The awe-inspiring ancient city of Hegra, also known as Madain-Salet, close sister of the equally astonishing and cinematically famous ancient site of Petra, is now finally open to the public, able to go and investigate for themselves. We have covered this site, and indeed the gigantic scale of the rock-cut temples, the claimed tombs, and tall doorways to enter these sites. Furthermore, we have covered uncanny similarities found upon rare unfinished areas of these once astonishingly precisely cut solid rock ruins. In addition to the enormous scale of the stone-cut buildings, and the absence of doorsteps, which would have enabled the now-average-sized human claimed as having created them, no chance of entering them with ease, this giving credence to the many theories pertaining to these gigantic structures, along with their gigantic scales and their enormous megalithic counterparts found at other sites, linked to, by cutting marks previously mentioned, were instead constructed by an ancient, now lost race, far larger than any of today, one capable of these incredible ancient feats. Could these structures have instead of, as so many as indeed we have postulated, not actually built by ancient man, but were actually made by ancient giants? Not only with the muscular ability to have once lifted such enormous stones into position, such as that of the enormous megalithic stones incorporated into the great pyramids of Giza, found within the temples of Baalbek, Gornia Shoria, but also almost globally? Could this explain how they were once able to liberate these giant stones from the quarries and bedrocks selected almost many miles from where they were eventually placed with seeming ease? How they were somehow transported, enormous stones high atop mountains, assembling them into the remarkably precise-laid polygonal masonry that now drenches the tops of Peruvian peaks? How they once raised the ancient obelisk of Aswan? But I digress. Many have now conceded that the methodology of the great pyramids of Giza construction continues to be an enigma in regards to a modern explanation as to how the modern man accomplished such feats. Could this mystery be linked to the cover-up in which many have claimed, and we ourselves encountered, in regard to the remains of this possibly lost civilization smothered by the Smithsonian, one that we would now perceive as ancient giants? It is a hypothesis which would indeed be a fitting explanation for these mysteries and a cover-up, the stifling of a reason for their continued inexplicability to modern explanation. It is a theory which we find incredibly intriguing. In our previous video, we presented a hypothesis, a theory believed by many, one of a now lost or possibly hidden race of ancient giants. Surprisingly, however, recently, although China is seen as an infamously secretive country with many tombs and ancient pyramids of gargantuan proportions rarely aerial photographed, let alone explored, it seems that they have, at last, stolen the archaeological world stage, with the announcement of a discovery which we may relish, but those whom these remains rest just beyond the clutches of, we would presume rather get a hold of themselves to study and then store away at hidden archives, far from public view, an ongoing effort we have personally read of, dating back to the early 1900s. An ancient graveyard, complete with over 500 giant human remains, has not only been accidentally discovered but publicly exhumed and most crucial of all, photographed for all the world to see within China. Could this be a retaliatory move with other motives at play? If our previously mentioned theory is true, it would enable man to explain the inexplicably seemingly impossible size of many of the world's megaliths, and indeed still standing megalithic structures of the world. How a pyramidal, treasury, and many other ancient architectures, lintels, and topstones, often weighing many hundreds of tons, were not only transported from quarries many hundreds of miles but placed aloft many meters with seeming ease. Furthermore, we have in the past not only postulated and have also presented reams of witness testimony and photographic cooperation, still to be found in newspaper archives across the western world, describing these finds, but also the Smithsonian's efficiency in not only dealing with the matter but disappearance of any further reporting, thus exploration, this also supporting the reason for lost pieces of the puzzle which is inhibiting us from unlocking the secrets to these sites' construction. Perhaps we may never know the true motivations for such a controversial exposure in China, nonetheless the resulting fallout of proof presented for our community is a step closer to the truth, the untangling of a tired and tangled web of lies in which many have weaved. For at the bottom of Pandora's box, there is always hope. Take care. During our research, we have stumbled across countless legends and accounts from history which tell of ancient giants, not only legends but photographic evidence and an equal amount of initial newspaper reports of their discovery. This often accompanied with the mention of the Smithsonian Institute's insatiable interest in such finds and then an inevitable erasure of said finds from future research. Rarely has an ancient giant been allegedly found with the remains seemingly slipping the net of said Institute's attention, making it into mainstream research and an ally's collection before the Smithsonian was able to make said discovery vanish from history. Captua being one of these particular finds which not only matches the initial claims but has remained in mainstream historical research. Tales of a two-headed, 11-foot tall giant are not only corroborated by photographic evidence but the actual mummified corpse of the giant himself. The initial discovery of this incredible being was made back in 1673. An ogre or two-headed giant is said to have assaulted a party of Spanish sailors who fortunately overcame said giant with cunning. After trapping the giant, the sailors planned on killing it, fearing repercussions if released. The cause of the giant's death, however, has long been debated, but what cannot be denied is the astonishing remains which eventually made their way to London. The mummy then vanishes from the history books for nearly 400 years, reappearing in 1914 on the shores of the Birnbeck Harbor in the UK. The mummy inevitably became an extremely popular attraction, with people traveling from thousands of miles away to come and peer at this once monstrous two-headed giant. It remained in the public eye until 1959, a rare exhibit which escaped the clutches of those who would wish to hide it, with many photographs and other research projects allowed to be undertaken on the giant's remains by Lord Howard. This incredible giant, thanks to the Lord's dedication to said curiosity, remains in existence within the public's domain. An undeniable verification of a lost race of giants, which we have long claimed to have had first-hand experience of in their past discovery. A magnificent three-meter-tall mummified corpse of an ancient giant does indeed exist, and due to its age and primitive technologies available to said-claimed sailors when initially discovered, the possibility of it being an elaborate stitched-together hoax has been seemingly debunked, but also ignored by mainstream media due to the controversial nature of said finds. Who was Captois? Was he part of a race of beings in Patagonia? A race we have merely seen these remains of? Is the corpse authentic? If not, how is he constructed to such an astonishing detail so far back in history? Captois is undoubtedly highly compelling. Ralph Glidden has a rather interesting story to tell, a story which he continued to tell from the grave. While digging on Catalina Island in the Gulf of California between 1919 and 1928, he found, according to him, and numerous newspaper articles from the time, numerous skeletons. But what made his claims particularly interesting, however, was the claim that their average height was around 7 to 9 feet. The question arrived at by all those who have heavily researched his story is, where are these skeletons today? Could it really have just been a publicity stunt, or did Glidden actually somehow find the remains of a lost race of giants? Santa Catalina Island, also just known as Catalina Island, is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California in USA. The Channel Islands holds the title as the location of the earliest evidence for seafaring in the Americas, and also the earliest evidence of humans in North America. Ralph Glidden, who worked on the islands for several decades, was an amateur archaeologist who successfully uncovered ancient burial sites on Catalina Island. From 1919 to 1928, it is said that he excavated more than 800 gravesites from about 100 individual locations around the island. In addition to finding thousands of artifacts, he also stated that he dug up almost 4,000 human skeletons, a claim which has often received a lot of negative attention, many claiming he lacked respect for the dead. However, his reasoning was quite profound. He claimed that there once lived an advanced ancient race of tall, fair-haired Indians on Catalina Island and the adjacent islands. With the male adults around 7 feet in height, Glidden lost his sponsor after digging for almost 10 years, and the general opinion today is that he was just bluffing about finding giant skeletons, with the motive of creating interest and making money. However, he never made much money from his finds and received little financial attention. Additionally, Ralph Glidden was not the first to find a giant skeleton on Catalina Island. According to Pittsburgh Press, July 20, 1913, and also the Daily Telegraph on July 26, a German naturalist named Dr. A. W. Furstenahn uncovered an 8-foot skeleton on the island. The skeleton was found with artifacts such as mortars, pestles, and arrowheads, all different from the ordinary Indian burials, plus a strange, flat stone bearing unknown symbols. Furstenahn had, while in Mexico, heard the legend regarding the noble race of giants that had once lived on Catalina Island, long before the white man had arrived. He would find the skeleton along Avalon Bay in black hard sand, yet alas, the remains have since vanished. All over the islands there are countless reports. According to several newspaper articles, Santa Rosa Island was the site of a dig in 1959 where they discovered several skeletons more than 7 feet tall. The tops of the skulls were painted red, and the skulls were described as having sloped foreheads. On San Nicolas Island, west of Catalina in 1897, a party of relic hunters stayed three weeks on the barren island, and Newark Daily Advocate would subsequently tell of them finding bones of a giant race on San Nicolas Island. Whether these bones finally made it into private collections is unknown. In 1930, Glidden was ready to sell his collection, including his whole series of secrets regarding the island. In return, he requested an annual annuity for life, funding for five expeditions, and the necessary financing for various planned publications that included a large monograph chronicling all of his excavations. But it seems, sadly, regardless of Glidden's confidence, nobody wanted to buy his miraculous finds, and in 1962, at the age of 81 years old, he sold his collection for a mere $5,000. Just six years later, Glidden died. However, in March 2012, an unlabeled box was discovered, resting deep within the Catalina Island Museum archives. In this box was Glidden's collection of secret records, among which was, most importantly, a series of unique photographs showing Ralph Glidden indeed excavating one of his authentic, giant, and very ancient skeletons. Have you ever heard of a man known as Ag? References to Ag appear in the Phoenician inscriptions from Beblos, within the much older Canaanite Ugaritic texts, within Midian, on the northwest-era peninsula, in Deuteronomy, in the Book of Numbers, and in Joshua, mentioned in many religious and nonreligious texts, King of Basham, which is now the Golan Heights. Who was this Ag? Well, it turns out, Ag was a giant, a rather special giant. He was, in fact, the last of his kind. The Book of Numbers states that he died during the Battle of Edrai. Deuteronomy chapter 3 verse 11 declares that his bedstead, translated in some texts as sarcophagus, was made of iron and was 9 cubits in length and 4 cubits in width, about 13 and a half feet by 6 feet. It goes