionary tale The story has much to teach us About psychology, politics And more than ever it can now Allow us to look at ourselves And our rulers with open eyes And really that's what Goethe does Is that we have to examine ourselves And understand our position in this world And selflessness everybody Education becoming an educator Becoming someone when you realize that you are I am you and you are me And we are all connected You really escape the Faustian trap You really escape the power trap That happens in this text And that really I think is what Vigo was talking about About psychology and politics and history Our leaders Anyone who gets into politics Already has this something I learned from Dune Already they have problems Anyone that gets into politics Is already corrupt Is already anyone They are a certain art type That we don't need in our society To make to step into an educated Nonviolent world So that really that's the Goethe Wager the Goethe deal And wager with the devil That is talked about in this tragedy We cannot step toward that We have to step toward our own Liberation only in terms of helping others And that's what the east kind of got They didn't get that right either They did liberation For liberation itself And for like cosmos And for a weird reason They didn't go to the next level The final level Of liberating yourself So that you can liberate others And the problem The trap is though That many dictators Many problems And people in hipster history Have liberated themselves So that they can liberate the people around them Through being a dictator Or through tragic Or through totalitarianism Because everyone hates my people So I just have to Thus have to kill everybody And so there are a lot of traps here So you have to kind of come To that level carefully Because you can get there automatically You can get to the point where Well I'm just going to help everybody And then that can There can be filled Because you have to debate along the way Well who do we kill Who do we don't kill If we want to get this done in six months Without the educational overhaul That I'm talking about right now Some people got to go down And then you're suddenly making deals With the devil there So you have to come at this point of view And I really think that Gerta gets at With caution The next one I really I couldn't find it online I couldn't find a copy anywhere So this one is called Dan Marks Saxo Grammaticus This is the best book for understanding The early history of the society Literature and politics of Northern Europe Without Saxo's research and extensive work In compiling ancient texts and oral stories Our knowledge of early Nordic, Germanic, Celtic And English cultures And nation building would be far poorer Than it is And that's what I feel like That's a very noble cause Even though I couldn't find Really this text That understanding our origins For instance, there was a decline This is talked about by Robert Blyne In his book, News of the Universe From Christianity That we got separated as Englishmen As Northerners, you know In England, in Scandinavia And France, Germany That whole area Northern Europeaners From nature We got separated from nature And in Beowulf And then the holy There are theory and tales We can see this connection in nature Especially in Beowulf It seems like Beowulf is Mimicking the forms of nature actually And a lot of, well, indigenous Or like tribal texts Do that, you know All throughout world history, you know Cause at one point, you know Europe was, you know, a bunch of barbarians And I would Recommend just exploring that topic Exploring that whole early time period of The English language And the Really the number that Christianity did, man Because we, like I said We were barbarians Like the rest of the world Violent and crazy But we got turned into Proceditalizing barbarians who Really hurt Africa and South America And a lot of other, you know And of course Asia later on But we did a lot of hurt and pain To a lot of people Because of this viewpoint That really didn't need to be explored Paganism could have just been reformed We could have just reformed paganism's Nasty spots And you could say that's what Christianity is And it is But we could have done that in With a non-hierarchical manner Which I think is the solution to the future, right In Christianity And all these things They cannot be non-hierarchical Because they are based in hierarchy all the way And a lot of people have a problem with that A lot of people on the right They're like Like Jordan Pierce Everything, every time a hierarchy is destroyed Another hierarchy is created No, we can actually have systems of spirituality At least That don't have That one group goes to hell and one group You know One group is better than the other group We can have a system of spirituality that says The only wrong thing is violent acts The only wrong thing is The assault of the body or property Of another And then everything Or of animals or the earth In a very violent manner Or in any manner really And or we can you know Have these crazy codes and ethics And Christian law And all this BS that we're working with now Anyway, I don't want to Don't get me going Last but not least Is the People's History of the United States By Howard Zinn Very US citizen could have the benefit Of knowing Zinn's collection of historical texts From a wide range of relatively known as Well as unknown people throughout our history Our country's history There'll be a lot better quality in our current political class And the style and substance of our government Governance And I agree that A People's History of the United States is important because Slavery The plight of the Native Americans Even the hardships of immigrants throughout time These are things explored in the text And a lot of people Even though they think they understand You don't understand You don't understand I mean if you don't understand Like if you haven't read about slavery If you don't even thought about slavery Even contemplated it And explored it And studied the civil war And what happened And