So you guys have heard from me so many times so I've decided to make that into a vlog. You guys have told me to do this so many times before and it's time so we're going to be reading the books that I've always said I can't fit into vlogs. And I asked you guys on Instagram which books do I say this with the most because I think I kind of have like pause blinders on like I'm like I never say that that definitely doesn't happen to me so I asked you guys on Instagram what books do I say this the most for and we're going to be reading them. The first book almost everyone said and I'm going to be honest before I asked you I wasn't going to put this in this video because I was in denial.  But you all said it and it is Unwell Women by Erna Clecon. I'm very excited to read this so this is nonfiction about women and the way that women have been mistreated in medicine and how medicine and our perception of illness and sickness and different health issues have been built around men throughout the years. And I've been so excited to read this for so so long. I think I've made so many of you read and I'm just very interested to see it for myself. So I'm super excited about this. I also you know used to read a lot of nonfiction a lot of feminist nonfiction and so I'm excited to dive back into that a little bit. So that's our first book. Second book quite a few of you said you said anything in the tea dragon. Seriously we're going to be we're going to be reading we're going to be reading The Tea Dragon Festival by Kay O'Neill. Guys we're going to be finally doing it. So this is the second in the Tea Dragon Festival graphic novels. We're following these little tea dragons who brew tea and I think this one is a prequel to the first book and I've been trying to save these oh look we kind of match. I've been saving this for the perfect day and now we just we just have to read it. So I'm very excited. It's time to stop saving it and read it because guess what I could read this once a month if I wanted to. And I get I bet you it would still be perfect and incredible and have all its magic. So I'm so excited. I'm gonna love it. This is like a five star prediction guys. I mean lots of all these books are pretty much five star predictions that all books I've really wanted to read for a really long time but always say oh I just can't fit into a vlog. And then the final book I don't think any of you said when I asked you but for me this is the epitome of I want to read this book but I can't fit into a vlog because I think I've owned this book now for like three years and it's been always one of the books I've wanted to read the most. I just don't think I've mentioned it a lot in the past year or so because I'm kind of like embarrassed this me this long to read it but I used to say this so much about this book. I remember back when I was in Leeds I vividly remember saying this so much and the book is I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. So this is true crime about the Golden State Killer and it's basically Michelle McNamara's like unflagging pursuit it says on the back to find out who the Golden State Killer was and to bring him to justice. I have just heard so many good things about this book once again and you know true crime I watch a lot of true crime like documentaries on Netflix and stuff but I think it's always important to think about like the ethics of true crime. There's so many discussions around true crime like the perception of women as victims and like obsession with killers and stuff but I think this one is coming from a place of like justice and bringing justice to victims and so I'm really excited to read it. It was the winner for Best Nonfiction on Goodreads Choice Awards 2018. So there we go really excited. I'm hoping that I'm going to find this just super enthralling and interesting. I've heard such wonderful things so yeah that's the three books we're going to be reading in this vlog. I don't know what we're going to start with but shall we just begin? Let's get into it. Hello! Let's begin the reading portion of this vlog shall we? If my hair looks a bit crazy it's still wet. I'm trying to let my hair now that I've in the summer I tend to switch to washing my hair in the morning so I can let it dry naturally throughout the day. Something about what we've just said has made my face go really red. I got embarrassed about my other way my hair is looking apparently. How are we doing? I've just been sitting here watching Gabby. Hey Gabby, say hello. And I am 100 pages into Unwell Women and I thought I would check in with you. I kind of feel like I've only just gotten to grips with this book okay. This is like a five-star prediction. I've been a bit rattled right because I started it off. I've listened. I'm listening to audiobook and reading along and I'm reading it slowly guys. I'm reading it slowly. When I'm not reading physically I'm listening at 1.5. When I'm reading physically I'm listening at like 2.1.   So yeah I started it and there was just something about the writing style. I was struggling to process and I'm still feeling a little bit like this but I feel like I'm getting better with it where like a sentence will happen and I'll have to like process what that sentence just said rather than processing it real time. Does that make sense? The whole sentence will happen and I'll have to like okay what do those words mean and put them together. It's not easily perhaps as easy digestible as I would like. So far we've been in the first section learning about the way that kind of women's illness and women's bodies have been is pathologised the right word? They've been thought of and like described in medicine and in culture throughout history. Something that's interesting about this book is that it's got I think three parts. Yeah it's got three parts. Part one is ancient Greece to the 19th century. Part two is the late 19th century to the 1940s and part three is 1945 to the present and what's interesting is that it is therefore kind of telling us a story of like women's health chronologically. If you don't know this book it's a journey through medicine and myth and a man made wild. So it's about the ways in which women have been yeah thought of and the way that women's illness has been thought of and perhaps ignored throughout history. Women's health issues have been thought of incorrectly or ignored at their history. So yeah it is kind of telling it historically but it does like jump around within those parts. Does that make sense? One minute we'll be talking about ancient Greece, next minute we'll be talking about medieval, next minute something happened in 1800 and 1820 you know. It does jump around so although it is like it has sectioned those off and that we're kind of going through history learning about women's health it does within those parts jump around. It kind of tackles an issue or an area so I think we've just had like one on childbirth or whatever. It tackles an issue or an area and goes throughout those time periods throughout that section. It jumps around within it which I think is an interesting way to tell the story. This first section is a really wide like ancient Greece to the 19th century is a really wide time period and sometimes I'm struggling if I miss like the year or the century in which she says something's happening I'm struggling to like situate where I am if I'm listening to the audiobook even though I'm listening to it slowly.  We could be anywhere if I just miss that one thing or like you know listen to it but don't quite take in as much as I should. So I think the second two sections are going to be easier for me to follow but I am enjoying it and I mean it's already deeply deeply angering. If I think if you're interested at all in women's health issues and this book does a really good job of like acknowledging gender and like how sex and gender aren't the same thing and you know the ways in which medicine and the way that I'm saying women's health issues is because medicine has only ever viewed health in man-woman binaries you know. So I would say this book is inclusive in what it recognizes and how it recognizes that like how intersex people haven't been recognized properly throughout history and etc. So we've already touched on stuff like that so I think it's doing a good job of being inclusive whilst also recognizing that like women's health issues I'm just using you know the general term have been treated very differently towards you does men health issues or normal like general health issues because men health issues are general health issues, women's health issues are viewed as women's health issues. Does that make sense? I'm enjoying it perhaps not as much as I thought but I'm just going to read this whole thing today. I've got no plans now, I did some work this morning, washed my hair whatever but now I have no plans so I'm just going to read this book.  My favourite, I've just really been craving it, my local vision chip shop does this halloumi salad pitta and I'm obsessed with it and I just feel like I need it so I'm going to go out and get lunch. It's so exciting guys I never go out and get lunch. What is this?  So anyways I'm going to go out I'll check with you and I'm a little bit further through. I am starting to enjoy it more, I'm starting to get into it more than initially I was like oh shit we're in deep shit because this is a book I've been so excited to read for so long and at first I couldn't get into it but things looking up.  I know it doesn't look it but it is so yummy.  Hello I am on page 245 so I've gotten quite a good chunk through the book because loads of this at the end is references so the book ends like there so that's how much I got left. I am gonna hope to finish it tonight. That's not happening. Here's the thing I'm pretty sure this is on my five, was it on my five star predictions this year? I'm not sure. I don't think it's gonna be a five star because there is something about the writing that I am not like 100% jamming with in the way that it's written. It feels like it could have been edited a bit more and could have been a bit shorter and a bit slicker and I think this is a debut non-fiction and so I just feel like it could have been a bit more precise in the way that it was talking about things. Sometimes it's making links between things that I'm not sure is entirely like the the connection is entirely not justified but it has worked for that connection enough and I think some stuff could have been cut. I am enjoying it still. There's so much interesting stuff in this that I feel like a lot of it is stuff that I knew vaguely of. I don't feel like I'm learning loads more but I think it's interesting to hear in detail. I don't know if you guys know but hysteria this was like a term that was basically just used against all women for there are so much of history like she's having hysteria whatever she's hysteric. Historia comes from the Latin word for uterus so the the whole idea of hysteria is feminine and I don't know I just think that's interesting and so much our history is to do with women being more emotional than men and that's just got me thinking about a lot of things like in myself and like I don't know I think I am quite emotional. I was having an emotional breakdown last night just post about Instagram. I haven't told you about it. It was about salad well it was about a lot of things but it was about salad and I didn't want that salad but I wanted a different salad and it was just