on to say that at the royal city of the Ammonites, his giant bedstead could still be seen as a novelty at the time the texts were written. Fast forward to the present day, and a miraculous discovery has been made, a discovery which could see more biblical stories being proven historically accurate. A recent archaeological dig has unearthed no less than two dozen skeletons, all of giant proportions near the ancient ruins of Rujim Elherai, which is indeed located within the Golan Heights. What's more, compellingly, this was no normal burial. During a press briefing, the team responsible for the discovery expressed their views to the world. Quote, The site of Rujim Elherai has been extensively searched for decades already, but our team noticed a mound nearby, which we thought was of major interest. It has been two long years, but it was definitely worth the effort. Said Tom Yagour, one of the archaeologists on site. One of the giants was covered in an exquisitely crafted suit of copper armor. One of their copper swords was also as hard as steel, and made in a fashion unknown to modern man. Could this really be the final resting place of the last of the giants? All we can hope is that the Smithsonian doesn't get a chance to buy them. Alaska, America's largest and most sparsely populated state, although that may not have always been the case. We have previously covered many compelling accounts, reports, excavations, even photographs of this mysterious race. It seems no matter where you turn within controversial archaeological fields, you will inevitably come across reports of giants. They even made it to the notoriously remote Polynesian island better known as Easter. Tales of giants with two rows of teeth, giants with red hair, blonde hair, moon eyes, and even giants from Alaska. Just who were these world traversing ancient Goliaths? Were all these different tribes related? Were they responsible for the building of many of the ancient structures found around the world, where the placement of huge megalithic blocks still perplexes us to this day? Atlan is known as the Gold District of Alaska, and James L. Perkinson owned a piece of it. An extremely wealthy American miner who found something remarkable in his land, something so impressive, he graciously went to the San Francisco Call newspaper personally to report his findings. Two weeks prior, the first excavations were being made for a tunnel which unfortunately broke through into a layer of an ancient burial ground. Within were seven gigantic skeletons. One was a mere seven feet in height, yet the others were of a tremendously greater stature, some over ten feet tall. The layer is at a high altitude, and the ground is half frozen, making for great preservation chances, said Perkinson. He believed that many more giants were buried there, as the ones he unearthed were lying comparatively close together. The skeletons were unusually well formed, but one unique feature was the size of the bones, the forearms were enormous in comparison to usual people. Besides two of the skeletons were spears, rudely shaped, and pointed with sharp stones. Other pieces of stone and carved metal were found nearby. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be long before it all seemingly vanished. Regardless, this was a noble act by James L. Perkinson. It is sadly unknown just what did happen to the giants on James' land. This was a report made by James L. Perkinson too and subsequently reported by The San Francisco Call on November 18, 1900. Ohio, the United States of America, nearly 12,000 years ago. The Cherokee would descend from northeast Asia to inhabit the Americas upon arrival they were welcomed by a race of giant beings. They would become known as the Moon-eyed people, a race of people far older than humans. It is said that they were responsible for the ancient ruins that now dot the landscape. The Cherokee called them the Moon-eyed, due to them only being able to see in the dark, during the day they had very poor eyesight. From the book, Old World Roots of the Cherokee, Chapter 5, What Kind of Indians Lived in the Territory The Choctaw and Chickasaw. According to local traditions, and confirmed by excavations of bones in Tennessee, a race of white giants. The Choctaws told of a race of giants that once inhabited the area, and with whom their ancestors fought when they first arrived in Mississippi. It was always believed that these were just stories passed down from generation to generation, the tribe for example had a legend of the mastodon roaming the Great Plains of America. However, over the past few years the remains of this mythical race have began to surface, confirming the Cherokees' accounts. This story was told by Comanches in 1857, many moons ago, a race of white men, ten feet high, and far more rich and powerful than any white people now living, inhabited a large range of country, extending from the rising to the setting sun. Their fortifications crowned the summits of the mountains, protecting their cities in the valleys. They excelled every other nation on earth, either before or since, in all manner of cunning handicraft, they were brave and warlike, ruling over the land they had rested from its ancient possessors with a high anwarty hand. They drove the Indians from their homes by the sword, and occupied the valleys in which their fathers had dwelt before them. The remnants of their fortresses, and the crumbling ruins that surrounded us all, is what remained of their mighty cities. In agreement, the Indian trader Adair often referred to the Nanish Tahuolo, as departed white ghosts, vested with spiritual powers whose descendants were priests and magicians. Navajo legends speak of the star-naked people, a regal race of white giants end out with mining technology who dominated the west, enslaved lesser tribes and had strong holds all through the Americas. The remains support legends of this race of giants having multiple sets of teeth, and having been over ten feet in height. The remains have been officially exhumed, but alas not officially covered in the press, it is as if we are now at a point of paradigm destruction. Artifacts that tell of such beings are no longer successfully hidden, they are now just ignored.  Polished slate tools have been found, including fishing plummets, which were apparently regarded as sacred, belief that the grandmother moon was the repository of souls, a diet of mainly shellfish and seafood. The building of fishwears on North American rivers to trap migrating eels, this is a form of fishing known as Elbering, but due to plummeting stocks it is now widely regarded as detrimental to the ecosystem. Certain vegetarian habits, wild rice, for instance, inscriptions on artifacts, especially pipes, often buried with the dead, use of coal and petroleum, weaving and looms, knowledge of seafaring, mathematics and engineering, including canals and irrigation, burying of a dog with a child to guard the latter in the afterlife, a language apparently Afroasiatic and close to Semitic tongues, and kingcraft, nobles were buried in seated positions on thrones surrounded by a coterie of their retainers. They also had flatter heads and six fingers and toes. Were these giants highly advanced? Did they build the pyramids, there is also, many contradictory tales, across the earth, which speak of primitive, cannibalistic beasts, enslaved or used for their strength, yet no legend has ever been corroborated with such compelling archaeology, as the moon-eyed people of Ohio. Where these races of giants came from, or indeed where they went, is a question which needs to be answered. It is now a well-known, heavily studied fact that the modern-day bird was once a very different-looking animal, evolution in the form of a radical transformational adaptation, forced upon them by gradual changes in the earth's environment, from which they once came, that being the dinosaur. We now know this to be fact, thanks to modern technology. Our capability to now scan these fossils, some found remarkably well preserved, still fortunately containing many things which have allowed us to discover that dinosaurs had bird brains, or more accurately, birds have dinosaur brains. With current investigations even shining light upon the reality that many of these gigantic animals, including the T-Rex, once had maines made of feathers. This drastic change from the dinosaur, resulting in the vast array of creatures we see today, from the ostrich to the albatross, even to the commonly domesticated budgerigar. Yet they all share one common trait, a significant reduction in their size, even animals which survived unchanged such as the crocodile, still shrank considerably. This shrinking of said species, having been demanded of them by environmental changes. Evolutionary adaptation, as we have covered in the past, is, in the channel's opinion, in its true sense, an adaptation of specific sets of vertebrate types, the true definition of species, not as Darwinian theory posits, of leaps between such. Thus, evolution witnessed within the animal kingdom is not indicative of a shared single ancestry, but inseparable branching from specific vertebrate or phyla groups, never proven to have leaped from one to another. As such, modern-day birds could in fact be seen as the product of de-evolutionary adaptation. This loss of size would in all probability have also resulting in a deterioration in their intellectual potential. This being due to the considerable decrease in brain mass, possibly derived from cataclysm, which deprived them of the resources needed to remain at such gigantic sizes. The reason for this digression is the channel's postulation of this same process, having once possibly occurred to Homo sapiens also. Could this explain why some of the oldest ruins are also some of the most advanced? With many remaining beyond the reach of modern man's ability to understand them, is it possible that man once had a much higher intellect than us today, due to a far greater size cranium? Simply put, were we once giants, just as modern-day birds were once dinosaurs? Legends and accounts of ancient giants can be found all over the world, also featuring in many ancient religious teachings. Additionally, many of the still unexplained sites of Earth regularly feature doorways many feet, sometimes even meters above that which is required by and for humans of our modern scale. The Terracotta Army, for example, is believed by many independent researchers, including Mystery History, to have been made by a lost civilization, and their average height, intriguingly, is much taller than modern man. Many accounts exist of giants, which share similar descriptive characteristics. Red hair, double road teeth, elongated skulls, etc. With many accounts of red-headed giant remains actually discovered and excavated all over the world, yet often all that survives of these reported events is a small news article regularly noting Smithsonian involvement in said recoveries, yet seemingly and conveniently always slipping away from the public domain. Lovelock Cave being another example, locals tell of it once being the home of a group of red-headed giants, which was eventually blocked and the giants burnt alive, a giant handprint still visible on a rock in the cave, presumably made by one of these individuals during their unpleasant demise. Yet what has to be the most compelling piece of evidence, fortunately still in view to suggest giants did indeed once exist, are footprints found all over the globe, once laid down upon sediment, now fossilized into solid stone. These footprints range in size up to a few meters in length, indicating that humans, at some point in the distant past, may have been even larger than many dinosaur species. This would have undoubtedly given them the capability to have moved the ancient megaliths we often cover, and also the ingenious nature of many of said sites due to a larger brain. Are these footprints proof that we too, just like the modern bird, were once monstrous in size? Yet at some point within antiquity, experienced a similar or the same cataclysmic events which forced a shrinking of our mass over many generations. And this de-evolution have been due to what titled the axis of the earth. When our earth was aligned, did it have the ability to provide and sustain such growth? Once providing a suitable habitat for an abundance of resources required for the far greater size food chain witnessed during the Jurassic period, we find the evidence to support the hypothesis of giant ancient humans highly compelling.