moving on to the Jim Crow laws And the Dred Scott case And John Brown's liberation of Kansas All these different things And of course the Atlantic slave trade Then you really understand The real history of the United States And same with you know The march of the Oh my god I'm losing it Oh And Scott Mamaday's Native American tribe Indigenous people Whatever tribe he is in I can't remember the Choctaws Maybe not the Choctaws Anyway There's there's so much negative history Of in the Native American realm too Or the indigenous peoples of Native With America realm also And understanding that And exploring that is vital And there's so many sub-branches that too Because there's poetry Like Native American poetry And fiction and criticism All these different things are very important To understand So my cat is now here And it seems like we are in a video Subscribe to the channel everybody For Orpheus For the cause For Vigo For Aragorn and I We'll see everybody later


I'm asking you a question. Is Jesus God? Is Jesus God? Yes, absolutely. Did Mary look after him as a baby? Did Mary look after him? Did Mary look after God? No, God created mankind. Oh, so Jesus ain't God. So he is God. How could Jesus be God if he needed someone like his mother Mary to take care of him? There's an important theological concept that we need to understand here. It's called the hypostatic union. The Jesus when he came to this earth was fully God and fully man. He didn't leave his Godhood at the door of humanity. And yet the Bible does speak of him emptying himself in certain ways that he would fulfill the Father's will. That's part of the beauty of what Jesus did. It's almost incomprehensible for us that the God of the universe would humble himself in becoming a little baby and further experiencing the shame and pain of the crucifixion on the cross. But he did it all that in his life, death and resurrection we would find new life in him and our sins would be forgiven. And even now as we face trials and struggles in our life we know that God can empathize with our experience.


Okay. Very good afternoon to all the people in Europe. My name is Kai, actually you can just call me Kai. Those people in Netherlands, they call me Kai. So I work for the Singapore National Water Agency, CPUB. And I am also a very proud student as what I would have mentioned of IHE, Hydroinformatics Class of 2017-2019. So I just want to share with you very quickly one of the projects that we have done, one of the pilot projects that we have done actually. And I originally had about 44 slides but I have cut it down to just 10 of them. So I just want to give you a gist of it. If you really want to know more details, then I think you can contact me or you know, Abraham for more details. Okay. So what we actually did is we applied deep learning models in flood forecasting for a case study of Singapore. So the deep learning models here actually adopt something like an image recognition and pattern recognition kind of a model which is quite interesting because it's not very common for flood forecasting models. I'll move on. I'll give you a very quick introduction of Singapore. It is a very, very small and tiny island in the Southeast Asia. And a lot of people say that you know Singapore is a city of China. It is actually not. It is a country of its own. And yeah, we are in the Southeast Asia 716 kilometers square which is super, super small compared to other countries. And Singapore just like many countries in the world, we grapple with the challenge of changing weather patterns. Over the years, we have been experiencing higher frequency of rainfall and also of course the magnitude of rainfall. And apart from that, there is also high degree of urbanization. So we are constantly competing for land spaces to house our drainage infrastructure. Singapore is actually very small, so we need to put in all the you know, infrastructures, houses and all that. And there's always a constant need to compete with all the drainage infrastructures. So we recognize that actually flood forecasting is very important. We need to start moving towards you know, very adaptive, non-structural measures as we move on to the future. So there is a flood forecasting system in Singapore just like many countries in the world. And for Singapore, we actually comprise of four systems, four components. The first component is an S-band weather radar. What it actually does is it scans the wind clouds. And then with the radar images captured, it is then being fed into a now-cast model. I'm not sure whether you can see something wrong with the presentation right now. So with the radar images captured, it is being fed into a now-cast model. So what this now-cast model will do is it will take in all your radar images and then it will extrapolate them into future radar images. And then it will then translate them into future rainfall predictions. With the future rainfall predictions, you then fit it into a physically based model. And this physically based model is something like your soil bag or your mine level model. So it actually gives you water level at various locations of the catchment. And then we also have a small, you know, error correction module that will help us correct the error. So you'll have water level forecast based on this setup. So what is the problem? So the problem for us is actually at the rainfall now-cast model. So Singapore is actually in the tropics. This rainfall now-cast model that we have adopts something called like the optical flow constraint principles for extrapolation. So it actually assumes that storm cells remain constant in intensity and their movements are sequential. But we know that of course, you know, especially people in the tropics will know that in reality, this is not true because storm cells can grow and you can decay within minutes. Sorry, I think we need to be a little bit faster. So this has actually led to low accuracy in the rainfall now-cast. And poor accuracy in the water level forecast is as well. So this is one problem that, you know, Singapore has faced for many, many