Let's start with the question. How many of you are musicians? OK. How many of you are programmers? I see people that join between those, so good. Yes, I'm going to talk about how to build a laser harp, or maybe how to spend a lot of time building a laser harp. We'll see. So what is a laser harp? Pioneered by, as far as I know, Jean-Michel Jarre in 1982, it's a device that when you hit a laser, something sounds. That's all. It's mainly used for live performances, because you can make a really big show about it. And that's exactly what we want it for. But let's talk about how did we get here first. Who am I? Yeah, I'm standing on the stage. You're not? I used to do a lot of talking on topics like Linux and open source and embedded. I stopped doing that about 10 years ago. But every now and then it itches, so I have a personal project that I want to talk about. So here I am. More important, who are we making this thing for? So there's something called the Sin Cecilia Procretionist Group. Leeshout Maria Hout. And for everybody who's not from around, there are two small villages near Eindhoven. The southern one, Leeshout, is mostly known for a very big brewery called Bavaria. The northern one, Maria Hout is a really tiny village, mostly known for a singer called Guzmeoiz, who was born there. But they also have a very good music association. So Sin Cecilia has a harmony where they together make a lot of musical music. And they have a percussionist group where they use drums and other things. So let's introduce that. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to meet and to champion me. So this was an excerpt from a two and a half hour show that they did a few weeks ago. And as you can tell, these guys don't just live for the music, they also live for the show. So it would be nice to have an instrument that really is just about a show. And a laser harp is such an instrument. So Houspecow, the guy that is missing here, because he is actually with the youth group of the music association, they're on a trip like this right now. So we decided that I would come alone. But he's the son of my girlfriend. He is the light and audio brain behind the percussionist group. So all the lights that you saw, for example, in this first part of the video, all the lights coming up, it's his equipment, and he did the programming to make it work. But a laser harp, so why? Well, because percussionist group wants it. How you can buy one, you can rent one, or you can make one. And again, I made the wrong decision to say, let's make one. So let's talk about how I made one by trying to save the association a lot of money, because buying is really, really expensive. Let's take a brief look at how Jean Michel Jarre operates such a device. So let's talk about how does such a device work? So let's talk about how does such a device work? We start with the circle at the top. Yeah, that's a laser beam. They use green for a reason, because it's the most visible. I have two laser buttons. One is red, one is green. Probably won't work because it's too light here anyway. But good luck finding the red one. It's red is what is used for laser points all over the world, but it's hardly visible. Green is way, way, way more visible with the same amount of power put into it. So if you want to make a laser achieve, use green. The next thing I want to talk about is the circle at the bottom. There's only one laser in his design that is used. Well, I'll show later, but it's using a rotating mirror to come up with seven big, of nine big lasers. This one, hard to see. There's the eye that actually records the reflection from somebody hitting the laser. More importantly, that eye needs to record only green light, which is why there's no other green light on the stage. Very back in the back you will see blue light. Mr. Jarre himself is shown in red light, because red and green are rather far apart in the light spectrum. So your regular photodiode will only pick up green or will only pick up red, but not both. And he is wearing shoes, gloves, just to make sure that he reflects as much light as possible. So we have an easy job as programmers actually distinguishing between no light and reflected light. And at the top of his head, he is wearing glasses, sunglasses. For a reason, those lasers tend to hurt. Wrong one. This one. So how does it work? Well, we have a guy, he's standing over there, and as soon as he hits the laser button, it will reflect, the reflection will go into the eye, and then we need some electronics to hook up the laser to the eye. As soon as we discover, okay, there is a reflection and I know which of the beams it was, I can play a note on the synthesizer. Is that, no? Okay. So if anyone asks questions in between, please go ahead. I'm used to getting questions throughout my talk. So don't worry, I won't bite. Yes? You may want to walk into the microphone indeed. Oh, there's a walking. Okay, that also works. No? Try again. Yes, it works. How does the eye define the position? And basically, how does the eye define which laser beam was touched? That's on my next slide. Thank you for the transitioning to my next slide. Oh, no, I started to beg, one more slide. So we started to beg. Doing a synthesizer means, well, essentially, we plan to use an Arduino to do it, so we need to get a MIDI signal out of the Arduino into the synthesizer. That turns out to be a solved problem. That was good news for me. I already was envisioning myself really having to start writing serial port drivers all over again, something I stopped doing in the 2000s, early 2000s, so... I really wasn't fancying doing that again, but fortunately, somebody did. And it works. So how to detect which beam is being hit? So the first thing, and this is the one that's actually used by Jarr and also by quite a few other videos that I found on YouTube, is you have a laser, you have a rotating mirror, and you only shoot at specific times when you know that the mirror is at a certain position. So you know where the laser is, you know if you see a reflection that that's that position, so that is the note to talk. We thought about this hard because Pascal, owning an audio-visual company, he has such a laser, he has those mirrors, so he can easily just make that beam. Not a problem, standard functionality of all those devices anyway. The lasers themselves are very expensive. We're talking about a few thousand dollars for a full device or a few hundred dollars if you talk about just the laser and then you have to still do everything yourself. Also, then we're talking about lasers of 100 milliwatts. So just watching such a laser without it being filtered or being reduced will just blow your eye away. Not a problem, it's gone. So we decided let's not build that ourselves and we could not tap well enough into those devices to get the position information out of it. So, OK, let's go for something simpler. So, we bought several of these cheap lasers and we decided, OK, let's do just this. So we take eight and we turn them on one at a time. There's one tiny problem and that is that at that point we're talking a five milliwatt laser that is on one eighth of the time versus a hundred milliwatts or 200 milliwatts laser at the same time. So our laser would not compare in the light intensity to that professional laser and that means that if you are in the audience and I have a laser that blows up in smoke, my laser will not be visible enough so you don't even have the idea that you will just see somebody doing this and by accident notes happen. Actually, you'll