What's up everyone? I'm Giovanni here at WebSummit 2021 with Andrew Serwer, the editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. How are you doing today, Andy? I'm doing great, Giovanni. How are you doing? I'm doing great. What are your first impressions of the conference so far? Well, it's great to be back in person and, you know, we've all been living in this virtual world for 18 months and so to see everyone in real time is amazing and there's a lot of energy here. This is almost back to what it was before the pandemic. Among the speakers, among the leading speakers of the opening ceremony, there was the CEO and co-founder of Sorer, NFT Unicorn. So a representative of the crypto industry was opening one of the largest tech conferences in the world and also the conference has an entire section dedicated to crypto this year. So what does that tell us about the role that crypto is playing today in the global tech industry? Well, I saw a little bit of his remarks and the entire hall was filled and people were wrapped. They were paying very close attention to everything he was saying and obviously it shows how important crypto is in terms of the thinking of the leading technologists around the world right now. It is very much front and center for all kinds of reasons. Obviously people are looking to build technology that fits into this space. They're looking to use blockchain and crypto currencies in their businesses and they're looking to partner with companies that are in this space as well. So it's almost like, you know, you can't avoid it. I mean, a few years ago we would say that every company is a technology company or every company is an internet company. Now to an extent every company is going to be a crypto company in one regard or another. Now I would like to talk about the concept of the metaverse. So everybody is talking about this metaverse especially after Facebook decided to rebrand itself as Meta. So what does this word mean to you and why should the world pay attention to this concept? Well, you know, it really is the next form of the internet. Virtual, persistent, always on so many use cases both from the enterprise and consumer standpoint. And the Facebook rebranding is really, really interesting to me. Obviously, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has talked about this for at least 18 months or two years now in terms of pushing the company further in using the Oculus platform of course. And the name itself is funny to me because it's sort of like it would be like Giovanni taking, saying at Giovanni when Twitter first came out. Like you grab that name first and so it's either that which is going to be really smart or it's kind of like naming your company IOT, you know, which is like kind of, you know, Internet of Things jargony like very four years ago that people will forget.  In other words, is it a sustainable name? Not just the concept, which I think is sustainable, but it's sort of the label.  So, do you see Facebook's move more of a marketing move than a substantial step into this kind of visions of the future? Well, you know, I wouldn't say either or. I think it's both, right? I mean, you know, they've had some issues in terms of their reputation. So, you know, changing the name is something that is a time-tested strategy.  We're going to have this name. Well, though, let's remember the Facebook name in terms of the product still will remain, right? So Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. So there's that. But I think, you know, so that's the marketing part to your point, Giovanni. And then the other point is, you know, no, this is actually a real signal to the world, to the marketplace, to our customers that this is where we're going and this is what's really important. And so what does crypto have to, what's the role that crypto has in the development of this metaverse, according to you? Well, you know, right now, you know, the sort of elementary use case, for instance, is in when you're using the metaverse for the consumer experience and gaming, right? If you're getting tokens and badges and you're playing and you're using crypto to do transactions in the metaverse. You know, it's not like going to be a situation where like, enter your credit card number. What's the expiration date and your security code? That's not going to happen in the metaverse.  But in other words, the default currency that is going to fuel the metaverse is going to be crypto. You know, in the same way that it's like Ether for NFTs, right? I don't know which particular form of crypto is going to be powering the metaverse, probably all manner of them. I don't think any one crypto will dominate the metaverse. If the metaverse is a reflection of the real world, then all these coins will proliferate. But it'll be so interesting. I mean, certainly I think some will become more dominant than others. And we're already in that situation right now. You know, there's the top five, the top ten, the top five. And then it becomes very much of a long tail in terms of the other currencies, right? So I think same thing for the metaverse. And now I would like to ask you your thoughts about the coverage of crypto. Because still today, when we are seeing crypto getting more and more into mainstream, we see that traditional financial media tend to be quite skeptical about it. And so what are your thoughts on that? Why are they so skeptical? And what would it take for them to change their stance towards this emerging industry? Well remember, skeptical is a very good quality for journalists to have, right? So I think that's number one. Number two, remember that the media has decades, if not a hundred years, of being aligned with legacy financial systems. So in other words, if you and your editor, and the father of your editor, all knows JP Morgan, you know, and all the way that JP Morgan works, it's very hard to get you to like change on a dime, you know, even though the CEO of, and especially because the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon is somewhat skeptical about crypto, although of course he's changing his views. So you've seen like what's happening in the media is so interesting because there's a whole new group of crypto media organizations, right? And so instead of the legacy organizations like Dow Jones and Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance immediately pivoting to crypto, they're kind of going more slowly and at the same time there's just a whole crop of new media that's covering it just by themselves. And there's a debate like, oh, that the crypto first news organizations are better than the legacy ones. The legacy ones will never get it. And the legacy ones that know we're more skeptical and you guys are just buying to it too quickly. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, right? Yeah, that's very interesting. So now a little bit of a look into the future. So we saw that 2021 was an amazing year for cryptocurrency. We saw the rise of NFT technology. We saw the adoption, I mean the approval of the first Bitcoin ETF. So what are the milestones that according to you, we should look forward to see in 2022?  Right, all that. And the squid coin. So there's a lot going on obviously. I think the regulatory framework is going to be very, very interesting. You know, that's a big issue in the United States obviously with the Securities and Exchange Commission which oversees the financial markets. Trying to wrap their brain around crypto. And you know, Gary Gensler, who is the head of the SEC in the United States, you know, if he has a press conference immediately, you know, there'll be a lot of questions about crypto. You know, people aren't really asking, well, how are you regulating, you know, the fang stocks and what's the disclosure and the unicorns is like crypto, crypto, crypto. So, you know, they've got to come up with a framework very quickly. And it's not just one framework. It's a lot of different things because, you know, when you talk to people, they're investing in these things, right, in these coins, buying these coins.  If something really blows up here, you know, it could be, I don't know if systemic, but it could be significant. And I think the regulators need to step up. Thank you very much, Andy. That was a very interesting talk to you. Thank you very much.