years. So over the years, there has been advancement in artificial intelligence. I think Jero shared that with you as well. So mainly in two areas. The first area is image recognition. I think you can sense it as well that, you know, your image recognition kind of tools are getting more and more prominent and more and more powerful. So this image recognition technique that usually people use, they use this algorithm called the convolutional neural network. So what this algorithm does is it's actually very good in capturing and picking up important features. Okay. And the other area that has significant advancement is the recurrent neural network. So recurrent neural network, you know, the algorithm, the backbone behind all those, for example, like your Google Translate speech recognition and all that. So it's actually very good in predicting sequential kind of stuff. So there are significant advancement in these two areas. And you ask me, so what, what has it got to do with, you know, Singapore, right? So in 2015, a group of Hong Kong Met Office researchers, they tried to combine the convolutional neural network with the recurrent neural network. Okay. So it actually adopts the best of both image recognition features. And then we've spatial and temporal kind of prediction for the recurrent neural network. So it combines these two algorithms. This hybrid algorithm is called the ConvLSTM and they apply this ConvLSTM on rainfall now casting problems. So what they did was they used like past radar images and then they predict future radar images of the next 19 minutes. And this Hong Kong Met Office, coincidentally, they also use the same optical flow constraint principle, same as Singapore, for their now cast model. So they are able to compare this deep learning model with the optical flow constraint model that they have. And they found that this deep learning model ConvLSTM actually outperforms the optical flow constraint now cast model. You can see the results here are quite apparent. Okay, move on. So there are actually many parallels which Singapore can draw from this study. And we wanted to test on this ConvLSTM algorithm for us. So what we actually wanted to do is we want to construct a deep learning model which takes in radar images of past 30 minutes. And then we want to predict water levels in the canals. Okay, this is essentially the whole objective of it. So if I were to move on to the previous slides that I have, what we intend to do is we actually intend to bypass all this. And we essentially want to, I can't point it, doesn't work. So what we want to do is we want to bypass, we want to just take in the radar images and then predict water level directly. So from step two all the way to the final step, bypassing all the intermediate predictions and the physically based model that we have. This is what we want to do. I'll move on very quickly. So we actually tested on one of the catchmen in Singapore, very small, 20 kilometers square. And it comprises of mainly residential areas and commercial premises and parks. This catchman is called the Burdo catchman. And it's at the eastern part of Singapore. So what is interesting is we need to process radar images. This is not very common in hydrology and hydraulics. So radar images we got it from our Matt office, this S-Band weather radar. And it is captured at every five minutes. So you can imagine it's very big file that we are handling. And the radar images are of one pixel, one pixel of it is one kilometer by one kilometer in resolution. And the radar images are in RGB format. The availability of the data is from 2011 to 2015, very, very big files that we have. And what we wanted to do is to keep the rainfall intensities and the pixels. We want to remove all other background colors. This is not important to us. And we wanted to convert it to grayscale image. This is to reduce the memory space. So this is what we do. Pick up what is relevant to us. And then from there, we convert it to the grayscale image, something like that. And then we trim it. And in terms of other data sets that we are working with, water level sensors, and you can see that there are five sensors in the catchment. Catchment one, two, and four heavily affected by tidal. Sensors five and three are not really affected by tides. And also we use predicted tidal data as well. And we need to tighten coded to synchronize it to five minutes interval. Very quickly, just maybe two more slides before we end. We constructed many models, but I just want to show you two of it. The first model is we use past radar images, fit it into the deep learning model that we trained and to predict the future 60 minutes water level. So what we can see, give you a good glimpse of it, is that there is actually good prediction for sensor number three and five. But we found that the Rumi square error and the R square that we have the predictions for sensor one, two, and four is actually quite long seed. So you can see the comparison right here. Sensor five, good results, but sensor four, not that good. And what we found is that actually tidal data plays an important role as well. So we flattened the tidal data together with the radar images to predict the future 60 minutes water level. And once we have done that, we can see that actually in terms of prediction results, it does give you the sinusoidal tidal pattern as well as giving you good results for that. So very quickly conclude. The conclusion here is that actually using past radar images, the deep learning models can actually forecast water levels and achieve satisfactory results. And here, actually, the challenge that I have was more on data processing and manipulation is very, very challenging. And but it is also one of the most important component that we should always emphasize on. And lastly, from the tidal information that I shared with you, understanding the area is actually very important. Sometimes there are some parameters that you miss out that would significantly affect your results. Yeah, so that is all I have actually questions, anybody, or maybe we should.