see me do that in the end. OK, there's a trick around this that we came up after a few days of thinking and that is let's turn it around, let's detect when the laser is off. Which means that about seven eighth of the time the laser is bright and shiny and only one eighth of the time the laser is off. So I now just want seven times the amount of intensity of my laser and now I'm at the same level as that hundred milliwatts laser is. So we bought a few of those and we started experimenting like, OK, I push the button and I have my Arduino on the other end and I check is the light coming up in one go and at the end is it going down in one go because if it would, for example, come up, go down, go up, go down, come up then I need to accommodate for that period because that makes it very unreliable to detect a note. Same is true at the end. If it takes eons to go down, then I need to take that into account when making my cycle for turning on and off the lasers. So we figured out that there's no startup or end effects. That's great. So we bought seven more and thought we could start. Sorry. Does it work? Yeah. Oh, sorry, it wasn't paying attention. Yes, it seemed obvious to me that you could have used the laser range finders for detecting which beam was like covered laser range finder. You know, they are used on the building sites to measure the range from the device to the wall, whatever. Yes, I could. That's a rather complicated device, though, because it means that you have a laser going out and then it reflects against the wall and it comes back. And then you have to measure the time of flight. We're talking microseconds that is very complicated electronics to get right if you are a hobbyist. OK, I built a laser harp myself with that, like with time of flight sensors. You can get them for, I think, under 10 bucks. So it's a really good recommendation. So then you are really measuring where is the hand? Yeah, yeah. OK. We can talk about it later. Yes, please. You would solve a second problem that I still need to talk about. I brought it with me. Cool. This is what I'd hoped for, that people would start giving me ideas. So these laser harps are cheap, really cheap, obviously made in China. And we learned that they were made in China very the hard way because, for example, if you screw them together, that won't always work. They're really machined so poorly that the screw thread on it is not necessarily working correctly. The batteries don't always fit. The laser is not exactly in the middle of the tube. I wish I would put three more. That would have made it much better. But we had enough that were reasonably usable, so we continued. So I only want to use the top half. I don't want to use the batteries. And that means that I need a mechanism to push the buttons. So my first... So fortunately, I have a 3D printer, so I made some kind of mechanism that would grab it and I could use a screw to fasten and unfasten. It turned out to be too hard, so we did the same thing with tie wraps. It worked. But kind of intricate to design if you... Oh. That we had a story first. But then, because I still have that other end, right? So what you see here at the bottom one is that we just soldered the wires. And then you need to keep in mind that there's a spring to push against the batteries that you need to solder again. Spring is not standard metal, so soldering doesn't really stick. And on the inside of the tube is a brass ring that contains the thread, and that's also not really nice soldering against, so that it didn't really stick well. And because we wanted this to be at least a little bit sturdy, I 3D printed a small piece and I would hook it up together like this. So the screw is on the top that will push against the spring. And I have to wire on the other end that will just spread itself out and fill up the room that the thread gives. So this was immediately spot on. We did this only once, and they have been on since. Connection is really reliable, even if we drop it, etc. So this was a good decision. Then we need to put A together. That was quite an intricate design to make because the angles need to, well, yeah. Took me quite a lot of YouTube reading and viewing to see how to wire all the stuff up together in Fusion 360, but I got it done, and this is actually the first time I printed it. It was right the first time. Until I realized that one of my lasers is off-center, so I technically need to make a new one where I put one of the lasers slightly tilted. Then we have that small problem of switching the lasers. Solve problem, except that the transistor I wanted to use, well, MOSFET I wanted to use for that, actually is out of stock at Fresnel. Any variant, any amount, they're out of stock. Wait, what? Locally, my local electronic shop still had them, so I could buy 10 of them, but that was kind of a setback because I was expecting to buy them in bulk. But I have 10. Okay, I need eight, that's good. Then the most painful part started. So I love to talk about those time-of-flight sensors. We thought that we could just use standard photodiodes, and they should be, after all, I reflect a lot of light, so they should be able to see that reflection of the light. They should be. They are mostly sensitive to green light. There is a big contrast between no light and yes light, so it should not be a problem. And just to make sure that we got it right, I made some kind of cone around it so they would not see any false light coming in from the stage lights or from the audience that happens to make pictures or whatever. Of course, then I learned that printing them in white plastic is not a good idea because that is just as translucent as doing nothing. So I printed them again in black plastic, which does work. And I decided to use four of them just to make sure that I can tune them as close as possible to two of my lasers. So just make, maximize all of it, it should work. No, it doesn't. But okay, I hook up everything together. Oh, if you wonder what those caps are for, just to make sure that I don't actually hurt myself. So they're on the lasers. I hope you can see it in the back as well. They're on the lasers. And if I want to toy, I take them off. If I don't want to toy, I just keep them on. I know when the lasers are on because they will light up nicely.  Programmed the Arduino? Yes, I did. I first started coding it on the PC because we were way ahead with software compared to hardware. Not the average project I've done. So as I do in my job, and I still have to convince, every time I go out for my work and convince in a new project, I have to convince the manager, no, I want my team to first write the test, then write the code. Write a new test, write new code. Write test, write code, write test, write code. Test-driven design. If executed, and I actually say I want two programmers on each job, give them two keyboards hooked up to the same PC, so then you actually get the mechanics where you have one programmer writing a small test, probably the first test is going to be, is the class that we're going to build, does it exist? So just instantiate class, test fills, doesn't compile. The other guy comes in, types, I have a class, test works, he writes the next test, he writes the next code, and so they keep working together, they keep on offering each other because you will very quickly find that two programmers working on the same PC with the same, well, with separate keyboards are trying to be smarter than the other guy. So they will test all the weird cases that could happen, they will