it was the breaking point and I basically this is like TMI but like I'm basically on the break from my pill and I've been running my pill for longer because of issues I was having with my period so a gynecologist I went to see told me to like I take my pill for like nine weeks now rather than three before I have a break and it's been fixing all those other issues I was having issues with fainting basically which is always fun and being sick and stuff and it's fixed those but I have been finding myself more emotional and I've been on this pill since I was what like 17 you know six years of my life I could turn quite a bit 18 17 18 and I just wonder like what would I be like off it you know some people come off the pill and it's like oh it's great I'm so I'm like oh I've unlocked this whole new level of emotions that have been suppressing and some people come off it and they have really negative experience coming off it and have to go back on it and I just like wonder who am I I haven't been an adult without being on the pill and I just wonder who I am without being on it I don't know and I've been thinking sometimes I think I tried to suppress my emotions but I don't think being inherently emotional is a bad thing I think it's you know feeling emotions for other people is a good thing so I don't know it's just got me thinking about stuff like that I would say this book is in is incredibly US and UK centric I think the author is from the UK it's incredibly focused on just UK and US and that's not inherently a bad thing I think any nonfiction has to have a focus right like it can't be just like about everything some of the faults of this book is I think when it tries to extend into topics that it isn't inherently like there's a whole chapter on women's suffrage and women's right to vote and like although that is connected to women I don't think it's necessarily it wasn't quite connecting it to like unwell women which is the rest of the book is about medicine and women in that you know so I don't think it's inherently a bad thing that it's very UK and US centric because that's the perspective that this author can write from but just if you're wanting a book that isn't this isn't the book for you is what I would say but yeah I'm gonna go ahead and finish it it's very interesting but I do think it could have been condensed I think it sometimes gets a little bit lost in the weeds so yeah I'm gonna go cook dinner I might show it to you me cooking but I'm feeling self-conscious because I've got my ugliest clothes on I'm doing a wash I don't know if you can hear the tumble dry I feel like I'm constantly doing a wash and constantly I don't have a lot of clothes guys I constantly don't have enough clothes particularly I don't have a lot of summer clothes I have so many jumpers but I can't wear any of them I have like three t-shirts that I like that I so I should probably like buy more I just don't really buy clothes I don't know that's like a whole we don't need to get into that that's a whole can of worms to open I might feel me cooking but like if you just see my clothes I got these hideous like shorts with strawberries on that I haven't worn in years because it's that dire anyways I'm gonna go I'm gonna go cook dinner I may show it to you if not I'll probably see you tomorrow morning having hopefully finished this tonight to finish Unwell Women I don't have a ton more to say to you because I feel like pretty much the same I did enjoy I think this last section perhaps the most I'm gonna get this a four star so it's not a five I'm gonna give it a four star but my personal enjoyment is perhaps more of a 3.5 3.75 but the reason I'm giving it a four is because I think this is a really important book that's discussing things that have not been spoken about enough and that I think a lot of people get something from there was just something about Ron and Starle they're like it wasn't entirely for me something about it perhaps it's because it's a debut but it just wasn't easiest to follow it wasn't the easiest to engage with sometimes I felt like the points that she was making were a bit meandering I've told you that all already but that was what held me back in my personal enjoyment of like loving this for me it was okay an enjoyment but what it was discussing was a four star perhaps I've heard some people say that there's some inaccuracies in this and I don't know enough about anything to know if there's inaccuracies so I would just point that out there but for me I think this is a book that's so many people especially if you're someone who is you know a woman identifies as a woman and is unwell and it could be in a many different ways that's outlined in this book I think this could be a really helpful book for you to like see the history of women's health and women's issue and the way that women's health issues have been ignored and mistreated history doctors basically weren't interested in anything that was associated with feminine and not with masculine right like they just weren't interested and the way is it's so angering like yeah when you think of all the different ways that women have been ignored and mistreated with their health throughout history um it's angering G saying so that's where I land on this and giving it a 4 for me it was like 3.5 enjoyment which is a little bit disappointing but I did get a lot out of it and perhaps that is the point of non-fiction you know okay I don't know which I'm gonna start next of the tea dragon festival when I'll be gone in the dark I'm leaning towards maybe just reading tea dragon festival but it depends whether I have time tonight whereas I might because I want this to be like I sit down I get all cozy like it's the perfect reading experience you know so I don't know if I have time for that today so I might start this and then read this and then finish this I don't know you'll see next whatever I'm doing basically something about you isn't right I swear you can make me lose my mind lying here awake at night if this is love then I don't want it why you gotta be so complicated I'm sick and tired of contemplating be here waiting if this is love then I don't want it I can't be the one you keep running to but never be that someone will always be there with something I shouldn't even actually need to say anything five stars I've been watching all my videos you know a bit in struggle city I haven't had a proper five star since like mid-april but we're back baby these are never gonna be anything less than five stars like they're always gonna be five stars the third one is gonna be five star I don't I could rate it now and not read it for a year and it would be five stars this book oh it's so beautiful I mean just look at it I don't want to like I didn't want to show you too many of the pages because I don't want to spoil the whole thing for you but this is like a prequel to the first tea dragon society book so we've got little tea dragons in this but this is more about an actual dragon a big dragon that I'm in character finds and stumbles upon that's them there and like their friendship and it's just so beautiful guys in terms of the representation in this the dragon character is non-binary slash gender fluid I'm not sure what they would be like technically classed as but there's this section where they describe to ren our main character how dragons can switch between genders and like how they switch between genders and I thought that was just such a poignant and beautiful moment and we've got two characters in my relationship who are in the first book who appear in this and there's also a character in the village who uses sign language to speak who is deaf and the whole village has learned sign language for this character and just like isn't it so beautiful it's just by the way I read this last night I was feeling really down I've been having a really really rough mental health week guys like it's been rough but I read this last night I didn't want to film anything I just wanted to like sit down and read this and it was incredible and I just read it again I just went in for a second time because it's just so beautiful you know I know these aren't technically kids books but I whenever I read these I just get so excited to read these to my future child one day because the way that these view the world is the way that I would hope I would raise a child to view the world does that make sense I'm already like when I'm reading it I'm like what age could I like could they fully start to take this in it's to say I'm having this discussion I think that is stuff a lot I was having this discussion with my patrons we had a high school musical movie night very different tone but we were having a high school musical movie night the other night and I was like what age would be best to introduce high school musical to my kids to make them obsessed to like fully you know make them love it very disturbing go see it counselor but yeah if you're looking for a cute heartwarming inclusive joyful gorgeous graphic novel this would be the one for you obviously well you could read this one first technically because it is a prequel but I would recommend the tea dragon society first but yeah I I'm almost tempted to just like read these all the time like just every couple months just like read the books again I need to read number three soon because they are just perfection and what it teaches you about friendship about found family about community right I think the community is such a special thing and the community of the village in this is so special and what it's saying about caring for others and being there for others and our duty as a community to care for others I just think is the most gorgeous thing on this app like this is perfection to me it was five stars I adored it I loved it I don't know what else is there to say to you it's so gentle cozy gorgeous it's perfect it's perfect guys if you haven't started this graphic novel series yet I don't even know what to tell you like you have to because it is just perfect I loved it and I cannot wait to read number three and then I think I'm just gonna read all of K. O'Neill's past stuff like I'm gonna have to get all of K. O'Neill's graphic novels because they've published a lot and so I need to go back through the archives and just read them all okay so it's time to get into our final book I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara and you guys know I told us about it's the one woman's obsessive search the golden state killer and excited to get into it there probably won't be a lot of b-roll in the rest of this vlog just because I am feeling a bit like sensitive a little bit emotional so I kind of just want to be you know I'm I'll check in with you when I have thoughts but I probably won't film much b-roll but yeah I'm gonna try and get through a good chunk of this today it's only about 25 past two I need to probably just edit what I've just filmed of this into this vlog because this is Friday and it's hopefully going up on Sunday I'm out Sunday so I have to get this all done by tomorrow and then I will just be reading this for the rest of the afternoon so hopefully I will make a good chunk and maybe I'll check in with you when I'm about halfway through okie dokie good morning good morning it's time to do my skincare and I'm halfway through I'll be gone in the dark so I thought I would chat to you also I do both two birds one stone yeah so this is Michelle McNamara's story of kind of her hunt for the