Well as 2018 comes to a close so will another chapter for the Beltrami County Sheriff's Office as Phil Hodaap retires after a long career in law enforcement. I Josh Peterson met up with the sheriff to not only reflect but look to the future as well. Over the past 12 years the Beltrami County Sheriff's Office has faced just about every challenge imaginable and all while under the leadership of one man. Sheriff Phil Hodaap sees the past 12 years as a success and seemed like the right time to retire and bring in younger officers. You know it's a bittersweet thing to to leave behind but you know it's time everybody has a time I think when when they think it's it's their time to move on. Not much remains of the once decorated office just some boxes and some paperwork remain creating the need to reflect all while being grateful. Leaders in the sheriff's office are exceptional. I just wanted to make sure that that the continuity and and the exceptionalism continues. The lobby of the law enforcement center proudly displays every sheriff Beltrami County has had in its history and Sheriff Hodaap says that he has no doubt that the 13th sheriff will hit the ground running. Chief Deputy Ernie Beidle will step into his new role as sheriff on January 1st. Hodaap says that Beidle is right for the job. Ernie's doing a great job already he's been my right hand man for a long time and you know he's the transition has gone very smoothly here and you know he's ready to step right in. After celebrating 44 years in law enforcement Hodaap says it was a labor of love and that leaving was bittersweet but the success over the years was only possible because of a wide range of support. I get out in the public a lot and I hear nothing but praise for the work of all the public safety officers. In Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. Prior to serving as Beltrami County Sheriff Hodaap worked 21 years as a special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hello and welcome to the session in which I explain how to figure out the fair value of financial assets or financial liabilities as it appears on the CPA exam. Now bear in mind, I am not discussing the fair value of property, plant and equipment, which will have slightly different rules. I will have a separate recording for property, plant and equipment. Fair value is an important topic on the CPA exam. It's a little bit confusing for students. Therefore, I'm going to approach it, explain it from a market perspective or no principal market perspective or no principal market perspective. I believe that's the easiest way to explain this concept. So really, you don't want to walk into the exam not knowing how to determine the fair value of a financial asset or a financial liability. Usually most of the time they'll ask you about financial assets. Now, before we start, I would like to remind you that whether you are an accounting student or a CPA candidate, I strongly suggest you take a look at my website, farhatlectures.com. I don't replace your CPA review course whether you are taking back a Roger, Gleam, Wiley or any other course. Please keep them. I am a useful addition. I explain the material differently. That's going to help you with your CPA review course, which in turn will help you succeed on the exam. Your risk to try me is one month of subscription. You can give it a try. If you find it's helpful, keep it. If not, canceled. So that's your risk. Your potential gain is actually passing. And my material is a line to mirror image your CPA review course. So it's easy to switch between my material and your CPA review course. It's on purpose so it make it easier for you. And if not for anything, take a look at my website to find out how well or not well your university doing on the CPA exam. I do have resources for other college courses. So please take a look at my website if you are an accounting student. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, please do so. Take a look at my LinkedIn recommendation, like this recording, share it with other, connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. So how do we determine the fair value of an asset, financial asset or financial liability? Well, it starts very easy. If we have a principal market, if we are told in the problem or if you are hinted and we're going to determine how to find out whether you have a principal market or not, it's easy. If you have a principal market, you'll go with the principal market price. Now, how do we determine or what type of hints do they give us that there's a principal market? Well, they'll tell you, for example, this market has the greatest value. It means most activity, the highest level of activity for that asset or liability is on that market. Then it's easy. Then whatever that principal market price is, then you go with that price. Very easy. You ignore the most advantageous market. They may tell you the principal market price is $50 or let's say $100. They will say the principal market price is $100. But there's the most advantageous market and the price is $105. Well, I don't care. If I have a principal market, I will go with my principal market. Now, what is the most advantageous market? We're going to talk about that in a moment. But the point is, if you are told the principal market, which somehow told in the problem as the greatest volume or the highest level of activities, where there's the most volume of buyers and sellers, you'll go with that market and you will ignore transaction costs. So if there's a principal market, it's easy to deal with the problem. I'll go with that price. The most advantage, the best price, I'm sorry, the price of the principal market. Very easy. And I'm going to illustrate this as an example. Let's assume there's no principal market. In other words, this stock or this liability is traded on several exchanges and there's no principal market. We don't know what the principal market is. Now what we have to do, we have to determine the most advantageous market. Now, how do we determine the most advantageous market? This is the question becomes. Now it becomes you have to kind of know the rules. Well, you have to find what is the best price for the asset or the lowest price to settle the liability. Just think about assets, okay? Because most of the time they ask you, what's the fair value of the asset, but if they're dealing with liability, you just kind of reverse the process, say, what is the lowest price I can pay to settle the liability? Now, how do I determine the most advantageous market? I have to take into account the transaction cost you consider. So when you are determining the most advantageous market, you have to consider the transaction cost to determine the most advantageous market. And notice what I said. You don't consider transaction cost when you're answering fair value. What does that mean? It means, okay, I'm going to take into account my transaction cost in determining my most advantageous market. Once I determine my most advantageous market, I no longer use transaction cost to determine the fair value. Don't worry. I'm going to show you an example on the next slide. But this is what you need to know. So let's look at an example. That's the best way to do it. So let's assume we have a company that have a financial asset that's actively traded in two markets, Milan, Italy, and Japan, Tokyo. So they company transact in both market. The price of the asset in Milan is $50. If the company sells the asset, they will incur a transaction cost of $4. That's in Italy. The price of the asset in Tokyo is $48. And if the company sells the asset, they incur a transaction cost of $1. And the question is, what's the fair value of the financial asset? Now, I'm going to show you three different scenarios because here you are not told which one is if there's a principal market or there's no principal market. I'm going to make the first assumption. If we're going to assume Milan is the principal market, if you are told in the problem on the market in Milan, that's the most volume, then that's it. It's easy. Then you would look at Milan. If Milan is the principal market, well, the fair value is $50. Easy. If Milan is the principal market, if you are told in the problem, Tokyo is the principal market or you are hinted in the problem that Tokyo is the principal market, well, guess what? If Tokyo is the principal market, then that's easy. I will focus on the Tokyo and the price in Tokyo is $48. So notice the price in Tokyo is not the most advantageous. It's lower than Milan. But since we are assuming it's the principal market, we'll go with the principal market price because the principal market has the highest activities. It means it's reflecting the true price. That's why I said, if there's a principal market, it's easy. You'll go with the principal market price. Now let's assume there's no principal market for this asset. So Milan is not the principal market, Tokyo is not the principal market and there's no principal market. Here we have to take a look at what's the most advantageous market. So now we are dealing with this side here. There's no principal market. Now we have to determine what is the most advantageous market and determining the most advantageous market we have to take into account transaction costs. So let's come back here. So what's the most advantageous market? Well, let's take a look at Milan first. So if we're looking at Milan and Tokyo, the price is $50. Now you take into account transaction cost minus $4. It's going to give us $46. Tokyo, the price is $48 minus $1. Give us $47. So which one is the most advantageous market? Well, the most advantageous market is where I can sell the asset at a higher price. Well, the most advantageous market is Tokyo. Now the question is, what's the fair value of the asset? Because the question is asking, what's the fair value of the asset? The fair value of the asset is $48. I don't take into account the transaction cost when I'm determining the fair market value because the question is asking about the fair value. If the question was, what is the most advantageous market? I would say Tokyo is the most advantageous market. But that's not the question. The question is, what's the fair value of the asset? The fair value of the asset, since there is no principal market, is the price on the most advantageous market, which is Tokyo, which is $48, not $47. So notice I used the transaction cost here to determine the most advantageous market, not to determine the fair market value. And this is where students, they get tripped by selecting $47 as the price. No, it's the fair value, not the most advantageous market. I hope this recording will help you clarify this point. At the end of this recording, I'm going to remind you again to visit farhatlectures.com. Again, I don't replace your CPA review course. I have many lessons that goes hand in hand with your CPA review course that's going to help you explain the material differently. If you like it, please subscribe. You invest for your CPA once in your lifetime. Take advantage of it. Don't shortchange yourself. Pass the exam, move on with your life. Good luck, study hard, and of course, stay safe.