Now, we throw around the word microgravity, quite a bit, microgravity, sort of a catchphrase term used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration used by NASA, NASA depending on where you live, a lot, but what does it mean microgravity, is there just a little bit of gravity there, so from time to time we're going to have these bonus physics lectures, so let's have a look at this. We know from Newton that force is equal to gm1, m1, m2 divided by r squared, so what does it say, that's the force by gravity, and we know that's proportional to the product of the two masses, that's the mass of the Earth and the mass of the astronaut or space station or whatever, divided by the square of the distance between them. So if we have the Earth, there's the center of the Earth, from the center of the Earth to the surface of the Earth, that is the radius of the Earth and it is a staggering 6,371 kilometers from the center of the Earth to the surface of the Earth, and the international space station is another tiny little, very tiny little, 370 kilometers, 370 kilometers above that. So if we have our little astronaut stand on the surface, we're going to calculate the force of gravity on him, force of gravity on him by multiplying the gravitational constant with his mass or her mass, the mass of the Earth divided by this 6,371 kilometers squared. Okay, now let's use kilometers here, remember g is in meters cubed, okay, so we just have to convert this to meters, you can't work in kilometers and meters, but it's not what this is about, this is just a bit, now I'm going to increase this distance a little bit in orbit, yeah, and now he's on the international space station, so he's going to feel a different force of gravity, but he's still going to feel or she is still going to feel the force of gravity, it doesn't disappear, it's still there. Now you can do very simple algebra, you can say the force of gravity on the ISS versus the force of gravity while the astronaut is on the face of the Earth, now what is that going to be very simply, well, it's still going to be g, the masses of the individual and the Earth divided by, now it's the square that's going to be the radius of the Earth plus that height of the ISS, we're going to square that divided by still, this is still the same, gm1m2 divided by the radius of the Earth, because now he's just on the surface or she's just on the surface of the Earth squared, so all of these are going to cancel out, and what are we left with, well that's the radius just on the Earth squared, this is going to now be in the numerator and that in the denominator and the radius of the Earth plus the height of the ISS, if you just square that, and you see it's going to be about 0.89 somewhere there, the ratio of the force of gravity that the astronaut feels there versus there, so he's still going to feel this gravity but so why do we say there's zero g, why do we say there's zero g, well it's very simple, the ISS and the astronaut are in orbit, and orbit has different components to it, and very plainly there's a lot more physics to it, it is falling, it is falling it's falling at a rate that it keeps on missing the Earth, so it's falling towards the center of the Earth but it has a velocity tangential to the surface that all the time, so in its fall it's moving so fast that it always misses the Earth and it's more complicated than that, so if you were in an elevator very high up in the building, and lo and behold the cables break and you fall, you and the elevator are going to fall initially at least at the same velocity, well there will be a different bit of inertial mass difference there, so you're going to fall and you're going to experience weightlessness and you're going to float inside of this elevator and it's going to feel as if you are weightless, so it is that fall, that fall that creates this effect of zero gravity, certainly there is still a massive force, almost a full force of gravity on the International Space Station as they, but because you and the Space Station astronaut say Space Station is falling at the same velocity towards the center of the Earth, always missing it because there's more but it's free fall and there is no way that you can distinguish in the absence of your senses the difference between zero gravity and free fall, and that is why it's called zero gravity and that's where the catchphrase comes from, just to distinguish that it's called micro gravity probably means, well there's still gravity, there's still almost full gravity there, you haven't escaped the gravitational pull of the Earth, you can never ever do that, even if you approach the outer limits of the known universe there's still going to be some radius between the Earth, by the way you're still going to have mass, there's still going to be the gravitational constants, there's still going to be some minute gravitational force, anyway call it microgravity because in effect you are in free fall and we know from Einstein's thought experiments there's no way that you can distinguish free fall from being absolutely impossibly far away from any gravitational forces on you, that's quite phenomenal. Okay so zero G microgravity but there's obviously some physics behind it.