golden state killer and trying to figure out who it was now I don't think she manages to solve it before she passes away there's elements of this book that are like pieced together from articles that she wrote or like pieced together from her notes where she hadn't written that chapter yet so yeah there is that element to it but it's basically her taking you through it's got a very interesting timeline we're jumping around in time so sometimes like she'll talk us through one of the murders that happened and then she'll go to something that happened with the police in the 90s that led them to discover something new about the case because a lot of this was happening like in the 70s and 80s and then we'll go back to like the 70s where he before he was murdering people he was like a serial rapist and she'll talk us through like that element so it's jumping around in time a lot I am enjoying it I here's the thing on the back all of the like all of the endorsements was applied for this like blurbs all of their blurbs are like Stephen King propulsive can't stop reading this is a one sit down read this is how riveting this is I tore through it in two days like I if I didn't have to read this like within the next like three days I probably wouldn't be reading I'm finding it quite slow read I've just caved and got on the audiobook which I've been trying not to do and I know that's kind of ridiculous to do when you're halfway through a book good god get a grip girl but I've been kind of like trying to resist because I feel like a lot of the books that I've read recently I have had the audiobook so I was trying to like tone down on it a bit but the way that this is written is like you're sitting across some hat and this person who has put so much research into this and like knows this inside out but like you're just having a conversation with her I don't know how to explain it like it's still written with so much research and like dates or whatever but you feel like she is with you like her presence in this book I feel like is very strong as the author um and you feel like you're just sitting across from her and she's talking you through the case and like what she knows and she's so excited to like share this with you and so I just thought that the audiobook might bring that to life for me a bit more because I was feeling a little bit detached from it and a little bit like just not loving it perhaps as much as I was expecting but um I think it's so well researched so well done and she's really like telling the complexities and she's got so much information about the case that I just can't imagine how long it would have taken to like research this so yeah I'm enjoying it I would say at the moment it's like a strong fourth star do I mean like it's not I'm not not enjoying it but so many people I know have given this a five star and for some reason it just wasn't quite clicking but maybe the audiobook will help me do that so yeah I'm just gonna go ahead and finish it today and I will chat with you I guess a little bit later today on my thoughts because I don't think it will take me long to get through it now that I've got the audiobook it will probably speed up my reading a little bit okay it's much later the same day but I just finished I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara and I'm gonna give this four stars this is a solid four star for me you know this is a kind of true crime topic I've never really heard anything about this guy and what he did and he was so prolific and the terrible things he did and how they escalated and I think it's just crazy that until her he'd never really been given much media attention or the public had never been like held attention to this guy in the way that they had with other serial killers yeah I thought this was really fascinating I thought it was really interesting there was just something about it that wasn't a five star for me but you know nonfiction I always feel is a little bit difficult to rate like what is a five star nonfiction I mean I have some like I don't exist but um I find it a bit more difficult to quantify especially now that because I don't read as much nonfiction as I used to but this video has made me really excited to read more I just think this is if you're interested in true crime this is perhaps one of the best investigative works I've seen of really having a genuine personal desire to see the person brought to justice and putting the victims at the center of your story without also like taking advantage of them or like dramatizing their stories or whatever like the victims are there they're ever present but it's not the focus isn't always on them in a way that sometimes I think it can feel exploitative so I just thought her balance of the way that she wrote this and the way she approached the case was wonderful there was just something about it that wasn't like it didn't jump out at me I wasn't obsessed you know but I enjoyed the reading experience I don't think there's a lot more to say I think if this is something of regular interest here I would recommend picking it up something that you should be aware of that I think I kind of misholded at the start is that she doesn't solve it like this she passes away before she finishes the book and in her lifetime she didn't solve the case you know so of course now we know who he was but this book isn't necessarily like solving it or playing an important role according to some of the detectives of that being solved it's more giving us an insight into the type of person he was and what influenced him and all the different factors at play and different the ways his personality shifted and the ways what he was doing shifted and I thought that was really really interesting so yeah I really enjoyed this and listen I am so glad guys I have finally read these three books and I always said I couldn't fit into vlogs and I had to do a whole vlog about the books I couldn't fail the vlogs to fit this into a vlog the standout for me is the tea dragon festival but I mean this series I already know the third one's gonna be a five star like I don't even need to read it I could rate it today this graphic novel series I think is one of the best cozy gentle fantasy out there with a lovely heart at its core and I couldn't recommend it enough these two are both non-fictions that I enjoyed and I am hopefully I'm gonna start reading one on fiction guys okay these are both ones I enjoyed and I think a lot of people could get a lot of from both of them but neither of them were a five star for me I preferred this one I would say to this on the whole a pretty successful vlog so I hope you guys enjoyed it I've got some really exciting vlogs coming in the next couple weeks that I think you guys are gonna enjoy so I love you and I hope you have a good rest of your day and I will see you soon bye


Everybody forced here ripping three boxes for Ryan S. Ryan has a 22 23 two boxes of 22 23 Donors optic basketball hobby and a 2022 tops dynasty baseball hobby Thank you for the awesome order Ryan Let's hit some monsters here. This game is crazy meant to put a comma. I was like a forced out That's surprising for how there's a jail and door and rated rookie Zion lime green to 149 Oshak Bajie rated rookie Tilly Terry age ill Williams rated rookie orange to 199 hollow star gazing lukha donge. It's Arjan Bochamp mellow Bulk Donovich got a hollow Darius Basley Zamobly Jabari Walker rated rookie pink velocity number to 79 Yeah, sorry man Sorry SMC hollow Monte Morris tie with the XR football Is there is that the truth? Redemption Isaiah Mowbly gold rated rookie signatures Nice hit Ryan Brian has with the gold Orange norm Powell the 299 storm and Norman Norman's Powell That's weird hollow ridder keep dealing Terry. You don't know the joke Donnie, could you report to the breaking studio, please? Hollow Gordon Hayward Hollow lights out Kevin Durant Well, one more nice color in this box.  It worked People want another joke the people the people being a higly The person being Higley hollow James Arden zoned in on shipping right now Donnie's here guys. You see the comments on one of the Breaks I was doing a Friday. I was wearing that shirt and they're like I like your Jamaican We haven't had to open a pack of one of 35 points off others tonight Yeah Yeah, Higley was here they said Matt Ryan all caps and I'm a buyer all caps. Yes See you Donnie Good luck out there. Oh, that's us. I was like, what is that noise? That's that's a stream, right? Rookie. Oh shag bossy Let's start doing that Dude, you'll get just chuck that thing up there. That was hilarious hollow step Curry stargazing Susan Victor That's in Sup Sam Victor. Yeah basketball Jimmy Butler Hemi-Buller he really is Let's see a tie game. Oh, it's about to shoot a three hollow Michael Porter, Jr. That's that's that's that's that's what first found last two minutes No, nothing to give now Sleeving slash also breaking hollow Justin Holliday. Yeah, Sam's are doing most of breaking the night the first one I've ripped in about an hour. I'd say Personals read the 99 rated rookie Scotty Pippin, Jr. Sam got to motor because he's a Ravens man And the brown orange Rui Hachimura Number to one 99 Rui And the Panthers just went up three nothing on the Hurricanes. Yeah, so the Panthers are gonna win at all lights out hollow Trey young like it's inevitable now. Yeah, the Panthers in the heat will now win at all Go Florida, Florida represent Yeah, it kind of stinks Vaughn buying some spots for Wednesday I think that's what I think that's wet nest day. I'm not sure what they those are Very Vaughn seems you're there Keegan Walker Agbaji hollow just soon move Have an auto to go. I think in this one Malachi Branham red it's a 99 Chris Paul. I think it's gonna be a blue shade on sharp. That would be For date ten days of Diablo four. Yeah, you ready hollow Davey. I'm Mitchell. I've never played at Diablo My buddies played it. I Downloaded for tonight today. Oh, yeah, Randy rookie shade on sharp so I have to Play that Dyson Daniels ready rookie you hollow autograph Dyson Daniels And I'm just kidding Jalen Duran. Oh my god, it's a lime green Josh Christopher It's 149 Hello, David Roddy rated rookie and we got to pull a an LB logo man out of dynasty right now Lakers ball 30 seconds left down to it's a time-off work played it. I wish I could take time off work period Period All right, here we go. It's a Shane Bieber three color patch auto five out of ten the Biebs Shane Biba That's gonna do it Ryan. Thank you again for the order. We appreciate you. We'll get these out to you


Hey guys today. We're asking people to define their major with one word and then we're going to have the next person We find guess what that other person's major was. Let's go So what's your major? I'm a biology major and what's one word that you would use to describe your major? squishy Okay, so the person before you defined their major in one word and said their major is squishy guess their major Are they studio art? No Okay, so what's your major by a chemistry molecular biology? Wow, and so how would you describe that in one word? stressful So the person before you described their major in one word as stressful guess their major I'll go with Biochem Good job What's your major biology and music and what's one word that you would use to describe your major? Multi-faceted what major would you say is multi-faceted? faceted Let's say like a chemistry or biology or something like that has to be yeah, was that it?