write code, it is really solid against any misuse and they will do it in twice the speed that a normal programmer can write code. Actually, they're 2.2 times faster than an average single programmer, so programming with two guys at the same time is faster than doing it by yourself. Believe me, no manager understands that the first time I explain it. Any of you have ever done it that way? Pear programming, you did, did it work out for you that same way? You're trying to force my team, I did, it works. It works for you? Yes, you always have to convince people to stick to the rules, yes. Yeah, so unfortunately they had me as a software architect slapping everybody in place, so yes, they kept following the rules, I made sure of that and once you do it for a week or two, it becomes a second habit and really your team gets faster. Okay, so you should do what you preach, so I wrote my code using TDD on my PC, then I compiled it for the Arduino and realized that the Arduino did not have any STL. Okay, back to old C-style arrays, later I realized that there's also a plug-in for Arduino where you can get all the STL stuff, but okay, yeah, software done. Actually, software was done in December already and we only did the hardware in March. So does it work? Well, almost. So watch the laser where the arrow is pointing, you'll find that it comes, so this is just turning the laser on and off. So let's do it again. So that laser starts burning, starts and then becomes brighter. We also have another one that is actually not shown in the video that after a few seconds will turn less bright. Wow, those Chinese can make effects into the lasers. Okay, okay, okay. So this is the actual program that I wanted to use, right? So I would have all the lasers on and would disable the laser that I want to check. And you again, if I replay, you will see that they are still brightness variations. The good news, and that really saved my day, is that if I go to much faster frequencies, so really a lot less time, say only one millisecond in between each turning on, turning off, instead of the about a hundred that it was in this video, all those effects go away mostly. It becomes a lot more equal in brightness. Phew, almost saved. Is this visible? The true lines I drew by in PowerPoint, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good to know. So how many nodes do you hear? Two. I think I heard only one node played with three different instruments. Two of them more or less reliable, one of them plays at random. I have a problem with my detection mechanism and not the simple one. So let's talk about time of flight.  We did check whether if you power a laser that it would immediately just go on and keep burning. What we didn't check is how much time it takes between actually enabling it and the first light coming on. I think that I have only two lasers that are reasonably fast and the rest is too slow.  My timing is off. And that is also enforced by the fact that when I turned it slow, made the system work slower, it would work more reliable. The second part that I have three instruments instead of different nodes is just my stupidity. I misread the MIDI protocol. But I was not in the mood to fix it anymore. And at this time, I would have hoped to power up the board and show it to you. Not gonna work here. It's way, way, way too bright. I tried in the speaker tent briefly. My photo diodes just say, sorry, it's light. I can't get them to be dark. So no actual demo, which I'm sorry, it takes five seconds of the schedule. We're almost there. You saw already from the original video of the drum band that they tend to perform their shows in a real stage where it's dark. So we can get it dark with the smoke, with the five milliwatt lasers. That will work. Getting it to be reliable is gonna be the problem. And I believe that to be a solvable problem, and definitely if time of flight is an achievable thing. But I still need to check the power to light, capability of all the lasers. And if I want to check a little bit about the brightness, I want to adjust it a little bit. I need to see if the power sources make a difference because I really noticed that if I power up my power supply more, so go from 2.8 up to 3.4, to 3.4 volts, the lasers become much brighter. So apparently a laser is not a digital thing. Good, works for me. But it also means that I can make power supplies per laser and then I can adjust the brightness. Or, if I don't do the time of flight, why not just take a webcam and just make a recording? And now I'd hope there's a musician in the room. No? If I take a regular webcam, how many 25 frames for, so if I get to 25 frames, any percussionist will hear the delay between me hitting the beam and the sound coming off. That's way too much, so if I go to 60, we're on the verge of being reliable. At this system I was at 120, that is beyond what I can hear, so that's good enough. But 25 frames per second definitely isn't good enough. On the other hand, you saw Lars the air drummer at the beginning, right? The show. Any of you noticed that they faked it all of it? They pre-recorded the entire, so he was just drumming in the air. The guys behind them were faking that they were doing the drum effects because it was all pre-recorded and they were just playing a tape. Actually they faked me, I didn't know either. I was aware that they were going to do it, I did not know how they did it, and okay, they tricked me, so if everything else fails, we'll just pre-record the laser arp if somebody will be hitting the lights. Not a problem, we'll make the show. Having said that, we're getting there, slowly we will get that show next year. That's not a discussion, we will have that show. I have my eight laser beams going up, everything else can be faked. Thank you for listening and I will take more questions if there are any more questions. I'll go. Ah, go on. I'm trying to imagine how you would play a chord, but I suppose you would just take the low two notes because it's very difficult to. Okay, so the idea was to use them in a drum band. So most of the, even the melodic instruments in a drum band are still, well, there are 80 of those bars that you can hit, but most of them can hit two Macs at the same time. Getting three batons on each hand is not feasible. So the conductor who was going to write a new piece for this was already anticipating to use only single notes at the same time. On the other hand, the system is capable of doing multiple notes at the same time. The electronics can handle it, the MIDI can handle it, and then indeed, it would be a nice show element to try to do this. Thanks for the idea. And I have a second question, as heard on May. You can't make a glissando, but I suppose because of a percussionist application, you're not interested. I'm very interested. Okay. So that's what I hoped. And I watched Jar performing quite a few things and what you see him do in videos is do this, which makes absolutely no distinction in the sound. But when I was first going with the photo diode, I did see a difference in intensity between here and here. So I thought, yes, I can use that to either change the frequency of the note or to change, for example, to modulate the volume. So I was, I'm still dreaming of all kinds of tricks to improve my instrument beyond just playing note on or off. But I first want to make it work, please. Of course. I was wondering if you can make just one screen and then slide your hand through it. That will be another technical challenge. Thanks very much. Nice project. Kind of like