I'm Michael Morris, I'm the superintendent in Amherst, and thank you for watching the latest episode of Window into Arps. This is an unusual episode, a little different than our format in the past. With me today are outgoing last day, where this is, we're catching Eric Nakajima on his last day as a school committee member in Amherst, and Anastasia Adonis who recently departed the school committee, and I think worth noting played large roles including being chairs of the Amherst and regional school committees over the past few years. So we thought it was a great, I thought it was a great opportunity to hear from you all and for the community to hear from you more importantly, about what your experience has been like, to give you an opportunity to reflect on that time, and to share with the community what are some things looking forward to future committee members might benefit from hearing. So thank you both for making time to do this, and for this being your last official act of, as a school committee member, quasi-official, and for willing to come back a month later in Anastasia, I appreciate it. Thank you for the invitation. Thank you. So first, if you want to introduce yourselves, you can, and maybe talk about when you joined the school committee, and perhaps if you want to combine that with, you know, what's your motivation, when did you join, but also why did you join, it's a time consuming commitment, and what were your thoughts on that, Anastasia, do you mind starting us off? So again, thank you for the invitation, Mike. It's great to be here, and I'm Anastasia Ordonez, and I joined the school committee. I was, I campaigned actually in late winter, early spring of 2016, and was elected to the position through a town-wide vote in March of 2016. In answer to your question about why I decided to join in the first place, I just, my family and I had recently moved to Amherst less than a year prior to my decision to run, and I had gotten to know some of the community members here in town, and had just thought that it was wonderful how incredibly involved and politically active many of the members here in the community are, and when the opening, you know, it came to my understanding that there was an opening in the school committee, actually two seats that were about to open up, and you know, people were asking around to see if there were people who were interested in early education, who were interested in education, were generally public school education, and thought that maybe I might be a good candidate, and I said, you know, this felt like a good time for me to actually put some deep roots into a community that I was new to, hopefully get to learn something, and hopefully contribute something of importance, giving, you know, the experience that I had in the background that I had in non-profit work, and you know, working with a lot of different communities around the country. So it just, you know, was one of those things that I had never seen myself running for political office before, but it seemed like something worthwhile, and yeah, I threw my hat in the ring just, you know, to see what would happen. Thank you. Great. And I'm Eric Nakajima, and I came on the school committee in October of 2016. I was actually elected to finish out a term that was originally elected by Laura Kent at the same time that in a stage was, so actually I was filling out the other seat, and I grew up in this town, went, graduated in high school in class of 85, grew up in a family of educators, and so I've been around schools and teachers and education my entire life, and when the seat became open and people, you know, sort of think mentally back to 2016, as a colleague to my left knows better than I do, it was a tough time for our school district and our school committee, and I thought, given my background in government, given my passion for our schools, that I thought some of my experience could be helpful in helping to serve to also lead the school committees and put us in a better track. And additional question I want to ask is, what was some of your motivation or desire to become, because you sort of touched on this, Eric, when you talked about leadership, to become chair of the committees, and what does that kind of role do or mean, you know, because it is, the school committees have different roles, but I used that word casually earlier that each of you served as a chair of one of the school committees, but I wonder if you had any thoughts to share about that particular role and what interested you or motivated you to kind of participate or at least accept the nomination for that role. I'd be happy to jump in. Yeah, it's actually kind of weird, because when I was elected to join the school committee, there was a low-level buzz that I might also have the honor of being the regional chair at the same time, so when I came on, I kind of knew that there might be a possibility I would both serve as a committee member, but also serve in the role of chair, and honestly, that appealed to me, because this town, there are a lot of people of a lot of passions about what they want in their schools. We also have a community of educational professionals who have tremendous ideas, experience, all the richness they can bring into their, into the schools every day, in the classrooms every day, your leadership. You were either acting or interim superintendent or one of the other at that point, but honestly, what I wanted to do more than anything else was try to see if we could help, at least from the committee perspective, the parts work together better and help people find both policies, norms, practices that could help people collaborate more effectively and get back onto a track where all those really good ideas and all those passions from the community could come to the fore more effectively. And I thought, given the fact that I had a lot of experience in government, and actually, to be honest with you, even up the road at UMass when I was an undergraduate there, I've been chairing really contentious committees and boards since I was like 19 or 20 years old.  And I get a lot of fulfillment out of that. I mean, if you ask me what I did, like personally over the last few years, not a heck of a lot. What I feel like I've been able to do, which I'm really proud of is help other people succeed. And that makes, that is tremendously fulfilling. You'd like to add anything? Yeah, I think the, the role of chair is, you know, as Eric alluded to, a difficult and time consuming role.  They have careers, they have other responsibilities, they have jobs and, you know, families and all that. Um, and so, you know, it often becomes a, a role that is incredibly important role that needs to, to happen, uh, in order for agendas to be set and, you know, for the, the mechanics of the committee to function really well, but I also found that many times our member committee members just don't have the time to chair a committee. Even if they want to. So, um, you know, my interest in, in stepping into that role was, you know, two fold one, because I felt it was sort of my responsibility after having served in the committee for a couple of years, uh, to, to step in and take over that, that time consuming role. Um, but also it gives you an opportunity, I think, to kind of flex your management muscles and be able to try things like setting the agendas for the meetings, uh, and leading some of the conversations and the topics, uh, for discussion, you know, working with you to more closely than, you know, other committee members get a chance to do so. Um, so those things were very fulfilling to me and, you know, and it felt, um, like a good opportunity for me to, you know, be able to step in and play that role. Yeah, one of the things that I observe from my seat, um, I don't have to respond to this, I just want to say it, is that one of the challenging things about a chair, and I, less publicly than you chair lots of meetings, right, is, um, and I think both of you have done this and have seen you do it as a routine, is that you're res, you're reserving your own opinions for after everyone else has spoken. So I think a lot of times people have this perception of the chair's opinion is the one that dominates. And in fact, both of you led in ways that allowed for everybody else's opinions to come before yours. And, and I think that's notable, right? Not, not every chair of every committee chooses to lead in that way, but I think it really, to your point, Eric, before, and I know, and a stage was nodding, it allowed for the full committee to, to engage on topics. That's part of what your role is, is chair, is to try to make sure that everyone is involved, everyone has information. When you're looking at the schedule of the agendas and things like that, are you involving everyone in that process, do they get enough information so they can participate very well, well during the meeting? And I think, to be honest with you, I think, I don't know what you think in a stage, but, um, I'd be lying if like a chair has plenty of opportunities to get their opinions out there, and if they think the committee might be heading in an ill-advised direction, you have lots of opportunities to redirect. The reality is, in other words, you have lots of power that's at least implied. So, to me what that means is what the committee can do and should do, and what a chair should do, is hold your powder and make sure that people, especially if they're newer, and maybe they don't have as much experience with the process of doing this, that they have a chance to have that moment where they don't know what they want to say yet, and do you give them the space to create, right, and you have to be generous to give that space to create on their part. Yeah, I would say that the chair also really sets the tone for the meetings, you know, by, you know, encouraging that equal participation among all the different members, but also for the public. You know, we have to often think about, you know, what the members of the public that are coming for public comments, what they need from that session, from that meeting, and, you know, really hold that time for them also to engage and to, you know, to learn and hear what the committee's discussing and thinking about. And then also I think the last thing that I want to say is just, you know, making sure that that transparency from the committee is made apparent, right? And so that, you know, ultimately, that was something that I took very seriously in making sure that that's being communicated out, the work of the committee is being communicated out fairly to the entire community, and that's where the chair plays a principal role, but it really isn't about us dominating conversation, it is about creating that space for both the community and the committee to be able to discuss the issues that affect all of our schools. Yeah, thank you. So another question that I hear batted around and hearing it again these days. How is a school committee member, how is an individual, I guess, prepared to serve as a school committee member? And, you know, if you could describe for folks watching what's required by the state, and what are ways that committee members, if they're new, can bring themselves up to speed and public education concerns both locally and then beyond. Yeah. I think that, you know, one of the most interesting learning curves I've ever gone through in my life has been becoming a school committee member. You sort of step into this role, you know, literally off the street, right? You run for, you know, for public office in this position and you don't necessarily have to have a degree in education or, you know, have worked in schools or anything like that previously. So that means that in order to do a good job, you actually do have to do your homework and take some time to learn how to, you know, how to become an effective school committee member. But there's also certain protocols that have been set in place that, you know, I think sometimes gets lost. And that's the, you know, there's a few different courses that are required by law for school committee members to take. There's, you know, the charting the course of the MASC, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees mandates that all school committee members take. And that's an annual training course, you know, not every school committee member does it every year, but it's required at the very beginning when you first join. There's also the, you know, conflict of interest, ethical training that we have to go through as a state employee, technically, as a public employee. But there's a lot of other resources out there that, you know, that exist. And the various discussions that we participate in the budget discussions, you know, the hours and hours of meetings, both in public and also with the superintendent and, you know, with the community and with other members of our local government that really helps shape a committee member's understanding of what it means to serve on the committee and, you know, helps us better know what we can and can't do or should or shouldn't do. But there's also just, you know, an incredible amount of, like I said, on-the-job training that goes on during the course of those meetings that, you know, I know I was always astounded by how much work actually goes on in our public schools. And we saw, you know, many presentations by our principals, our special education, you know, educators, and many other folks who are involved in our public schools. It's a, it takes a village to get this work done. Yeah, I'm trying to think, what can I add to that? It was very complete. I think one of the most important things you learn when you get on this, well, one, when I came on, I was thrown into being chair, like literally at my first meeting. And so never could you have a stronger dichotomy between a role of facilitator where you're like, you know, parliamentary rules and you can call on people or whatever and then having a complete vacuum of knowledge about what we're actually doing. And so like the funny thing is usually when school committee members come on, they're not in that position. And so they can kind of sit back and what you realize early on when you get on is, oh my gosh, there's so much I don't