Aloha everyone and welcome to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kay Lee Akeen, President of the Grassroot Institute. 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, better known as the Jones Act. Now this set of laws governs all cargo shipped between any two U.S. ports. After a century of the Jones Act having served the United States, there's now vigorous debate over whether it's time to modify or repeal the Jones Act, or simply leave it as it is without any changes. My guest today has certainly weighed in on this issue. U.S. Congressman Ed Case representing the first district of Hawaii was elected to his current term in 2018, and prior to that he served as representative for the second U.S. Congressional District of Hawaii between 2002 and 2007. We previously hosted him here at the Grassroot Institute in a debate I moderated between congressional candidates, and we now welcome him back as a member of Hawaii's congressional delegation. But as an advisory to our viewers, we're first going to talk about the Jones Act, and then as time permits, we'll ask other questions of the Congressman of importance to Hawaii and the nation. So would you please welcome with me Ed Case, Congressman Aloha. Good to be back with you, then on the show here before, but good to be home. Well, this is your home, definitely, and we've got beautiful Waikiki beach with which you're no stranger to. You've worked there as well for many years, and thank you so much for being on the program today. Well, we're going to talk about a topic that kind of makes people glaze over in their eyes with confusion as to what it actually means. Jones Act, this esoteric sounding law, what is it? What would you say to the average constituent or even to your fellow Congressman describing exactly what is the Jones Act? The Jones Act is an almost 100-year-old federal law that basically says that if you're going to ship anything between two U.S. ports, you must use U.S. shipping built in the United States, screwed by United States folks. And that sounds perhaps to some folks like a really good idea. But the fact of the matter is that the Jones Act has a disproportionate impact on island states, island jurisdictions, such as ours, because we only have one way to get our stuff here, and that's by shipping. So there's no competition from airlines, no competition from buses, trains, anything else. So the Jones Act says you've got to do it this way. So the Jones Act covers shipping between two American ports, and as you mentioned, it requires that ships that are used for that are built in the United States. Yeah, correct. So for example, here in Hawaii, we got almost all of our goods, almost anything that's in the store comes in by ship, and it comes from California to Honolulu by shipping. It doesn't come in by airplanes. It doesn't come in, obviously, by freight trains or anything like that. So while the Jones Act affects all of the United States, as you mentioned, it will inordinately affect places like Hawaii. Absolutely. That's a major issue that I've got with the Jones Act because let's say you're taking a cargo of wheat from Minnesota to New Orleans down the Mississippi River. Now that's a Jones Act location because it's Mississippi to, I'm sorry, I said Mississippi, what I really meant was Minnesota to New Orleans down the Mississippi River, and that's one port to another port, American port, that got to use Jones Act ships for that. But if you don't like the charge that's being charged for the Jones Act ship, then you can get on a train, you can get on a truck, you've got a lot of other ways to get that down there. So there's a competition going on, but here we don't have that. Well, let's step back for a minute and go back to the days when Senator Wesley Jones put this law into effect. What was he thinking as he looked at the future? What was the real purpose of the Jones Act? How has it served us in the last 100 years? Well, you're going to get a debate over that, but I'll tell you from my perspective, the real purpose was straight protectionism to artificially protect the US industry so they didn't have to compete with anybody overseas. And that was what was happening at the time in whole industries. The reason given for the Jones Act when it was passed, one of the reasons was to protect the US domestic shipping industry, both because we felt that we should always have the option of transiting goods between US ports with US ships. Also, there was a military aspect to it where there was some sentiment after the First World War that we didn't have enough capability to take our military around the world, so maintain that shipbuilding capability in our country. But again, for me, it was protectionism, and it still is protectionism. So you've mentioned some of the main reasons given for the Jones Act, but you highlight protectionism as being the real underlying motive. Why wouldn't you want a federal law to say that you don't have to compete with the rest of the world on your shipping? Well, that's a very good question, to take the automotive industry, for example. When it was under a high level of protectionism, we saw what happened in terms of the quality of American cars, in terms of the ability of Detroit and other places to sustain jobs and so forth. You think a comparable thing has happened in the shipbuilding industry in the United States? I think the motivations were similar. I think that businesses love competition or want to be able to compete unless they get a federal law or some other circumstance under which they can get a monopoly going. And of course, that's good for the business, but not good for all the folks that depend on it. And when your lifeline is off of shipping, you do not want a monopoly to develop so that your prices are not subject to market forces. And that's what has happened with the Jones Act. During your first term in Congress, you began to talk about Jones Act publicly, and you introduced some legislation. And before we talk about that, what motivated you? How did talking about the Jones Act come to your play? Did constituents raise that as a concern of theirs? Well, first of all, it wasn't the first time I talked about it. I actually started talking about the Jones Act when I was a quite junior state legislator. So we're talking about the 1990s. And I simply asked the question in the legislature, what is the impact of the Jones Act on Hawaii? And I felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me because the sky fell apart. And everybody was so upset that we actually had to evade this, including the folks that were most benefiting from the Jones Act being medicine primarily. And I thought, well, if they're going to come down on me that hard, where they don't even want to have a discussion, then where they'll smoke, there's some fire. So that's when I started to focus on the Jones Act. When I got Congress in <IP_ADDRESS>, as you mentioned at the outset of the show, I brought the second congressional district. And that had almost all of the agriculture in Hawaii and that district. And the bottom line for our Hawaii agriculture is that the only way to really make it into a materially contributing part of our economy is to be able to export it. And the markets are on the mainland. That's Jones Act shipping going from here back to the mainland. And they weren't able to get their product there because the prices were too high. And these weren't empty ships going back. You said you've been talking about the Jones Act since your days in the Hawaii state legislature. Were you surprised at some of the backlash that you got when you began to discuss it? Well, initially I was surprised. But then once I understood a little bit more, I understood that they had the sweetest deal going. They had a monopoly. And they were going to protect it at all costs. And they were quite lavish in terms of their campaign contributions and their influence in the legislature and with politicians. And so nobody really wanted to talk about it. Well, one of the reasons that Mattson and others who defend the Jones Act put it forth is that according to them, it allows our shipping lanes to remain open, especially during difficult times like hurricanes and so forth, and especially because of the fact that we're so isolated, the most isolated archipelago in the world. What do you think about that argument? Well, first of all, that is not proved out by the facts. When Puerto Rico had major hurricane there, they actually had to exempt Puerto Rico from the Jones Act in order to get adequate shipping from the mainland and other places to Puerto Rico for humanitarian purposes. Number one. Number two, the bottom line is in the last 100 years, essentially the shipbuilding and the ship operation industry has become internationalized so that we have a very, very small shipbuilding industry in this country and very, very small number of the total ships out there transiting cargo around the world. We're really an anachronism in this way. And so what the Jones Act is basically doing for Hawaii is it is artificially reducing the supply of shipping. And with that, of course, comes increased demand. And with that comes increased prices. Well, you're bringing up my favorite subject as an undergraduate in college, economics. And the one thing, however, I remember, although it was a long time ago and there's a lot that I forgotten, was supply and demand. And when the supply shrinks but the demand remains constant, the price goes through the roof. Well, that's what's happened. Well, I think there have been various attempts to quantify that. And as I recall, the Grassroots Institute is also trying again to get a really good handle on a tight study that can actually show a price linkage to the Jones Act. But the studies have projected somewhere in the range of 20% attributable at Jones Act. And one way you can tell that on a very, very artificial way of going about this is imagine that you go into the grocery store here in Hawaii and you buy anything on that shelf and then go up to California and buy the same thing on that shelf in California. And that difference has virtually nothing to do with anything other than the cost of shipping that unit from the mainland to Hawaii. You're right. I think people realize intuitively that the costs are high, in part, because of shipping. And we're talking about everything from goods in the store to the most important commodity, which is housing. Well, let's talk about something exactly. I was about to say that because sometimes people focus only on how much something caused in the grocery store. But let's look at the fact that almost all of our housing supplies come from the mainland. So we talk about the high cost of housing. Well, imagine that you add 10%, 20% to your products that go into housing right off the top. You think that's not going to make for a more expensive house, of course it is? Well, let's not say that this is the price of paradise. That in order for us to have paradise the way it is, we need the Jones Act specifically for our sense of national security. That in times of war, we need to be able to mobilize our merchant marine fleet in order to protect us. What are your thoughts about that argument? I think it's not borne out by the facts anymore. For example, take that argument. First of all, our military operates military sea lift ships, which it has at its disposal. And those are built overseas. And so our military gets that the cost of building ships for our military is probably one quarter, somewhere in that range, one quarter of what it costs for us to build it here, number one, number two. Let me just step in for a moment, then we can go back to what you were about to say. You're saying that our United States military actually buys ships from overseas, from our allies presumably, whereas under the Jones Act, our businesses are not allowed to do the same thing with their commercial fleet. Well, yes, that's correct, except that they get around it by being able to buy free manufactured parts of those ships from overseas and then bringing them here and assembling them here. So they kind of get the best of both worlds, number one. Number two, take a look, for example, in 1950, we had 400 Jones Act ocean-going vessels. Today we have 99. So obviously, a couple of generations ago, we had many, many shipyards. Today we have essentially three shipyards. So whether we like it or not, what has happened is that the world has run by us in terms of manufacturing ships and becoming quite adept at operating those ships out there in the international sea lanes. And why should we not benefit from that? Why should we be subjected to the high cost, especially in an island state like Hawaii? Again, if the mainland wants to do it, I'm less concerned about that. I'm concerned about Hawaii. You talked about the price of paradise. I don't accept the price of paradise just off the top. I'm sorry. Everybody says price of paradise. There's lots of things we can do here in Hawaii to deal with the price of paradise. Yes, it is going to be more expensive in many areas, but doesn't mean we have to extort money from the folks that live here because of an excuse like the Jones Act. Well, I don't need to tell you how important the unions are here in Hawaii and how prominent they are in terms of political power. One of the arguments put forth by defenders of the Jones Act is if we modify it, if we change it, we will end up in massive losses of union jobs. What is your thought about that? Well, I don't agree with that. First of all, the Jones Act requires that ships be built in the US, manned by US, by US crews, and subject to US law. And that's as it should be. There is no reason whatsoever why we cannot require foreign ships transiting between US ports to be subject to US law. They should be. They should be subject to international law, I'm sorry, environmental law, labor law, certainly subject to whatever collective bargaining agreements are entered into by the workers on those ships. So that's number one. Number two, I would