a theremin. That wasn't my question. With regards to the problem of the time it takes for each laser to power up, have you considered not fully powering them down but just dimming them? Then they would only need to power up once. Yes, that's actually called the knee voltage, if I recall correctly, is on my to-do list. Okay, thank you. Yes, that could solve the problem altogether except that providing two different voltages means double the amount of transistors. A solvable problem. Okay, thanks. If somebody has transistors lying around, that is. Please? Okay, yes? Question, why are you buying laser pointers as opposed to the laser diodes themselves? Have you tried? Yes, I bought several laser diodes from Alex Pérez, China. Because I tried and I couldn't get my hands on them and at that point we decided, okay, let's give up and just buy laser pointers instead. Because the ones that we could find were not in our price range. So that's, yeah. Second question, do you know if there's any driver for a laser diode in the pointers? Because I suspect they just rely on internal resistance of the batteries used. So you may want a constant current driver, then you can adjust the brightness per laser as well. I did not go as far with my experiments as see if it indeed is one or the other. I did not check whether a power source, no, of current source instead of a voltage source would make the difference. All diodes are current driven, not voltage driven. They have a constant voltage. Yes, I did not go into that kind of experiment. That would be a nice trick, yes. I had a question. Okay, Jean-Michel Jarre's glasses, if he has a very high powered laser, if he did get that in his eyes, would the glasses help at all or? You can make filters that effectively block out a very tiny bit of spectrum. Then you couldn't see the laser. Does he need to? Oh, I suppose, yeah. Actually, I have seen somebody who has a laser harp with both green and red lasers. So apparently they don't need glasses at all because two different frequencies makes glasses too hard. Actually, I have a general observation as well. Somebody was saying about, oh, sorry, come here. I'll get less feedback that way. One general observation I've got as well. Somebody was talking about buying lasers from different places. I bought some lasers off Alibaba and others off eBay. I was building a laser maze for one of my kids' parties, which was great. But when I first bought lasers, small ones, I wanted them to be bright so they could be seen. I accidentally bought cutting lasers. For a child's party, you had to be very careful of that. So I did spot that in time. But it's a very easy mistake to make. Yeah, how many kids did you cut? None in the end. Just sing from your hand once. Oh, you sing? Only you sing from your hand. OK. But anyway. OK. Anyone else, any other questions? No, cool. Well, it's pity we can't have a demonstration of running live. Maybe you could do later when it's dark or something if there's time somewhere. Or do you have a village? I'm not in the village. I'm leaving today again. Oh, I'm leaving today. Actually, I promised to be home before dark. Is that promise not to do a demo? And the total cost of your kit, what do you, if somebody, once you've, also once you've finished it, will you publish the, will you make it open source the plans and stuff? The plan is to open source everything and the kit, as it is now, is about 160 euro. So that's a good reduction compared to Jean-Michel Jard. Yes, it is. But it doesn't work. And that's actually quite... OK, small difference. It is different, yes. Cool. OK, brilliant. Well, thank you very much indeed, Klaus.


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Merry Christmas! The 12 days of Tiskey has brought us to Christmas Day and today we are looking back at the month of June. It was when the Black Lives Matter movement really went global. The killing of George Floyd by a white police officer had brought to the fore issues of racial injustice in the United States and with people pent up after three months of COVID restrictions this time around they really exploded worldwide. In Britain that manifested most dramatically in the felling of a statue of a prolific slave trader Edward Colston. In response to that action we saw liberals and conservatives hand-wringing about the fact that for example slavery wasn't so bad actually at the time or I wish they'd have done it but just democratically and peacefully. Let's take a look at myself Aaron and Ash debunking those points one by one. On Sunday at the Bristol Black Lives Matter demonstration a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down by protesters. Let's take a look at the dramatic footage. So after being pulled down the statue was rolled from the city centre to Bristol's harbour. This is what happened next. So this is a slave trader responsible for the trafficking of 84,000 Africans to the Americas to be sold into slavery. 19,000 died on the journey. It's obviously an outrage that this statue was ever allowed to stay in Bristol city centre for so long but the fact that he was dragged to the harbour and thrown in the sea like so many of his victims has a certain poetic justice to it. Ash what's your take on the scenes we saw in Bristol this weekend? Pure unadulterated joy. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. I've got a like barrage of texts from like one of my friends which was just like this is great he's in the bottom of the river stop whining no one can do anything about it done now in the harbour and I think what I love about it is that we've become so used to politics being this thing which happens to the sort of grinding negotiations in parliament within institutions which are ultimately frustrating and haven't been able to deliver the kind of social change or justice that people really really need and to have a political action just cut through that and for the statue to be taken down not because of this long drawn out battle with a council or some kind of petition to a higher authority but because a young and diverse crowd led by black people said we're not going to have this anymore staring at us the celebration of a man who's responsible for the enslavement of thousands of people the deaths of at least 19,000 people in the middle passage he's gone he's in the harbour and as you said the symbolism of that happening in the very docks where his slave ships would come in and the fact he's at the bottom of that water rusting just love it. Yeah you've seen sort of various people offer sort of soporific platitudes today whether it's Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak saying that this isn't how justice is administered I would disagree what we saw on Sunday in Bristol is pure unadulterated justice it's a justice that can't be performed by bureaucracy and by paper clips and by pens and tick boxes and by the way I don't say that in a sort of dismissive way all of those things are needed for the everyday reproduction of a liberal democratic society but it was an instantiation I think of pure justice I mean I sound like Robert's Pierre perhaps but I can't think of many other ways sort of to put it and there's a beautiful picture of a young black guy with Black Lives Matter t-shirt Black Lives Matter face mask with his knee on the neck of the statue a young black guy next to him with a t-shirt saying something about Trump Donald Trump Trump is a waste man and it's like if you wanted to and I don't want to asceticize it too much because it's a very political action