know. Like, I don't know why we do things a certain way. What's the appropriate way to ask questions? How do you interrelate with the public? There are lots of things you learn, as you said, on the job. And that was really like made clear to me if you go back and look at the tape, you can see it's embarrassing because I'm asking colleagues like I don't really understand what we're doing now. And they would tell me and stuff like that. But one of the things that I think, there are two things that are, I think, advantageous to that on the job learning. One is that school committee members themselves legally don't have any power outside of being a member of the committee as a whole. And so the funny thing is, even though it might seem awkward to come on the committee and be really conscious of the fact that other members know a lot more than you do, and you've got to norm up. You've got to read, you've got to pay attention, get it better. But on the other hand, another way of looking at it is that the committee only exists as the whole of the group. And so the fact that you can come on with your own perceptions, what your neighbors and people you've talked to when you're running for office are telling you, and bring that perspective to the table, but also recognize that the group around you is going to bring their ideas and experiences, including maybe a longer experience than a school committee, is I think really a valuable thing because it helps you adopt that mindset that we're here to do this as a group, regardless of what my agenda or reasons for running were. And then the second thing that goes with that is you understand the value of the professional staff, I mean all the educators and staff, as well as the community. Because ultimately, when you're orienting yourself to figure out how to be an effective member, you're drawing on all of your homework, the courses from MSc, but then everyone around you becomes a resource to help you figure out how to do a better job. And ultimately, that's what makes you a more effective member, I think. So looking back at your tenures, what are some of the highlights? What are the things that you think back and smile, right? About, and it could be personal, in terms of things that you sort of advocate for, but it also could be more general about the work of the committee. What are things that kind of flash to you as you think about highlights over the last three, three and a half years? I have a second contract. Well, personally. Forgive me for saying that. Although, honestly, I know that there's a ton of people who are gonna be watching, who are gonna be like, yeah, right, exactly. Mike's staying. No, I think the stability that we've had in the district run leadership on the committee, I think our ability to improve the functioning of the committee. And then, I don't wanna, if I start saying all of them, I'm gonna say some of the ones that Anastasia wants to say. So, honestly, restorative justice in an annual climate survey at the high school and middle school, common aunties, the dual language program for River. What are some of your favorites? Well, I think getting accepted into the MSBA school building project pipeline this year, this past year was a huge accomplishment for the district and for this community. And I'm particularly proud of the work that our committee did while I was there on that. Yeah, and I think, as Eric said, there's a lot of things that we have sort of presided over in a lot of the decisions that we made that I'm happy to say ended up in, I think, a stronger district, stronger programming. And in overall, really, the stability was key. I think, I remember hearing from a lot of different community members when I first came on board, wow, the school committee is just such a difficult job. I wouldn't wanna be in your shoes. And as a fairly new Amherst resident, I didn't know how to take that, right? It's like, what does that mean exactly? And I came in with this wide-eyed optimism about the changes that were possible and how we could implement a lot of these things. And I was happy at the end of my tenure that we did see a lot of really positive movement in the district. And I think, again, thanks to your leadership, but it was really what I kept hearing as well from a lot of the educators that I would talk with and parents and family members was, we're looking for leadership that sticks around and leadership that will guide our district to be the absolute best that it can be. And so, the things that you just named, the things that I named, I think show evidence of that. This is, and we still have a long way to go. They're not perfect, right? And I think that there's an incredible amount of work and the community should continue to hold all of us accountable for that. But we've come a really long way and it's great to see. And I think one of the things that I'm super excited about is at the high school and in the three elementary schools, we have strategic plans that are in place. We've had presentations. You can go back and look them for the public on Amherst media and find presentations from the different schools. We're making progress on them and you're seeing a space being opened up for staff to work with the community and think about what's over the horizon and in an environment in which you know you have scarce resources and time is one of the most scarce resources that what the stability buys you, so to speak, is a buys a space in which you're actually able to start reflecting, planning, building information, building partnerships, some outside of, I mean you've talked in recent meetings about examples in which outside of our community you're potentially building partners for like preschool and stuff like that. I mean, and to me the fact that we can now see that progress, I mean I know Anastasia was really intense and really focused on developing a capital plan as well as also a custodial and maintenance plan for elementary schools and what, mice are down in Wildwood, right? I mean, it's working. Yes, it's working. But the thing is that's in the end that's what it's about, right? I mean, Cominantes is in place. This isn't about passing policies and all this kind of other garbage. It's about can we see things happening in our buildings? Can we see things happening in our libraries, media centers and classrooms and even the athletic fields, right? They're in better shape. There's a long way to go but you can really see it happening. And that's so exciting. And I wanna thank both of you because the one thing that you didn't mention that I thought you might, but I think I can say it personally is some of the support and then eventually a policy around immigration, right? And so for me as superintendent to have a school committee that I knew I felt confident in and successfully did support me to support our immigrant populations in the community so publicly and so clearly, that doesn't happen everywhere, you know? Talk to other superintendents and that's a risky political move for people to make. And I had the opposite experience here of partnership and collaboration on that topic. And I think that extends to other oppressed groups as well but I think that was a really tangible one a couple of years ago that still has legs and still really matters. So I wanna thank both of you. It's good to hear it does. I mean, it's actually the person sitting on my left as well as myself, I'm sure are proud of that. I'm proud of that. So you talked about some of the aspects of the role that you enjoyed and some things you feel good about. What were some of the, you referenced it a little while ago what were some of the particularly challenging parts that perhaps people were alluding to as you joined the committee, you know? How did you experience them or what were some of those challenges? Well, I think the, again, you know, what I mentioned at the very beginning of this conversation about a politically engaged community. And you know, I think that that's, I still think it's actually a wonderful thing to have community that cares so deeply about it's, you know, the education that's taking place across its community but also specifically in its public schools, right?  And so, you know, people care very passionately about that and so I think that part of the challenge is when people have such strong opinions you're gonna hear different opinions, right? From the ones that the committee may have, superintendent has. So I think managing all of those different opinions and expectations is, was quite challenging, you know, is always going to be challenging.  And we've had to just sort of weather that and learn how to, you know, how to engage the public in a positive way, in a transparent way. And so, you know, and that's been a learning process just to, you know, to understand where those expectations, you know, sort of come up against what you think is feasible in terms of a volunteer part-time role, right?  So there's, you know, those challenges there, I think with just what the expectations are and what the reality of the work is. I think there's a lot you have to do and that we have to do and that we tried to do to improve transparency, to improve communications, open up spaces where the public can engage. And I think, you know, we talked about this in the athletic fields. If some parent is worried that like their kid's gonna break their ankle, they have every reason to come in and be really intense and express themselves in ways that maybe in hindsight they wish they hadn't. Like literally in terms of the way they talk and present because the issue is so personal and it is genuinely important, right? And that's what you're typically dealing with and people who come to us, we have to be open to creating and improving all the time, improving our models of how we engage. I would say the toughest thing about doing it is, and this is a tough thing in this town sometimes. I know we're not unique, but it's certainly hard in this town. You have to be kinder to people. And I'm willing to say that declaratively and I'm not interested in arguing with anyone about it.  But in the public, it's like, our organization is made of people. The population that we're engaging in and serving are all people, they're all families, they'll come someplace, right? And so the idea, and we're never gonna be perfect. So as much as we need to improve, there are always gonna be things that someone can genuinely point out or like accurately not done as well as they could be, not resourced in a way they should be, that's entirely true. The hard thing, and it's something that we need to work on all the time in this community, is being kinder and more considerate and engaging people as human beings. And I like the conversations about restorative justice. If you find that prism point through which you're able to communicate and engage well and or personally as a human being, that also opens up dimensions to dealing with oppression, structural or otherwise. And so you gotta walk the walk. And I think that's one of the most important things we could, I would hope that if people are watching this, they think about how they can present and engage in ways that build that harmony, trust and dialogue and don't break it down. Thank you. So final one for each of you is, what advice would you give to future school committee members? There'll be some election by town council and a combined meeting of town council and school committee coming soon for your seat, Eric, and there'll be further elections in coming years and people may go back to this tape. So you got an opportunity to tell them what you think. What advice would you offer? Just run. I think we need more people running for public office, period, school committee members, town council, what have you. And especially, I think for people of color and women, it's incredibly important to just throw your hat in the ring and to do it in the spirit of collaboration and building up rather than tearing down. I think that there are roles for all of us to play in so many different ways, but that is something that I would say is just do it. It's not as bad as it seems, actually. Honestly, it really isn't, and it's a great, really rewarding experience to help your community, help your neighbors, help the schools. Absolutely, I'd say do it. Well, my parting words are that, so I was walking in today and Jim Lisco, who's the executive director of Amherst Media, thank you Amherst Media for running the show, said, oh my goodness, losing both Eric and Anastasia at the same time. They were such strong leaders and complimentary, and someone from MASC, which is the Massachusetts Association of School Community Members, reached out to me and said, oh, she saw the news about you, Eric, and she'd known about your departure and someone who'd been out in the district working with us a bit, and was just so saddened to hear that the field of Massachusetts School of Community Members was losing both of you, which I think hopefully you can acknowledge and it feels good that people will acknowledge your work over the last few years. And then, of course, the person from AMASC said, well, why don't you do it on the shelf? Send me the link, I'm gonna put it on AMASC's website and put it on their social media profile because she just feels like our school committee, our current organization is a little unique in terms of the multiple districts, and we're not as unique as we think, but we're a bit unique is the way I would describe it, and I've appreciated personally and professionally working with each of you and learned a tremendous amount about leadership and about how to work with others. So I thank both of you for your 10 years. Thank you. Not alone in doing that. And I wish you the best in your post-school committee lives. It's set down a stage in what I saw. Hope your Tuesday nights are wonderful, whatever TV show, whatever you're doing, it's great and your family see you more often. It's very relaxing. Wish you success in your new position in Boston, which is incredibly important work to be done. So thank you all and thank you all for watching. We'll be back very soon with the next episode of Window Into Arps and we always appreciate you tuning in and learning what's going on in our district. Thank you.