make this point. Every single one of those folks that are out there working in Hawaii, the hundreds of thousands of folks that are working in Hawaii and their families, including the 20% that are unionized in Hawaii, all pays for Jones Act shipping. So a very, very small number of workers, it's probably 3,000 Jones Act seamen across the entire country, are really, from my perspective, harming not them themselves, but the Jones Act and the implications of the Jones Act to Hawaii are harming hundreds of thousands of workers unionized or not. They're the ones that are suffering as well. Their jobs are at risk because prices are too high. We're going to go take a break. And when we come back, I want to ask you about some of the legislation that you put in in the past and plan to put in your current term in Congress. And we'll hear a little bit more about your views on the Jones Act. My guest today, Congressman Ed Case, is talking with me about the Jones Act. Don't go away. And when we come back, we'll also move on to a few other topics of importance to Hawaii and the United States. I'm Kaley Iakena on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Together. We'll be right back. Thanks to our Think Tech underwriters and grand tours, the Atherton Family Foundation, Carol Mon Lee and the Friends of Think Tech, the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education, Collateral Analytics, the Cook Foundation, Dwayne Karisu, the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, Hawaii Energy, the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, Hawaiian Electric Company, Integrated Security Technologies, Galen Ho of BAE Systems, Kamehameha Schools, MW Group Limited, the Schuyler Family Foundation, the Sydney Stern Memorial Trust, Polo Foundation, Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Welcome back to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kaley Iakena, president of the Grassroot Institute. Hawaii is the most isolated archipelago on the Earth. And for all the states in the United States, we're the one that is most dependent upon shipping and shipped goods of every kind for our daily lives, for our economy, and for all things, even for our own sense of security in this world. Representative Ed Case, however, has raised questions about a 100-year-old shipping law known as the Jones Act. And we're going to continue our conversation on that. Congressman, in your first term, you introduced some legislation for revising the Jones Act. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you may have planned for this current term? Sure. I actually introduced the three bills. The first bill said that the Jones Act should not apply at all to any non-contiguous part of our country. That'd be like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Anything other than the mainland, it wouldn't apply. So we're talking not just about Hawaii, but Guam, Saipan, Virgin Islands, Samoa, Puerto Rico, Alaska. These are the areas of our country as to which the Jones Act has a disproportionate effect, which is what we've already talked about. And then number two, I said, OK, fine. If these other jurisdictions don't want to do that, then I'm going to just try to exempt Hawaii itself. And then number three, I said, OK, fine. If you don't want to exempt the Jones Act for westbound shipping, so California to Hawaii for some reason, then at least exempt the Jones Act or take the Jones Act out of the shipping back to the mainland. And there I was trying to get at my agricultural producers who had no real avenue to get their product to market. And I said, hey, you're sending back empty ships, but you're still charging Jones Act prices. Fine. If it goes from here back to the mainland then let the Jones Act go for that. And the answer was absolutely no. And the reason was because they viewed it as a slippery slope. The Jones Act business, as to the non-contiguous parts of our country, is miniscule compared to the rest of the country. But the Jones Act lobby in Washington, which is a very powerful one, basically views any exemptions to the Jones Act as a slippery slope. So they're not willing to simply say, yeah, we understand Hawaii's problem. We'll go with you on that one. Well, it's obvious that you represent Hawaii and you are concerned about the problems of Hawaii. But why have you focused primarily on Hawaii in the non-contiguous regions rather than looking at a national solution to Jones Act? Well, I think there's many problems with the Jones Act on a national basis. But I was just trying to pick my fight. My fight is for Hawaii in the non-contiguous areas. And if there is a broader movement out there for Jones Act reform, which I think the Jones Act at 100 years needs a little bit of discussion, not the same world it was 100 years ago, I'm fine being part of that. But you're correct. My focus is on the folks that I represent here who are paying unnecessarily some of the highest prices in the entire country that doesn't have to be that way. What kind of legislation can we expect coming out of your office during this term? Well, I'm going back to the idea of exempting Hawaii out. But I'm taking it another angle this time as well. What I'm putting together is a proposal that says, look, the international cost of shipping is out there, and it's pretty well-established. Actually, you find indexes out there that have, how much does it cost to take a cargo from here to there? It's all in how much space you have on an ocean-going vessel. And these are well-established, kind of like the Consumer Price Index. They're standard prices that are paid. And I'm saying, basically, OK, if you're going to keep the Jones Act in place, then you cannot charge more than X percent above that international rate. So yeah, we'll take the Jones Act as a given, but you can't gouge because you have a monopoly because of the Jones Act. Now, you are the only major political figure in Hawaii or from Hawaii who has spoken out in a big way for Jones Act reform. How do you account for that? I'm not going to prejudge my colleagues in Congress, and not pass present or future. There have been others, Charles Dejeu, being one very good example who agrees with me on the Jones Act. Other politicians from Hawaii simply take, I think, more face value some of the arguments that I think used to be advanced for the Jones Act, for example, military readiness or maintenance of a domestic shipbuilding capacity. I don't think the facts support it anymore as we've already talked about, but I think that that's their orientation. And I think that they are also, I would assume, comfortable with the Jones Act ships continuing to come here at higher prices and are less comfortable with the idea that if you didn't have Jones Act requirements that the international shipping would pick up the slack and you'd have real competition. To what extent do you think that their arguments are really based upon reason or perhaps to what extent would other politicians be in the pocket of Jones Act? Well, I'm not going to speak about them, but I'll tell you one thing. Some of my most powerful political opponents throughout my career have come from this particular issue. These are folks that don't like me talking like I'm talking on your show. They don't want the public to think about the consequences of the Jones Act or the high prices, and they don't want to have to consider that maybe the arguments don't exist anymore. And their remedy is to keep people like me out of office and when I get into office to keep me from continuing in office.  You have allies in Congress. Do you expect to be able to get consensus for your attempt to help Hawaii and the non-contiguous regions? I think I do have allies in Congress. The Jones Act does impact negatively other parts of our country. There are whole industries, for example. And especially in the Midwest who would love to get their products to market at a cheaper level than what the Jones Act allows them to do. And you can take this from a number of different slices. You've got folks out there that simply don't believe in this kind of regulation. They don't believe in protectionism in general. And then, of course, there are folks that represent areas like Guam and the CNMI, Northern Marianas that are my allies in Congress. You think you'll get bipartisan support for your effort? I would guess so, yes. But again, I haven't put this out to my colleagues yet, so I don't know what kind of support is there. Well, you have one colleague, Representative Garamundi, who is floating a bill now to include LNG in Jones Act ships. Right now, we don't have any ships that can actually carry LNG under the Jones Act. What do you think about his efforts? I think it's trying to fix a problem the wrong way is what I think. And he's a good friend of mine. And he's an ally of mine in many other areas. But on this particular one, we'll have to respectfully disagree. One of the things you discover about the Jones Act as you take a look at it is there are whole categories of ships out there that we're not producing in our shipyards. And LNG carriers are one. There's some tankers, some very specialized kind of oil-related barges that have to function under exemptions for the Jones Act. So that should tell you that there's something wrong with it in general. Let's move on to some questions that have to deal with other issues. You've brought some legislation forward to prevent internet platforms from being used to defeat laws in Hawaii that are kind of informed recently against Airbnb and other platforms such as that. What are your thoughts here? Well, I do believe that the proliferation of illegal vacation rentals is hurting us in many categories. It's hurting us by the non-compliance of most of these operations with tax laws and labor laws and other laws that are imposed on hotels right now and are not being imposed by them or if they are, they're not paying for them. Number one, number two, I think this is directly jacking up the cost of housing. Because after all, if I could sell my house as a hotel, it would be worth more than if I sold my house as a residence. So what does that do? It increases the cost of housing. It takes inventory out of local people being able to buy those houses and or rent them. Again, this falls in the category of, hey, we're sitting around talking this up to the price of paradise. Well, it's our fault for letting these vacation rentals get out of hand on an illegal basis. We've got good laws now, and they're being enforced here. But the internet platforms are claiming that our laws don't apply to them because they're not liable if they knowingly post illegal content on their sites. And there's a federal law that they're hiding behind. The federal law says that, and I say no. I don't agree with that. Here at the local level, we see the divide oftentimes between those who are promoting personal property rights on one hand and the quality of community life on the other hand. How do you find the balance between the two? Well, we have balanced those very successfully throughout many, many decades. Some people might not agree with that balance, but we've had strong planning and zoning laws in Hawaii throughout our statehood and before. In fact, we're really quite revolutionary in our laws. And clearly, that gets in the way of some people making a lot of profit. And by the way, when we're talking about illegal vacation rentals, the old line about how this is just about so-and-so that is a senior person and just needs to rent out his or her home, that is by far the exception to the rule. The real rule here is second homes owned by people that are operating them for profit and many, many times they own a lot of these homes. That's what's jacking up the cost of housing because those are out of the market. They're being operated as hotels. And I think that most people in Hawaii understand that and they agree with the direction that we're going now. Hawaii has become a place that people have to leave, unfortunately, because of the cost of living. We've got the highest per capita rate of brain drain. People just leave the state because they can't afford it. What are your thoughts about this migration of population out of our beautiful paradise? Well, back to my earlier point, I think a lot of this is self-inflicted by us assuming that we are always going to have a very high price of paradise. As you put it, yes, to some extent, that might be true. But there's many, many things we can do to help our own situation as opposed to just taking it for granted. Number one, number two, it always comes back to, and we've talked already about shipping prices as contributing to that. We've talked about housing prices as contributing to that. And I could go on to other prices. Well, I want to thank you for being with us. And I just realized we could go on talking for another half hour or longer. You're going to be available to the people of Hawaii and some forums that are upcoming. In fact, we can put that onto the screen right now. You want to say a couple of things about your talk story? Well, I think it's just a really, really critical time for me to stay in touch with the folks I represent. I have always run my talk stories where it's me personal. There's nobody censoring questions. You can see on the screen there that's one of my talk stories. I'm just here talking with the folks I represent. We're running six more during my current period back home, starting this Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, two on Saturday, and then on Monday, we're doing an electronic talk story for those folks that couldn't come personally. And the information is at case.house.gov, case.house.gov, and that'll tell you everything. Very good. Well, Congressman Case, thank you so much for spending time today. Always good to talk with you. Thanks for having me on. My guest today, US Congressman Ed Case, talking about the Jones Act. If you want to see more, tune in in two weeks on Think Tech of Hawaii's Hawaii Together. Until then, I'm Kaley Iacina. Aloha.