born of a great deal of suffering historic suffering but if you wanted to almost sort of you know compose a sort of historic painting justice it would it would look like this and I kind of you know I mean look we'll talk about the sort of the sort of political responses to it but I didn't expect them to be quite so bad I mean we are talking about a former slave trader there we are first of all what I want us to do is address and I imagine debunk the sort of two main forms of criticism which have been thrown at this action on Sunday so the first of them is this idea that we shouldn't erase history so first this comes in the form of people saying you know we can't get rid of statues because that's trying to erase our history that's trying to pretend our past is something it wasn't and the other closely related brand is the one that says oh people in the past they all had problematic views and problematic activities and ways of making a living that now we seem are completely we see to be completely unacceptable so our example of this from today is surprise surprise Julie Hartley Brewer talk radio host so she tweets breaking news almost every single person from British and world history probably doesn't share your values today and almost certainly did bad things at a time when they weren't necessarily thought to be bad things and which you won't like but that might be fine for something like flares but this was slavery I mean the 84,000 people he was transporting from Africa to the Americas I don't think they thought it was fine at the time also I think I mean this is just a complete category error in in this particular issue because Winston Churchill right we I mean he was a colonialist and a racist but he's also remembered for helping to defeat the Nazis he's someone with a complicated past Edward Colston was just a slave trader who gave some money to charity that's his only legacy so this idea that we're going to cancel him because he did something the only thing he's famous for is the slave trade so the fact that you would celebrate him is nonsense and of course we have learned more about Edward Colston from this action in being thrown into the harbor than we ever have from that statue standing I sort of would beg you to find anyone in this country who knew much about well a few people in this country would have known something about Edward Colston before this but the number will have dramatically increased since this action I don't know about you but I was very surprised when I went to Germany and I didn't see a single swastika or Nazi statue when I was wandering around Berlin because I thought why would they want to erase their history like that you know oh you might not be familiar that was this guy Hitler he was in charge of Germany you probably won't have heard of him because he didn't see any statues around and when you make that comparison right which is that Germany obviously did confront confront its Nazi history had to go undergo a program of denatification and that didn't lead to a forgetting of the horrors of the Nazi regime but rather the ability to remember it correctly because you weren't left with these objects which just integrated into your everyday fabric of reality which made it seem like all those things were okay so not only do I you know reject the idea that you're erasing history by taking down these statues I actually propose the idea that by having a confrontation with these statues by tearing it down by having this political moment of throwing it into the harbor but it's a better historical education than leaving it up ever was the whole thing about oh you know historical context it requires nuance of the tens of thousands of people trafficked in the ships which you know were overseen by was it the royal african company of the tens of thousands of people trafficked basically from west africa to britain's colonies in the west indies how many of them do you think were saying well you know look there's a debate you had here actually and there's a bit of nuance and yes about 15 to 20 percent of us are dying on ship and they're throwing some people over overboard and we've been ripped out of our culture our our society we're going some we've never been before we're going to be brutalized but but look there's two sides to the story it no nobody who was a slave thought there was nuance and context so this whole thing is ridiculous the only people that thought what they were doing was okay were the people making money from it who weren't the slaves and they chose to give a blind eye to evil because they they profited from it so i mean it's not like we're talking about oh yeah in africa there was a you know there was also a conversation on the gold coast and many people volunteered to be slaves and actually it's more complicated there's just bullshit it's just so stupid and dumb who actually thinks this actually i can tell you it's people like julia harley bro no one engages their brain and thinks about this logically for more than 10 seconds buys the line that there's a context specific nuanced issue there have been slave insurrections since forever since you know the roman age since uh you know in antiquity it's talked about very frequently so it's absolute garbage in terms of the question of of history remembering i thought this was very nice from bristol council i mean we can talk about why why they'd allowed the statue to to remain up for so long but i thought their response to it falling was quite nice so let's get up this picture they've collected all the signs that were laid in the city after yesterday's black lives matter protest and they're going to preserve them on display in the history museum um let's go to the other form of opposition to this action from sunday the idea that the statue should have come down or it would have been fine if it came down but only if it had happened via the legal means and we're going to go to a tweet by sagid javid now as the representative of this position i grew up in bristol i detest how edward colston profited from the slave trade but this is not okay if bristolians want to remove a monument it should be done democratically not by criminal damage now that might seem like a reasonable point it's definitely more reasonable than the one that julia hartley bruer came out with but there is a problem there has been a long standing campaign to try and remove this particular statue from the center of bristol and in fact from the names of of of schools of concert halls or all sorts of institutions around bristol are named after this slave trader and all of them have been blocked um so in fact not only plans to take this statue down have been blocked but even completely minor ones to put a plaque on that puts his existence that that statue in proper context even something so minor was blocked by normal democratic channels or normal legitimate political channels as sagid javid would call them i want to get up a passage from the bristol post this was from an article last year explaining the difficulty of getting a statement agreed this is this was an idea as the plaque that was going to go under the statue originally it was a free paragraph statement which revealed how colston played an active role in the enslavement of more than 84 000 africans including 12 000 children and of those 19 000 died on board his ships it was controversial at least the one Tory councillor richard eddie who said that he objected so strongly to the wording that he said he would understand if it was vandalized or stolen i wonder what he says