In this video, I'm going to show you how to upload your photos to nine sites, including your websites, with complete titles, descriptions, hashtags, and keywords, all in under three minutes. And it's the social media management workflow for photographers, and it's so much easier to do than it was for me to say that clickbait title. Let's jump in. Hi, my name is James Willer. I'm a co-founder for Loo and I'm also a travel and landscape photographer. In this video, I'm going to show you my workflow for uploading my photos to social media and stock sites. Now before I get started, if this is your first time watching a video for me, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notifications so you can get notified of future videos. Now before I start the three-minute timer, I've already created my photo and lightroom and I've downloaded as a JPEG to my computer. We'll start off at the PhotoLoo login page. Let's start the timer now. So you can sign up for PhotoLoo for free at PhotoLoo.com, but I'm going to log in with the user I already have set up. First, I choose the photo I want to upload to all the different sites. These are the sites I'm going to upload to. All the major social sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, and the stock sites like Shutterstock, Alamy, and Adobe Stock. And my photography website, souvenirpixels.com, which runs on SmugMug. I typically enter the photo, title, and description in Lightroom. And PhotoLoo reads it from the metadata. So I can change it here, but this one looks good to me. So I'll just use this for SmugMug and Flickr, which both allow a title and description. The description I entered in Lightroom wasn't a good stop description, so I'm going to enter a more keyword-rich description to be used on the stock sites here. Next, I need to add in my keywords. Now I've already added some keywords to the entire shoot in Lightroom, but I want to add some more photo-specific keywords. So I'm choosing them from the suggested keywords. Typically, I like to have at least 30 keywords per image. That looks pretty good. Now, Facebook has only a post, not a title and description like Flickr. But I'll just put my title on a separate line from my description and post it to Facebook. Now for the tweet. I'm going to take my photo description and add some additional hashtags to it before I tweet it. Next is Instagram. I'm going to use the same title and description for Instagram. Then I have a group of hashtags that I've saved as favorites. I'm going to add those first. Now I'm going to go in and add some additional suggested hashtags at different levels of popularity. Now I can review what's going to be posted to each site before either posting it now or scheduling it later. I'll just post it right now. Now here's where the magic happens. Blue is taking that photo and uploading it to all the sites. Now as the photos are uploaded, the spinning arrows will turn into checkboxes. The green checkboxes indicate that the photo has been posted and I can click on the checkbox to see the post. And the sites with blue arrows require an additional post app. Most of the stock sites require you to go in and upload releases and set a category before submitting. Since this photo has no releases, this is pretty quick. Alamy is the only stock site that will auto submit for you, but if there are people in the photo, you will still need to go back into Alamy as well, upload the releases for the photo. Instagram has one more step. I already have the photo to app installed on my phone, so I received a notification to finish the post with the app. I need to go through the standard Instagram pages. When I get to the description section, I can just paste it in the description of the hashtags. And that's it. With that timer, I finish in under three minutes. OK, so what did you think? Is that easier or more complicated than your current online workflow? Let me know in the comments below. Also, I went through that pretty quickly because I wanted to show the entire workflow in three minutes, but I'm going to be posting other videos on how I set up that workflow and why I do the things that I do in my workflow. If you're interested in those, go down and click the subscribe button below and click the bell button to be notified. Happy uploading!


Live from San Francisco, it's the Cube. Covering Oracle Open World 2016, brought to you by Oracle. Now, here's your host, John Furrier and Peter Burris. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in San Francisco for Oracle Open World 2016 flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the sales of noise. I'm here with my co-host this week, Peter Burris, head of research at Wikibon.com and also SiliconANGLE Media and our next guest is Vinnie Marchandani who is a distinguished analyst but also a award-winning author and his new book, Silicon Collar, we're going to talk about. Check it out. He really talks about the future of work and kind of demystifies this notion that everyone's going to be automated away. We're going to get to that. But Vinnie, welcome back to the Cube. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Peter, good to meet you. So we're kicking off Oracle Open World Day Three, 25 interviews in the books here in the Cube.  What's your take on Oracle this year? What's your thoughts? So a couple of threads, right? The application thread, which I cover quite a bit, I cover SAP in four and so on. And nice to see the adaptive intelligent apps, you know, their version of artificial intelligence brought to transaction systems, right? That's nice to see them. Still very early. We got some early glimpses at it. It'll take them probably a year or a half to flesh all the detail out. Their blue guy acquisition allows them to be slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to consumer marketing data, by when it comes to HR, financials and so on. Still a while before their machines have enough data to be able to learn, right? So that's one positive from the application side. The other positive from the application side is because they have such a broad range of applications now, I'm starting to see their legacy customers, people SAP, JD Edwards, et cetera, say, ooh, I could finally look at moving a lot of stuff into the cloud. That's been a hesitation point for a number of them because they say, I can only move financials or I can only move HR. Now they can look at a much broader portfolio of applications to the cloud. So that's another slight inflection point I saw here. And you'll see that accelerating the next few years. So the timing of this all-install base, the acquisitions as the Oracle, does a lot of acquisitions, you know, people SAP, JD, or something like that. Most of them have stayed put in their legacy on-premise environments, right? Now they have a chance to start to look at migrating a lot of their footprint rather than just a point solution. So you see this as a catalyst, as an opportunity for them, as a catalyst for them to look at a new direction to kind of go to the next level with their preexisting conditions, if you will. Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I see there are times when you feel like Oracle wants to just keep looking the maintenance base. I'm starting to see signs as they're saying, hey, it is better for me to migrate this maintenance base into the cloud. And you know, there's a different set of economics with that. And clearly on the infrastructure side, I mean, you saw the attention they've been paying to Amazon this week. I see it slightly differently. You know, they're going after the sexy part of what Amazon is doing. Amazon goes after the new developer. Oracle has an opportunity within its legacy customer base. You know, every people's self-customer has somebody hosting it, every civil customer has somebody hosting it, every one of their acquisitions has somebody hosting it. It's not sexy, but moving them into the cloud infrastructure, you know, saving them 15, 20, 25% is not a bad business. I don't see Oracle as focused on that. They're going after the Amazon market, which is new developers, right? Do you think the Amazon as a red herring, though, like it's just a way to kind of get the attention for that potential install base? So kind of like, because depositioning Amazon gives Oracle a way to say, hey, don't look there, but move your stuff over, or is it a real threat to them? It's smart marketing, right? You always, it's the Avis strategy, right? You point towards a leader and be associated to the leader. So more and more oracles talking about Amazon, they're talking about Salesforce, they're talking about Workday, they're not talking about SAP, IBM, HP anymore, right? So it's- Or even really Microsoft that much. Yes, exactly. Which is probably, longer term, might even be a bigger threat. With Azure, yeah, absolutely. Especially if you come out from an applications perspective. Yes and no. Microsoft's been inconsistent on the enterprise apps side. Clearly they're desktop, they own the app space. So infrastructure-wise, interesting where Oracle will be positioned. If they want to really go after Amazon, I see them having to make significant capex investments. You know, if you look at, I interviewed Microsoft in 2010 for one of our books. They had already spent billions on the Azure data centers, right? If you look at where Amazon's invested in the last few years, it's been billions. Oracle has not. Well, Microsoft has their own needs too. They've had a big web presence they've had. Obviously, they're searching new Bing, Office 365, Skype they've bought. So they have a lot of critical infrastructure already kind of in that cloud, kind of cloud positioning. But you brought up the competition, and I want to ask you about that, because last year we saw the beginning of Larry Ellison and Mark Herd clearly trying to consolidate the messaging around cloud. So like, all the other stuff is getting there, have to do all their messaging on their own. But really been muted, if you will, by the corporate mandate of cloud, cloud, cloud, even here, not a lot of big data, and all these other stuff. They get some key notes, but it's all about the cloud. And also Larry said, oh, we have new competitors. We don't only talk about IBM and SAP, but they're still competitors, because they're out there. He's just trying to shift the game to Salesforce Workday and now Amazon. Your thoughts on SAP? Obviously, you covered them pretty deeply. They have the Hauna Cloud. You have other existing competitors. Like IBM certainly would disagree. And now you've got Dell Technologies, we'll have Dave Donatelli on shortly, grill him about that. A lot of multiple fronts with Oracle, but they're old competitors. Your thoughts on how old are they? You know, if you look at all the senior citizens, if you will, the SAPs, the IBMs, the HPs, and so on, and Dells, and so on. I think Oracle, frankly, has done a much better job positioning itself for the next generation. I mean, if I look at SAP, you know, I've covered them quite a bit. Cloud applications, only the acquired ones have any traction. They're internally built as for HANA and business by design. Really haven't had much traction at all. Yeah, and Hauna Cloud was late to the game, but they're trying to get Hauna Cloud back into that, you know, what the Apple deal was interesting. They're trying to be there. Is that just paper press release or? Any time they're talking about cloud, I look at their CapEx spend. SAP's data centers are puny and primitive at this point.  