If there is a war, Britain will endure for five days. The British armed forces will be able to last about five days in a war situation due to the depletion of military supplies. This was reported by the Financial Times with reference to Tobias Elwood, the head of the Defence Committee of the Great Britain Parliament. High inflation and the cost of replacing equipment sent to Ukraine has created a truly grim picture and has seriously depleted military supplies, the FT quoted Elwood as saying. According to Elwood, the army is facing a massive shortage of surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles, two of the most supplied arms to Ukraine from the United Kingdom. I'm very concerned that the message coming out of the Treasury is indicating that we must brace ourselves for further real-terms cuts because inflation is rising, he said. This comes amid an increase in lobbying for more military spending in London with defence officials discussing cost-cutting measures. Meanwhile, the condition of the British army has become a domestic political issue with Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, a prominent lobbyist for increased military spending, telling Parliament earlier in the month that the United Kingdom hollowed out and underfunded its forces. The Ministry of Defence, however, has dismissed the claims that the UK army has grown meager, stressing that these are speculative rumours which always circulate before a budget and even more so in the run-up to the Integrated Review. We don't comment on speculation.


There are many IT based, internet based resources available which can be very helpful to the small firms to maintain their HR functions like training, recruitment and many others. For example, this website of Dosibos, it can make easy for company employee to access of the shelf and customize online learning courses. There are dozens of online learning courses, all relevant topics like productivity, HR management or benefits management, salary and compensation. The whole range of management related topics and HR management related topics are there on this website at a reasonable price. HR manager can jointly identify the most valuable, most useful programs for their employees and recommend those employees and they can do the reimbursement or they can finance these programs for the employees. So, OSHA guidelines are very well elaborated that resource can be used by the management or by the HR. OSTARnet, you might remember, we talked about this website in our session on recruitment. This is very rich website in terms of giving job description and job analysis related data for thousands of jobs, those data, those job analysis can be used and can be customized according to the need of existing job. So, that is a very useful resource to do the competency mapping and job analysis and it is particularly useful for the small firms who cannot afford to have full timers looking at the job analysis and competency mapping. There are lot of freely available test and reasonably priced test available which can be used which are scientifically developed and which can be used for the selection and recruitment process. This is one example like Wonderlich personal test, it measures the general mental ability, it also gives the predictive index in terms of professionalism of the person, in terms of their commitment for the job on many of such things. So, there are many such tests available, organizations can use, small organizations can use these tests and the selection tools for selection and recruitment process. Then there are many other resources like HR direct that is the, that offers the variety of HR material. You must have recognized that there are lots and lots of forms are required related to various HR activities like recruitment related forms, performance management related forms, training and development or training evaluation related forms or even exit interviews. So, forms and formats are required at many, for most of the HR practices, for most of the HR functions or most of the HR activities. This website can give lot of generic forms which can be further customized according to the organizational needs and these are related to the various HR activities. Along with this, these repositories and net based resources, there are some IT based tools as well to manage the HR processes and these tools also can be very useful for small forms. First example comes to my mind is Zoho. Zoho is an Indian product, excellent administrative HR tool, it does performance appraisal, it helps in time and attendance tracking, it helps in leave management, it is, it can be customized, it acts as an employee self service, it can work on mobile app on the android environment. So, it can request time off even when they are not in office. So, this is very useful tool for the small forms, very user friendly tool, can be operated, can be useful, can be operated on the mobile phones as well. So, this is one example of readily available software to manage the HR processes and systems and particularly relevant and useful for the small forms. Another example of the HR tool is Bamboo HR. It is a cloud based core HR solution designed to meet the small business administrative needs. So, it has central depository which contains the employee information, salary history, benefits, qualifications, training received etc. And this can be accessed by the employees as well and so it has a repository as well as the inbuilt forms and both are linked. So, HR activities can be carried out and the data generated in this activity automatically get saved in the repository. So, this is also one of the very useful tools of managing HR without large number of human resources. So, this is one another HR package available for the small forms which can be used by the owner managers or other managers for whom HRM is a part time job. For expanded use Bamboo HR integrates with many popular application like application tracking, e-signature, payroll, performance management and this also can operate on the android environment and iOS environment both. So, this can also be very useful. There are many tools, many such tools are available like Namely or Alight HRM, Fracto HR, Darwin Box. Darwin Box also have a chat box available inbuilt in the software. So, which can be used for the which is like a small robo to address the queries immediately through the chat. So, these are many such softwares. Most of them are which is being presented here are useful, they are good, large number of firms are using these software. So, these can be used by the small firms that can help them to manage their HR processes professionally without investing number of hours or number of resources specifically for the HR process.


She had blisters so severe from it that when she popped them, the neighbors dogs would start barking. Welcome to episode number 27 of the Marty and second floor, the Marty and the second floor. Yeah!  Say what you will about that, but you can't say it. Actually full too. And what else? What else about it, man? Oh, he stands up, he's puffing his chest out. What's going on here, he says that. Hey, what's he saying, man? What's he saying? What's he looking at, huh? He looks cute with a long shirt on. He looks cute with a long shirt on. Is that better? Is that better? Is that a bit better? Like a Bosley. He's actually talking to him, he's actually talking to a man. You met the neighbor's horse today. Yeah, my neighbor has a horse. That's so cool. Yeah, that is good news. God, it was a beautiful animal. Any horse related stuff? There's a horse right there. Yeah, having a horse neighbor is better than not having a horse neighbor. Horses are vital. Imagine highways with stallions, stampeding back and forth. Imagine bumbies. Yeah, no one would have to fuel up anywhere.  Bloody horses having a great day outside. It was a friendly, friendly creature. Do you remember his name? Yeah. Yeah, it was Gaston or something? Something like that. Oh yeah, that's right. Gaston. Like from that. Wasn't he the bad guy in Cinderella? What's that? Beauty and the Beast. Beauty and the Beast? Gaston. I've made that up.  Yeah, and how funny was it that she said he was a grumpy horse? Yeah. He's a grumpy horse.  Gaston is the bad guy in Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, I thought it was. Remember that song? That Gaston song when they got nuts in the pub. At the very beginning. Gast, yeah.  What happened last week? They're remaking Pinocchio in real life. Tom Hanks is going to be Gepetto. Ah, yes. Tom Hanks, the pedophile. Will be Gepetto. How fitting. I've got hairs that go across my eyes now. That's just how I am.   Oh, every time. We had Michaels. That's what I was going to talk about. We had Michaels housewarming on the bloody weekend, didn't we? And what did we do?  Speaking of horses.   We had a valium strain.  Yeah, yeah. Holy fuck, is it fun? We can't talk about it too much. I don't know. Can we?  Drugs are okay as long as you're above 18. Oh, I just shot. Then that's like an ad for not to do drugs.  Involuntarily all the time. As we said, we don't do them all the time. It's just for special occasions. Everything in moderation.  Just do it now and then. Same with cigarettes. You can just smoke them every second day. I got to watch it and remember it all. It's not about the drug taking. It's our memory. Like you said last week. It's not about the drug taking, but we did have a bloody good time, didn't we? Yeah.   Did you enjoy it? Yeah, we did some acting and that was a lot of fun. It's so fun. What do we do? We had to be snakes. We had to be snakes. You had to hear our job. We were doing job interviews and you were the boss. We had to try and get a job with you.    Oh, it got me off hard.  Yeah, you really got into it. Oh my god. I thought if we committed, it'd be funny. We turned around and looked at you guys and said, well, me and James are still in trying to stay in care. We were mum and dad to you. We were trying to be in character and we were snickering and then everyone else just was shocked. Yeah, I felt it was weird.  Yeah, he always commits. He's a funny guy.  What happened Sunday? We slept. I didn't wake up to like, fuck, that's right. Well, it's yeah. We missed a fun day there, but fuck, it's good sleep in all day sometimes. Oh, dude, especially when you're up.  