now but then bristol live revealed last august that there was a significant problem of bristol historian francis greenacre on behalf of the merchant venturers the organization colston belonged to which still holds services and commemorations in his honor today got involved a debate ensued with the wording of the plaque changing gradually with mr greenacre challenging it removing things like his position as a Tory MP changing the word traffic to transport it and maintaining a lengthy dispute about the numbers and ages of the thousands of children who died on board colston ships so there you have it there was a there was a long drawn out campaign that was you know the pinnacle of a 25-year campaign to try and get either this statue removed or put in context and the people who were part of you know the same organization that colston was part of were not happy unless you had a sort of mealy mouth statement underneath there that you know well there should be no nuance but that's what they're trying to do trying to say this wasn't as simple as it was was it 84 000 was it 64 000 like what the fuck so this idea that people should have just you know why why didn't people think to start a petition why didn't people think to lobby their council people they'd been doing that for decades we don't have statues by accident we don't have monuments by accident we don't have memorialization by accident they have to be preserved and they have to be maintained and so what we have when it comes to the Edward Colston statue is one the fact it went up in what was it 1895 so the statue goes up you know what well over 60 years after the slavery abolition act passes which outlawed slavery in the british empire in 1833 and on the original plaque it said he was amongst you know the wisest men in the city you know one of the best and wisest men so you have this kind of quite literally a whitewashing of the role slave money has played in building the city of bristol and also building this man's reputation and his legacy immediately when the statue goes up but it's not enough to put a statue up you have to keep it up and that's why you need these strange organizations with their kind of pet historians like francis greenacre to make the case of why this slaver was a good slaver or why the slave trading he did wasn't particularly bad if you actually looked at the issues and what it does is that it just creates noise it just creates the a kind of fog around the issue so you lose sight of the very clear moral point which is why are we celebrating a slave trader in a diverse city in the 21st century that's what the whole thing is about and it's a way of clogging up the political process now this is where I differ from both saja javid and i'm sure we'll talk about him later kia sama i actually think that that protest and the action of those protesters i don't think it was violent people didn't get hurt it was a statue he doesn't have nerve endings he doesn't have feelings i think it was a legitimate political action because the so-called legitimate means by which politics takes place of petitioning the council writing to this person writing an article it had no effect because those processes have been corrupted and corroded by the lingering poison of slavery


So if you are a level 30 or above and play in a group, today I will showcase you one of the better XP farms in this game. How's it going guys, my name is DPJ and if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more be sure to subscribe. So this farm consists of you needing to be in a group if you ain't anywhere near a level 45. Because that's basically the level of the enemies here and because there are so many of them it does get wild. So located within Weaver's Fen is Boar's Hall, pinpointed on the map right here. This is a small farming area with literally 20 level 45 Boars spawning continuously and you can see this happening on the screen right now. What you're witnessing here is me playing solo, not in a group and I'm at a level 29, getting absolutely battered all over the place. But if you were in a group here, like the people that are here with me or around me, the XP gains would be off the charts. Now I do plan on coming back here with my powers when they get back online because even as a low level here guys I jumped straight up to a level 30 so fast it was unreal. So yes players within groups at a level 30 or above try your luck here earn some crazy XP and while I hope this helps you out, one of many many XP farms within New World. If you're watching this at a much lower level, check out my channel I've posted plenty of New World guides, the surely one there that will help you out.  But yes if you enjoyed the video leaving a like whole helps out, if you're new around here and want to see more be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button but guys thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully I will see you on that next. One.


Residents from across the Bay State gathering in the heart of Roxbury rallying for change and taking it to the streets. This reaction comes in wake of the Ferguson grand jury announcement not to indict Darren Wilson and the shooting death of an unarmed black teen.


It's nicknamed the humongous fungus, and for good reason. This colony of armillaria gallica, a type of honey mushroom, stretches across an area the size of 28 football fields beneath the Crystal Falls, Michigan, and weighs in at a whopping 95 metric tons. Scientists estimate the colony's age to be approximately 1,500 years old, but size and longevity aren't the only things that make this species of mushroom special. Armillaria are the only known organisms to produce mellialides and armillil or selenates, natural compounds with potent antimicrobial and anti-cancer properties. Now, researchers have isolated the cluster of genes responsible for manufacturing these powerful chemicals, paving the way toward artificial means of ramping up their production. The team led by Stefan Jenerwein had previously isolated the pathway committing proto-illudine synthase, Gene Pro-1. Pro-1 encodes for a terpene cyclase that ultimately leads to the production of the coveted molecules for which armillaria are prized. In this gene, they have found the key to unlocking a treasure trove of medicinal compounds. But what was missing were the critical steps and biosynthetic intermediates in between. The team assumed that the genes coding for biosynthetic enzymes that lie on the same biosynthetic pathway tend to be clustered in the fungal genome. Thus, they believed they could find those missing steps by cloning the genes surrounding the Pro-1 gene. That led to the discovery of four genes coding for cytochrome P450-dependent monooxygenases in the vicinity of Pro-1 in the armillaria genome. Functional expression of the cytochrome P450 genes identified one of them as the gene coding for proto-illudine-8 alpha hydroxylase, which catalyzes the committing step into the armillil or selenate pathway. When engineered into a strain of yeast, that protein produced this intermediate in quantities large enough for structural confirmation using NMR spectroscopy. Much work still remains to be done, as much of the biochemical pathway that leads directly to armillaria's most potent natural products still remains unknown. Researchers will continue to explore the genetic neighborhood surrounding Pro-1 for more clues. And hopefully one day, they'll crack the code that enables the mass production of armillaria's chemical arsenal against human diseases and cancer.