It picks a lot of investment in the...  You know, in the end, they'll have to start investing on their own, not just buying capacity, right? So the way that I would just, let me ask this question that I would look at it is, what are the paths forward for the customer and which are more or less viable? Certainly agree that Oracle's paths forward for customers that they've articulated this week are attractive. You can see customers saying, okay, I'm going to go that way. And we'll see how SAP, the paths forwards that it has, it's trying to rely a little bit more on partnerships and whatnot, and it's clearly trying to intercept the Oracle database. But at the end of the day, it does come back to whether or not the paths forward are viable. Wouldn't you say so? Absolutely, and I think in the enterprise space, progress is measured in decades, not years, right? So Oracle, even though people made Futter Fusion, it's taken a decade to become real. That does, at this point now, they've had their wounds and they're ready now, right? SAP has just started that process with S4HANA last year, right? So it's going to take them a while to mature. IBM, if you look at their cloud infrastructure, I mean, it's a two year investment, right? So in that sense, Oracle does have a slight edge, slight lead over the others. In many respects, I know you're going to show the book. We're looking at it and I want to get your thought on this, does it, Oracle's presence with its partners and the ecosystem here is interesting because it begs the question, is Oracle going to be able to ride that ecosystem down into the lower end faster than the enterprise gets upset with Oracle's pricing and contracting approaches? And so what do you think? Is Oracle going to be able to ride down with the ecosystem faster than Amazon can come up because of disaffection? You know, Oracle's always had an interesting relationship with its partners. They compete with them. I don't think they've been as dependent as someone like SAP, which has, I've written a couple of books on that. It's a $300 billion ecosystem around a $30 billion venture. I mean, they have been very partner centric, almost too much sort at the expense of the customer. Oracle's always been a little bit push and shove with their partners. Partners don't necessarily like that, but from a customer perspective, that's actually a better model is where you don't just, you know, invite partners to a party and customer pays for it. So, I don't know if I answered your question. No, you do. I mean, let's talk about your book, Silicon Collar. I love the name, it's got Silicon in it, Silicon Angle. We're calling the market with the content. So I want to talk about this. First of all, it's a great book. You should, everyone should get it. It's a deep book about tech. So it's been talked a lot about the technology industry, but it puts a lens from a future of work standpoint. And it covers a lot of the dynamics we've been talking about on theCUBE all week, which is the role of executives, the role of the company in how they form themselves in the future and demystifies this notion that AI and bots are going to automate away the world. But there's an interesting part here I opened up and want to share. The battle for technology budgets is a section of a year. And it talks about the CIO and I bring that up because we talk about budgets because the buyers of Oracle and other big company selling cloud and other things are constantly looking at how they can get more help from the CEO CFO because of the mandate to digitize their business. So the digital digitization, the digital transformation is now mandated, the CIO now has to expand their role and the budgeting and or allocation of resources is going to change. So I want to get your thoughts on that and put that in context to the book, what you're finding, the personnel issues, the HR issues around how jobs will shift. Now I said it's a zero sum game, that's my position. I think things will shift around. Yeah, people will lose their job here and there, but I think it will shift somewhere else. Your thoughts? So the reason I called it Silicon Collar was I interviewed about 50 companies, different work settings, white collar, blue collar, brown collar, UPS and so on. And I said, every job is being influenced by technology. We're not white, blue, red collar workers, we're all Silicon Collar workers. So that was the fun part of the book. So I interviewed the Golden State Warriors about how variables and data are changing the coach's job and the player's job. I interviewed BP in terms of how they're using drones in remote infrastructure, remote pipelines and robotic crawlers on their rigs and so on. I interviewed many of children's hospital here about how robotic pharmacies and robotic surgeries are changing the physician's job and how cognitive computing, the Watson type stuff is changing medicine, transcription's changing medicine. So when I look at 50 different work settings, I covered every kind of automation thing you can think of, everything from drones to exoskeletons to machine learning to variables and so on, exciting stuff. In background though, as I was doing all these interviews, I was reading all these pessimistic reports, right? There's a couple of Oxford professors who said 47% of the US workforce is susceptible to automation. Gartner, my former employer, said by 2025, a third of the workforce will be replaced by smart software, smart machines, so on and so forth. I mean, these are big numbers, right? And number of authors, number of, a lot of pessimism in the market. And I said, why, why, why, all these practitioners I'm talking to, I'm not talking about job losses, I'm talking about improved productivity, improved customer satisfaction and so on. Where are these getting all this pessimistic data? And what I found was most of them are looking at short-term evolution curves. And it's scary, right? You look at the way machines are growing, you can't feel scared. I looked at evolution over 100 years and I found example after example of how society slows down adoption of technology, right? So I looked at the grocery industry. The UPC code was first branded in 1952, for 20 years nothing really happened. In the mid-70s grocery stores started to adopt UPC scanners. Interestingly what happened was it made inventory control much more accurate. So it allowed stores to now say, hey, Kellogg, I'll store 100 of your skews, I could only store five before. Campbell, give me more soups, more variety. So skews exploded, sales exploded, grocery jobs actually went up, right? So I looked at the banking industry. The predecessor of the ATM was branded in 1960. And by the 80s, you know, ATMs were everywhere and in the last 10 years we've been moving to mobile banking. Well, we still had just in this country 90,000 matchbacks that still hire half a million tellers and other staff. And 60 years ago we would have said that job would be gone, half a million jobs still there. So where's the impact to the customer? Because now all this change is going to certainly change the value chains and how the configuration of the business models to personnel, to resources. Certainly there's going to be great software out there. We see that coming. Impact, whose lap does this fall on? Or is everyone's responsibility at this point? What was interesting was I don't see enough. This is something HR should be all over. Because it's a form of talent, right? Machines are another form of talent. And they're not paying much attention. So I think most businesses will need an automation executive who can look at different business processes in a very different way than they could 15, 20 years ago. 15, 20 years ago they should look at process and say, I can re-engineer this part, this part. Now they can do a lot more dramatic impact. Not just for cost, but customer satisfaction. I have an example of Pixar in the book. Zootopia, right there. You think with all the computer generated imagery the jobs would be gone. Zootopia had, if you look at the credits, 500 animators, sound technicians, and so on in the credits. And you could think, in the credits, how much more does Pixar and Disney animation have? So in their case, it wasn't anything but cost. It was about making a fantastic product. In Zootopia, every one of the characters had individual hair. So they could show how light reflects on every strand of hair, how wind moves through every strand of hair. I guess how many haired the giraffe at 9 million. So in their case, machines are helping make the product that way better. So it's not always about cost savings or efficiency. It's about how can I make a better product? How can I make a better product? I saw when a digital presentation last night as part of the cloud storage forum and the amount of new people working on both creative and pipelining of the workflow for these films and jobs and the data centers are being built using the storage, ZFS storage. Pretty amazing. I know you got to catch a flight. Thank you for spending the time. Great book. Finally, someone coming out with a positive view of this great revolution we're living through. This new class called the Silicon Collar. No more white collars, no more blue collars. It's going to be a flattening of the classes. Hopefully people can make money and buy a home and we don't go into a depression with the current situation. You would look better in gold than this. I'm a Silicon Collar here at Silicon Angle Media. Get this book. It's a great book. It's a good read. It's a deep read. So if you're really interested in the future and the positive impact of software eating the world, get Silicon Collar. It's a great book by Vinnie Merchandani. Thanks for sharing your book. Great to see you again. He knows what he's talking about. Former analyst, great person. Read the book, Silicon Collar. Be right back with more live coverage here at Oracle Open World after this short break.


Folks in Bemidji got to travel back to the 18th century tonight and experienced the adventures of American poet Walt Whitman. Artist Patrick Scully was the man behind the show. He wrote the entire show and performed it himself. Scully says he feels his life parallels Whitman's, so his performance is genuine. When asked to describe the play, Scully says the audience would be taken on an interactive journey and would get to see both the triumphs and setbacks of Whitman's life. What the audience gets from the performance tonight is that they get a more complete picture of who was the human being behind the great poetry that we know in Leaves of Grass. And that they also realize that there's a strong resonance between many of the political challenges and discussions that we face in contemporary society today in the United States with those that Whitman faced 150 to 200 years ago. The performance served as a fundraiser for the Beltrami County Historical Society. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.