Oh, god. We're just always baking. Those are our real jobs. We're actually bakers as well.  Why don't you mate? I did a lot of research for on this days. It was a new man.  Unbelievable.  He's gone crazy. But he said, he said, turn to me and said, I have four very good on this days. He said, then he handed me a piece of paper and I haven't seen him since just now. Where'd you go? Oh, he just went over there. He's preparing for next week.  Have it your eyelashes. Has that really been there since last week? No, they just come just before the podcast.  Oh, yeah.   Wow, you guys are great scientists. Well, yeah. It was all me. It feels like it's my eyebrows. So it's not my bottom eyelid.  It's not my bottom eyelid. So it has to be because it's coming from up here. It's up the top.  Let's get on with the research. Yes, moving on from the eye hair. On this day in 1992, Mark Wahlberg landed on his back after jumping off a four-story building to impress a girl he was seeing. He was going for 10 front flips, but lost control midair and was spinning out of control until he slapped onto the ground. Incredibly, his only injury was a shattered hip. A really shattered hip. Even so, he managed to walk back up to his apartment in an attempt to hide his injuries to avoid further embarrassment from the girl, still watching him from the four-stories up. He beat her ears off when she pointed out that he was clearly badly injured. Man, he's aggressive. I had no reaction to that. Well, that was going to be a nice story, but that took a nasty turn there at the end, Matthew Brown. Was it his wife? No, no, he jumped off a building to impress a girl he was seeing. Do you know who Entourage is loosely based? The idea is based off his life. Apparently, is that crazy? I heard that the other day. Yeah, I spoke to him. On this day in 1996, he's pissed. He keeps it in a massive cold room at his house and has like a million litres of piss now.   That's in doing that. Committing to it. Having just heaps of rooms filled with frozen piss. He's got enough money that he could do that.    Gushing. Imagine all that.  Did you guys watch his Netflix doco? Who? The Michael Jordan one on Netflix? I got like two episodes in. Or three episodes in. What happens in the end? Oh, the bends.  I don't know the Chicago Bulls story, but... It's a good, it's a really good story. I didn't realize how good it was. Does it get better than past like the last two?  It's like the Epstein one. On this day in 2003 Julia Roberts would smash her face into walls, cars and steel sheds in an effort to shorten her snout. There was a comment once about her on social media that she said she looks a little bit like a horse and she really took it to heart.  A cooked then fucked.  On this day in 2016 Clint Eastwood turned 168 years old. He's still alive today and his skeleton can now be seen through his shirts and he doesn't excrete bodily fluids anymore except vomit. The vomit is always a thick, dark paste. He only whispers when he speaks and his testicles have turned into a soft foamy material. He's very, very old. He's very, very old. How old is she? Apart from 168. He's 90. Is he? No, he's not.  He made a movie like last year. He did that movie The Mule which was really weird racist old man. Wasn't he still directing?  He directs most of his movies. Nearly all of his movies he's directed himself. He's an incredible actor. Is that one? We saw that. Is he racist in that as well? Is he racist in The Mule? Yeah, but like it's more he becomes not racist. Yeah, he becomes not racist, yeah.  Yeah, okay.  If he falls over he's dead. He's so frail. I think why he died at 91. Yeah, for what he's doing at 90 it's pretty incredible.  That's it. It's like pushing someone off a cliff. He's always on a cliff. I think he's pretty fit. For an old dude, yeah.  Well you heard. Yeah, the pace, the dark pace sounds pretty fun. You re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re.  Do you know he's older than Sean Connery? How old she is? No, he's older than Sean Connery. Yeah, he looks like he looks. Sean Connery is 89 and Sean Connery looks old like, well seems old. Geez, he's done alright too. Yeah. What's his number, Matt? How many? Two. Sean Connery got voted the best Bond ever. Yeah, of course. For me, I really like Daniel Craig, the current Bond.  I haven't really watched him. But the old one is pretty good. And he's cheeky as well. He's very cheeky. Yeah, I like the... There's that great scene where... He's like 60 years old as well, Daniel Craig. He's getting old. He's nearly 50, I think. He's like, fuck, I swear to God, look at man, he's 57. I guarantee. I hope that we get to be the next James Bond, like us two together. Fuck, no. Us two together. I always want to. And we're we are Bond, James is Bond. And we're James is. We are James is Bond. And we fight to the crime.  In the in the bad guy in the movie's box boy. And he's just sliding around everywhere and running after him. He's doing his dancing. Yeah. I had to get you a Mr. Bond. James is Bond.  That was good. How old's Daniel Craig? 52. I knew it. I knew it. Oh, both wrong. Yeah. But there isn't Sean Connery so funny as a bond is that he do little cheeky things as that scene. I come in which one? I think it's Goldfinger or Goldmember which one? Good and confused. But whether chicks like can you hand me some clothes and you like hands or shoes and he sits back and watches.  Never been a big action. You can tell what's going to happen. Five minutes in though. There's a love interest. There's a complication, but everything always works out.  Just. Just the A's just because he's a real man. Yeah. Oh, not even that. It's just it's fucking. It's not a superhero. It's just some fucking.  I like the head bob. You're going to do that more often.  It's probably more entertaining to watch Avengers, I guess, but. Oh, it depends if you're watching the new bonds.  The only thing is they're dated. They're very different movies. Yeah, I guess. Action. That's what it is. The whole time. That's an action movie to me. Which brings us to our next segment, which has been renamed and man. It was pretty. I like that one. And there's a segment where we just answer questions that you guys have sent in via our Instagram. By the way, this podcast is brought to you by the University of Mark.  We can't post on social media. Social media. So risky now these days. Even, well, I guess these aren't hardly any of these. Hardly cut that corner. Hardly any of these podcasts are monetized. That's why we can talk freely here, but with stunts and being rascals. We can't risk it on social media without it being cut or canceled. We're posting Michael's new house to the website. So you get to see the whole house and this little setup has a little cameo in it.  He was only $7 brother. $7 a month brother. That's nothing. Yeah, go on.   I'm trying to find albums. Yes. I love albums. Here we go. Excites me. This one's from Ryan underscore Jones underscore rj. If the trot of a horse was to can be why then if not for his can be the who.  Let that let that just sink in because well one of three things really spring to mind. Isn't that right? Correct. So I'd say it can but it can't well that's just the thing it's like is it really or is it even real? So but we'll leave it alone with you run very very good question though. I understand like that's yeah like that's made me a bit emotional. Yeah, I'm I've got like half a hard reaction heartburn. I'm feeling heartburn.  Yeah. I underscore underscore Tyler.  Yes.    Next question is from rain, R-E-I-N, right? And then there's a dot and then lad, so L-A-D at the end after. So anyway, I'll have a look at what he's written, everyone. Podcast question.  Dude, I'd flip it all the way. Yeah, he's, what do you mean? I don't even flip it now.  Yeah, and then when one side is heavily crustified after that's happened a few times in a few months, then he flips it.  I shouldn't say this.  So it happened, I don't know, weeks ago now. But remember, we did the office, remember we did the office antics and we threw the fan? Oh, yes, yes. I pissed the bed in between that time, some time, right? And so I didn't have a fan, so I just left it. I didn't even put a fan over it. I didn't even change the sheet. And by the next day, it had naturally dried or just gone deeper into the one bed mattress. This is the beauty of one bed mattresses. That is not an endorsement for them.  Oh my God. It evaporates. We should definitely get another one bed mattress brand deal because they've given us two so far. And that, if they give us another one, that's what we're doing. Oh, one bed mattresses. Look how well they absorb my piss. Within 12 hours, I'm able to lie back down.   It was perfect.  So that was it. But yeah, go me, I'm doing well. Woo! Woo! All right, last question. Oh, that is the last question. Would you believe that? Would you believe that? Yep. All right. And next segment, it's been called. Oh!  It's right here. Read it out loud for everyone. Matt. PO box 256 Taigum, spelled T-A-I-G-U-M four oh one eight dot Q-L-D dot A-U-S. Woo! Australia for long. Woo! Look at this. We have a big box. What's we got here? What's that? What's that? What are you touching? I don't touch it.  Oh, Bozzy's come over. Oh, darling. Fuck, it's so funny how he comes over when that noise is happening, because he likes it. I really don't know how to open this. Beautiful. You should have seen Bozzy's reaction. The horse and him kissed today.  Bozzy kissed a horse. Oh, and then he got a bit panicked. Yeah. He was like, no, it's not a dog. He's not a dog. You lied to me, daddy. You said it was a dog. He saw our story right now. You said it was a dog. I guess it's a week from now for you guys. He turned back. You talking to me? You lied to me, daddy. Oh, he thinks he's got a toy. He literally thinks this is a toy. Oh, that's why, because he would think that me making those noises over there is me being like, oh, this is something for you. Yeah, sorry, dude. You miss out.  Sorry, Bozzy. Good boy. Dude, so he's bought us the cricket box.   So I think he, is this his shit?  You need them. Because he hasn't mentioned their new brand or anything. P.S., the best vid content you make is where you need dick protectors.  Maybe we should do an experiment to see how much these things work. Yeah. And it'll end with us driving over our dicks with this there. And if it handles a car, then we know they work.  