Man jits. Let's go with a year. Let's go man He's running plays that make me bump. Yeah, definitely. He's doing that a streak definitely Definitely, he's running a streak, you know This is earth. There's just like He's still on the 28 yard line by the way by the way, he's still have you I realized that like he's still on the 28 yard line How did we wind up with three people on one part? Nobody went to spy? Nobody went to spy three people went on a curl route and Madden, you know, I just like that's my fault I just like I like Y'all have no idea how like This is missy. He's definitely scoring a touchdown.  It might as well, right boys Might as well just give him a touchdown at this point Might as well just give at this point. We might as well give him one, right? We might as well Yo, I'll give him a like dude milk in a whole quarter and being at the 50 is the nastiest thing ever, dude 15 play drive, dude. I mean, it really wasn't you just can't catch that fourth down, bro You really can't honestly I could have clicked on a his victim, but I didn't want to get lost I felt like I was gonna get an animation with Jimmy Graham there. I really did I don't think I really don't think he's a high safety. I really don't bro. It's just that fourth down play I mean no play was really terrible. He just was just like just like yeah, I got some of them Like I'm just like this like it's got get off the field one of those bro through through like, right? That's their elites and contains not the smartest player, but you know Yeah, the fourth downs weren't that bad, but I mean I played a good defense So can we motion? He's definitely watching now. He might my nigga did a 35. Oh that first drive was nasty, wasn't it? Why would I replace pits with who bro? I want to know our receivers, bro I don't like cup. I want Calvin or Moss to instead of Chad Johnson. Josh Gordon is really hidden, but so bad It's like scary how bad this is bro. It's like scary, of course, right? Just per oh my god. Oh, I got cheated Cheated honestly, I don't even know what the run right now. I really have no idea. I'm like so lost right now This is terrible defense, bro, it's actually Thank God hello fresh boys get that hello fresh and how many orders we got we got 20 Ten seconds we get the yards here. Do I have a time out? Yeah, I got two. I made I could have got more I thought that could have got me 20 yards. Okay. It only got me like 12 yards But you know, this is why they watch. This is why people sign up This is why people show up right here.  I rolled out to the left. I should have stayed in a pocket a little bit more Oh, come on boys. Like we got to do better there Like we just can't just get just shed it that fast, bro Like bro am I having fun tonight, bro? Like this is just like something's getting railed Low pass. I didn't want them come any I don't think I needed a low pass But I mean you still gotta catch there, right?  I don't think I can roll out on this dude. I really don't think I can I don't need that. I get it again, right boys. I get it again. Okay. Oh my god I feel like they're just like cheating my soul right now. I thought this is covered to invert Let's go round a your rendezvous having a good game boys. He is Did you expect her to be good? Did you expect them to be good? What's crazy is I feel like I played really well this game And it's a seven point game going into a fourth quarter boys, huh? And that's only because the games are so damn short, but that's okay, right? You just died, but I don't need a ball gun bunch. I'm telling you girl. This is really not for you Lord Jesus, bro. If I if you want the five-wad, I had no shot with the do for over There's really in the chat 100% confirmed in the chat 100% confirmed in the chat 100% confirmed in the chat 100% just audible to five-wad. Yo, I hate that in bro. Oh My god, bro, what am I what am I playing right now, dude?   What a play.  She's trying his best here. Give him a round of applause May he's trying his best, dude. I can't lie Sherman. They got Joe I've been getting real tonight, dude. I've been getting real tonight I just want one of you out of that damn W. Right.  Oh Back to the patented four six. Oh We lost now boys Yeah, sometimes you have good night. Sometimes you have bad nights. I have no idea what he's doing here. No idea Dude, oh my god, dude. This is like not having fun. Dude. I'm really not thank God I can't lie. I didn't like that five-wide one. What was it five wide? No, it wasn't five wide It's only right. We give him a ball back, right? Come on, dude Like y'all see this game am I outclassing my opponent like come on, bro Bro, like the like me versus him is not close. It's not close, bro It's not even like it's like I kind of want to give him a ball back though. I can't lie to you For the content I want to give him the ball back. What we think Earl money drive is scary content I'm looking for the tight end here. I am I'm not gonna point.  Like what I Mean, are you gonna rush me?     Damn. Oh, I gotta kick a field. I'm tripping. Oh I thought I thought the game was all like over my bed.  I really like forgot that I had to kick I thought the game was over. You think he's trying to block it.  You think he's smacking it. What you guys think? He's sweating right now, huh? Like he's doing like Are you just trying to look at him? It's funnier when they try I mean, I was too for to look for down. I don't know how I got the fourth downs I don't know how I got the fourth downs ever. I really don't know how I got the fourth downs Bro, how is this complete though? Like bro, he got one foot down and he goes out like look Look his elbow down first. We got railed. Just say we got cheated, bro. Just say we got cheated But look his help or was his elbow go down first Why is that? It's not even down. Not even down. You have money game. Definitely. Did y'all watch that? Do you see that guy play on my field money game?  No chance. I go capital all pro Yeah, maybe you throw pigs when it's all man The people I do too were wide open.  Yeah, I ran Earl. Yeah, definitely dude. Definitely GG's


October 26, 2019, the Aghorn Operating Incorporated Water Flood Station near Odessa, Texas. One Aghorn employee succumbed to toxic hydrogen sulfide gas that had escaped through a damaged pump. His spouse was also fatally injured by the hydrogen sulfide gas while searching for him at the facility after he didn't return home. The Aghorn Water Flood Station is used as part of a process to extract oil from underground reservoirs in West Texas. Oil extraction starts at an oil well, where pump jacks are used to lift oil from underground reservoirs. Reservoirs in West Texas also contain hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas which comes to the surface with the oil that is extracted. The oil comes out of the ground with some water in it. To remove the water, the mixture is fed to a tank battery. As the oil and water mixture sits in the tanks, the water separates from the oil. The oil is then transported for further processing. The water is pumped through pipelines to the water flood station. It is now called produced water because it can contain residual oil and other contaminants such as toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. At the water flood station, the produced water flows into a large storage tank called a suction tank. The water then enters a building called the pump house. There, pumps are used to pressurize the produced water and inject it back into the oil field through injection wells. The injected water increases reservoir pressure and displaces the oil, allowing a larger quantity of oil to be extracted. At the time of the incident, there were two pumps in the pump house. The pump house also contains a control room from which employees run the station. Typically, the station is not continuously occupied. Instead, an aghorn employee called a pumper visits twice per day to record meter readings and inspect equipment. If there is an equipment problem and a pumper is not at the station, an alarm system triggers an automated phone call to the pumper. It is then the pumper's responsibility to acknowledge the alarm and go to the station to determine what is causing