Is this what a cup is? Yeah, it's the same thing, yeah. Very good. Thanks, dude. Thank you very much, mate. We'll fucking, we'll use one and then we'll put one up here, right? Yeah, well, let's do an experiment to see how effective these are. Bloody Bozzy can't move, really. Can't believe it.  All right, that is the end of... I just realized what time it is. Oh, that is the end of the PO1 boxing segment.  We love opening it every week. It's great. The next segment has been renamed to... Please, stop it, mate. And this is a segment where we just do stunts and we both do very equal. We both get the same amount of pain. We both take 50, 50, even split of stunt that we each do to each other.   Is that... I like the other way, the wasp. He likes the other ways. Probably the words. Oh, I thought the beers would give me confidence, but they're not doing anything.  Yeah, I want to hit your eyes, right? We've got everybody. I think you go the long way. Whoa, that was quick! I thought you were going to make it fucking...  I'm going over there. Oh, bad. I think that was all right. I thought the long way would have been better. Yeah, no, that's still pretty bloody good because it's twice a double, double whack. Is there a mark?  No, no, there will be a mark right here. Oh, yeah. It's like a birthmark. A little birthmark. It's a little birthmark in the forehead. It's like, wow. Do you know what I mean? Oh, oh, oh.  All right, and that is the name of our last segment, which is where we do a prank haul. Let's not achieve our David Fu-Chimp-Oh, and I live on the second floor. Hey, sexy-N dad, my mate Joe. Co-co-choo, is that it?  He's recently got done speed and one forwardish in an 80s and gone through the airport link tunnel in Queensland. He's been fined over one K and eight points as well as six months suspension.  No, that's good. We can do that one to Joshy. Hello. Oh, nice speaking with Jai. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, good day. It's just Judy from the Brisbane Magistrate Court here. Just calling, I'm wondering why you didn't come to court today. You've seen to have missed your court hearing today. I didn't think for what for 142 and an 80 zone going through an airport link tunnel in Queensland. I was led to believe that I didn't have to go to court. It says here that you're definitely meant to come in today. And as a result, your court date's been changed for another six months and you're going to have to hire a lawyer. And basically means that the court can come and repossess your car. For how long? Well, up until up until the next court hearing, unfortunately. OK, so how do I? Is there a way of making that not possible? Because I was never told about a court thing. Well, it says that there's quite a lengthy process up to a court hearing. So you should have received plenty of notices, lots of letters in the mail, and also usually standard protocol is to also call the plaintiff to come in and texting and stuff like that. So yeah, there's plenty of ways. I'd never got to text calls nothing. Yeah, emails nothing. But yeah, you have to try and understand that the people that I call at the end of the day who have missed their court hearing, they're not usually very honest people. They don't usually give me a very straight up answer. I'm not sort of expecting you to tell me the truth at the moment. I'm just calling to let you know that you've missed your court hearing. And yeah, in six months time, that'll be your next one.  OK, so what's the process of getting my car inbounded? OK, so the big tow truck will come. And they'll pop it on the back of your car. And then they'll sort of they've got like a winch, a winch or whatever in there. Oh, yeah, like I get how it's a truck works. But what's the what's the thing with that? So that's just purely because it was a traffic violation. That's just standard protocol. So yeah, I understand that. But like what charges are there for that? So if you're losing a license, I don't have the whole list of the charges here, but there is a charge for missing your court hearing and failure to appear on court is also carries up to a $15,000 fine. If you can't explain or give a good reason as to as to why you missed your court hearing or even sort of letting us know that you weren't going to make it. You know, that's sometimes I never got letters in the mail or anything. Yeah, yeah. Well, like, like, I don't know, like, yeah, it's like a tricky one, isn't it? Because, you know, it's like, it's like, I guess it's just it's crazy. Yeah, no, no, like I understand. But yeah, I honestly can say that I never received anything in the mail, mate. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's just like it's just honestly, it's it's just like it's like it's full. Well, it's full on the first of all, isn't it? One full.   Yeah, yeah. So it's like, yeah, but I understand what you're saying. Look, I completely understand what you're saying. Yeah. And look, look, I'm willing to cut your deal. OK, a little slice of the action has this for you. All right. I'm looking, I can click my little button here and make everything go away. Bye bye. If you transfer me $10,000. Sorry. Don't repeat this out loud. I can make it all go away. The push of a button, $10,000. That's all. How do I? I don't have $10,000. Well, look, I'll give you two days. OK, to get to. Are you able to? Are you able to actually send me an email? Look, I don't like to get anything in writing. OK, for obvious reasons, darling. OK. So, look, I can give you my personal debts, right? So you can contact me. But other than that, that's nothing that I can roll about. OK, what? Yeah, what are your personal details? OK, my personal details are. Marty and Michael. Sorry, Marty and Michael.  There is no way.   Good.  Well, who was it? Michael, let's set him up. Wait, his name was Jack or something. Oh, Joshy. Josh.   What is this going on? Oh, dude, I can't believe you were keen to like.  He's fully going for it.  I was getting I felt so bad dragging you along for so long.   Come on. Oh, that is a good time. Oh, your dog. That's fucked. Can't be with him. No, man, he's just he just said it to us on Instagram.   Oh, dude, well, anyway.    You know, I can't.  Yeah, yeah, of course, man. It'll be out in the next week's podcast.  Right over here. I mean, shitting myself.   All right, dude. We've lovely to meet you, mate, and you can go and relax. Cheers, boys. See you, man, dude.  Doesn't like to listen to me. I don't handle it. I always like to just push it further with the with the person to like make him more obvious. It's a prank call, but it's so funny when they don't get it. I was like, by the end of it, being so weird and he was still like OK with it. You had spasms of the character from last week.  And then I wanted you to go on the covid thing again.  It worked out really well. That was very good. Well, we are the best. We are the best. Well, best and better than the rest of the best. Well, the best with the best. Well, we're the best. Nothing else for us. We're the best. We're the best with the best. The best with the best. We're the best. We're the best.


Another way to detect a black hole is to find stars orbiting an invisible point. The black hole at the center of our galaxy provides an excellent example. The central object in the Milky Way is known as Sagittarius A star, or SAG A star for short. It is surrounded by so many stars and gas and dust that it is almost impossible to see. After decades of careful observations, the speeds and orbits of around 45 stars around SAG A star have been calculated. This enabled measuring the precise location of the point they are all orbiting around. The measured orbits also identified the gravitational pull from this point, which in turn gave us its mass at four million times the mass of our sun. But when we look at this point, we don't see anything. This was strong evidence that SAG A star was a black hole, because stars are known to be unstable at much smaller masses. The star S2 is of particular interest, because it passes closer to SAG A star than any other. It's a single main sequence star with 15 times the mass of our sun. The measurements of the star showed that its orbit took it to within 20 light hours of Sagittarius A star in 2002, without bumping into anything. That puts SAG A star's 4 million sun mass into a very small place. For many astrophysicists, this constituted proof that it was indeed a supermassive black hole. But others pointed out that an extremely dense dim star cluster could produce these results. But if SAG A star were a cluster, S2's orbit would wobble. It did not wobble. This was the final proof point. 500 years after Copernicus put the sun at the center of our solar system, this team identified Sagittarius A star as a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. But we weren't done with S2. This orbital period is 16 years. Following the 2002 passing, a major effort was mounted to upgrade ESO's very large telescope array to enable the precision needed to reveal the true geometry of space and time near this object and test Einstein's theory of general relativity. These new instruments followed S2 very closely. At the start of 2018, it was accelerating towards SAG A star, reaching relativistic speeds. On May 19th, it reached the closest approach, Perry Center. At that point, it was traveling at 7,650 km per second, or 4,753 miles per second. That's almost 3% of the speed of light. This distance from the black hole was just 18 billion kilometers, or 11 billion miles. That's only 120 times our distance from the sun. The separation on the sky between the two points was just 15 milli arc seconds. It was also reddening in color as the black hole's gravitational field stretched its light to longer wavelengths. The color change in this illustration is exaggerated for effect. The actual reddening is quite small and would not be visible to the naked eye. S2's velocity changes close to the black hole were an excellent agreement with the predictions of general relativity. In addition, the change in the light wavelength agreed precisely with what Einstein's theory predicted. Here's a full dome illustration that shows how SAG A star might look to viewers on a planet orbiting S2 as it orbits the black hole.