it. The station was also equipped with a hydrogen sulfide detection and alarm system that would trigger a separate automated phone call to the pumper on duty if it detected dangerous levels of the toxic gas. The system would also illuminate a rotating red beacon light on top of the pump house. But the CSB found that this critical detection and alert system was not functional on the night of the incident. At 6.38 p.m. on October 26th, the water flood station's control system activated an oil level alarm on a pump. Five minutes later, the phone system called an aghorn pumper, alerting him of a pump malfunction of some kind. The pumper drove to the water flood station. The hydrogen sulfide beacon light was not illuminated when the pumper arrived at the water flood station or at any time for the rest of the night. The pumper parked near the water flood station, leaving his personal hydrogen sulfide monitor inside his truck. The pumper went into the control room where the control system indicated the alarm was for pump number one. The pumper prepared for work on pump number one. The pump, which could automatically start when enough water was available to pump to the injection wells was still connected to its power source. The pumper did not de-energize the pump. The pumper then walked to the pumps. He closed pump number one's discharge valve and partially closed the pump's intake valve. While the pumper was near the pump, he was overcome and fatally injured by toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. After the incident, the CSB found that a plunger on the pump had shattered, which had allowed water containing hydrogen sulfide to escape from the pump into the pump house where the pumper was working. Due to limitations of available evidence, the CSB was unable to determine whether the pump failure and water release occurred before the pumper arrived at the facility or if the pump automatically turned on while the pumper was closing valves. After several hours, when the pumper did not return home, his spouse drove with their two children to the station to check on him. She entered the water flood station facility and searched for him. She soon found him on the floor in the pump house. She then was also overcome and fatally injured by the toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. A short time later, emergency responders approached the pump house. They detected a very strong smell of hydrogen sulfide. This required them to set up the command post outside the front gate of the facility and wear self-contained breathing apparatus. They found the pumper and his wife deceased inside the pump house and water spilling from pump number one. The responders rescued the two children who were inside the spouse's car. Working with Aghorn employees, they were able to stop the water release the following morning. One of the six safety issues identified was that the pumper was not equipped with his company-issued personal hydrogen sulfide detection device inside the pump house on the night of the incident. When the pumper's personal hydrogen sulfide detector was located in his work truck, it was found to be in an alarm state, meaning it had detected dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide. The potential for a hydrogen sulfide release was a known hazard at the water flood station as indicated by the posted signage and a safety pamphlet provided to all employees. However, there was no evidence that Aghorn management required use of personal hydrogen sulfide detectors or adequately trained employees that equipment malfunctions could indicate a toxic hydrogen sulfide release. The second safety issue CSB investigators discovered is that at the time of the incident, Aghorn did not have any written lock-out-tag-out policies or procedures but relied on verbal procedures without formalized training. On the night of the incident, the pumper did not properly perform lock-out-tag-out to de-energize the pump before performing work on it. Instead, he started to close the pump's valves while the pump was still configured to be automatically operated by the control system. As a result, the control system automatically turned the pump on and water containing hydrogen sulfide was able to escape from the pump when the discharge valve was closed. The third safety issue identified by the CSB was that ventilation inside the pump house was inadequate, leading to fatal concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas within the building. The CSB found that the pump house could be ventilated by two bay doors, exhaust fans, and natural vents on each of the four outside walls. Due to the limitations of available evidence, the CSB was unable to confirm whether the exhaust fans were operational at the time of the incident. The two bay doors were approximately 60% open but this was not enough to adequately ventilate the building. And the CSB's investigation could not find any evidence that Aghorn assessed the pump house to ensure it could be properly ventilated despite the potential for a hydrogen sulfide release to occur inside. The fourth safety issue noted by the CSB was the lack of a robust safety management program at Aghorn. Comprehensive safety management practices include risk identification, assessment, mitigation, and monitoring of design, procedures, maintenance, and training. Safety management practices are an essential element of protecting workers and non-employees from toxic gases at chemical plants. At Aghorn, there were no operational training, testing, and maintenance procedures or records other than items such as a cell phone use policy and a pamphlet on the hazards of hydrogen sulfide. These items were not sufficient to prepare employees for potential encounters with hazards inherent to their work. The CSB identified a fifth safety issue at Aghorn which was a non-functioning hydrogen sulfide detection and alarm system. Some of the facilities detectors were set to a testing mode which prevented them from sending an alarm signal and other sensors that were correctly set up were unable to send a signal to the control room. As a result, the pumper was not warned of the toxic hydrogen sulfide either through a telephone alert or illumination of the red pump house beacon light. And finally, the sixth safety issue discovered by the CSB at Aghorn was deficient site security. Per Aghorn's informal policy, when an Aghorn employee is working at the facility, the access gates are normally left unlocked on the night of the incident. This practice allowed the pumper's spouse to drive directly to the water flood station and enter the pump house where she was also fatally injured. As a result of its investigation, the CSB made the following recommendations to Aghorn Operating Incorporated for safety improvements at all water flood stations where the potential for exposure to dangerous levels of toxic hydrogen sulfide gas exists. These include mandate the use of personal hydrogen sulfide detection devices. Develop a site-specific, formalized, and comprehensive lockout-tagout program for each facility. Commission an independent and comprehensive analysis of each facility to examine ventilation and mitigation systems. Develop and demonstrate the use of a safety management program that includes a focus on protecting workers and non-employees from hydrogen sulfide. Ensure that hydrogen sulfide detection and alarm systems are properly maintained and configured, and develop site-specific detection and alarm programs and associated procedures. Ensure that the hydrogen sulfide detection and alarm system designs employ multiple layers of alerts unique to hydrogen sulfide. And develop and implement a formal, written, site-specific security program to prevent unknown and unplanned entrance of those not employed by Aghorn. The CSP also recommended that OSHA issue a safety information product that addresses the requirements for protecting workers from hazardous air contaminants and from hazardous energy. And the agency made a recommendation to the Railroad Commission of Texas to develop and send a notice to all oil and gas operators that fall under jurisdiction that describes the safety issues outlined in the CSP's report.